An unkindness of ravens but still no whales.

Monday 17th October 2011
 Another fairly quiet week but there was one piece of excitement for the general population of orkney.

 A sperm whale was found swimming on the surface close in to the pier in Kirkwall harbour. These are deep water whales and it was assumed that it was very sick and in imminent danger of death.
Of course we did not get to hear about it until to late but we have come to expect that.

At least we were not as bad as Helen and Jimmy who were parked up by the bay having a burger from the burger van. Helen commented to Jimmy that there were a lot of people and cars about and wondered why they were all there but did not bother to get out of the car to see.
 What was drawing the crowds was in fact the whale on the surface about 50 yards from their car.
 There have been some NATO excercises round here and it has been suggested that the whale may have been disorientated by noise from submarines or surface ships.

 There seems to have been a good outcome in the end though as a boat managed to shepherd the whale to deeper water where it suddenly dived and did not reappear. It has not been seen since so is presumably alive and well.
I think the council were relieved as they are responsible for disposing of whale carcasses and this one was about 50 feet long so would have taken some disposing of.

 The skies this week have been full of activity. As well as aircraft taking part in the NATO excecises, there have been geese coming over in huge numbers. They look and sound very impressive with skeins of 100 geese or more passing over honking as they go only to be followed by more a few minutes later.
I don't suppose the local farmers are to happy about the geese though. Apparently four geese eat the same as one sheep and in winter there are about 85,000 geese here.

Now to the reason for toda's title.
I found where the duck had been laying her eggs and there was a nest with about 20 eggs in it. As I didn't know how old they were, I just slung them away into the field (except 2 marked ones) .Very quickly hooded crows and ravens found them.
 I have always known that the collective noun for ravens is "an unkindness" but It is not something that I have ever been able to use in a meaningful sentence before and it is one of those simple things that please me to be able to use it.
As we had four ravens and a load of hooded crows coming down to get the eggs (The collective noun for crows is "a murder") I can now take great delight in saying that we had an unkindness of ravens and a murder of crows in the bottom field at the same time.


 Oh I do feel good now.

A kestrel also came over the field while the ravens were there and one of them chased it off so perhaps unkindness is a warranted name. I do not think that the kestrel was interested in the eggs but was just an innocent passer-by. The raven did not have much chance of catching the kestrel anyway but it was just making it's feelings understood.

Duncan was up at Steve's across the road the other day and fetched Jock with him. As Steve's dog, Swona was playing with Jock and as Molly had been good earlier in the day and had walked nicely off the lead. I decided to let her go for a play and surprise, surprise she came back when she was called. Maybe we are getting somewhere with the traing after all.
I have however decided to stop going to the dog training classes until I have got Molly coming back every time when she is outside. There seems to be little point in her learning all sorts of fancy tricks if I can not let her off the lead safely.

The links at the back of Burray village seem to be becoming an industrial site for the building of salmon cages for the fish industry in Scapa Flow. There have been quite a few built there recently and there were another couple of almost completed ones and one under construction the other day when I was walking Molly past the beach.
Presumably we will see them being towed out into the flow in a few days.
Plans for a new salmon farm just off the island of Cava have just been passed and so I assume that these cages will be destined for there.


 Saturday and Sunday Pam was away in Kirkwall on a course on Japanese quilting which may or may not be different from English quilting but who am I to comment. I was therefore left to my own devices. The weather on Saturday was a bit indecentso I got nothing done but on SundayI finally got round to fibre glassing the holes in the shed roof. This needed to be done before I can put the roof on the lean-to.

 This morning I had some parcels to post so I went to the post office in "The Hope". A note on the post office said"closed for holiday". This seemed slightly odd as it was not a bank holiday but I thought that it must just be that the post mistress was having a day off so I went to the post office in St Mary's.
The St Mary's post office had a notice on the door saying "closed for Post Office holiday". I have never heard of post offices having special separate holidays before and I think that it may be something that the Orkney post offices have made up themselves. Another of Orkney's special rules for themsels.