The days are getting longer and from now on we have longer days up here than down south.
The clocks have gone forward or backwards or whatever it is that tey do in spring. This messing around with time has always mystified me. Does just moving the hands on a clock make any difference to time? Is mid-day really mid-day, or if the clocks go back, is mid-day at 11 AM?
I think that the reason for all this messing with clocks is supposed to be something to do with making it lighter in winter when the children finish school. Would it not be simpler to say that schools open one hour earlier in winter, or come to that, say that everything starts one hour earlier and the clocks stay the same.
Stephen Hawkins never mentioned anything about juggling with clocks in "A brief history of time" or at least not in the few pages that I read ( three pages forward and two pages back).
Anyway, enough of that.
What I was trying to say before I went off on one was that spring is on its way or is here already.
The snow lying on the ground outside at the moment does tend to discourage this belief in spring but I have always been an optimist.
The official start of spring does at least mean that people have come out of hibernation like little green shoots and things start to happen.
We have had a couple of glorious hot days, one of them a bit to, too, two hot for me. On one of these days a new local walking group had a ramble from Burray village around Hunda island and back. Although we only live about 800 yards from Hunda I have never been over the causeway to the island so this was a "must do" walk.
They had estimated that the walk would take about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. I thought that this was rather optimistic and it ended up taking about 4 to 4 1/2 hours including a break of anout 45 minutes.
It was an enjoyable walk but about half an hour after we started I could feel the pressure on my hip joints as we went uphill. I valiantly,(or foolishly)persisted and although I managed the walk with no trouble,I spent the next 3 days limping about with sore joints. (Oh the joys of od age. All the time to do what you want but your body won't let you.)
Previous to this, and while I still had two functioning legs, we ad a "Birdie walk from Marwick bay up to Marwick head, back down to the bay and along to the fishemen's huts at Sand Geo.
Marwick Head and the Kitchener memorial
It was an interesting walk. We saw a dolphin so close that we could reach out and touch it.
OK, so the more perceptive among you will have noticed that it was not a very lively dolphin but a dolphin is a dolphin, or at least an ex-dolphin.
We also saw a whale, or to be more precise, some bits of a dead whale. There are the remains of a long dead whale that have been washed up in Sand Geo for several weeks now, just skin and blubber now but it is still attracting lots of gulls.
It was not all death and gloom though. Such is the circle of life that omong others,the whale carcass has attracted some Iceland gulls. We have recently had an influx of Glaucous and Icelandic gulls and there were several at the whale carcass.
At first thought it may seem that we should get loads of Iceland gulls here as Iceland is not far away. Iceland gulls though do not come from Iceland but from Greenland and Northern Canada so they are a long way from home.
Why are they called Iceland gulls when they do not come from Iceland? Maybe it is just because "Greenland and northern Canada gull" is a bit of a mouthful.
I had some Andalusian eggs in the incubator. Nine of the twelve hatched, two were infertile and one got infected through a nick in the shell. In theory, this should have given me about 50% blue, 25% white and 25% black. The blue ones are the only ones that you are allowed to show so of course of the 9 that I have, 5 are white, 3 are black and 1 is blue. Maybe the next lot will be better.
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