After yesterday’s (Sunday) hold ups blog posting, here we go again. Just the ongoing story to-day, not much Wildlife movement. Weather is crap. Enjoying Lockdown but missed our holiday this year like everyone else but we are lucky in where we live, with no one here we have the place to ourselves. We are used to it and it is just about to come to an end, to-day it is a grey, wet, gale, with rain.

Back to earlier this month.

It was good to get a trip over in the boat to Portree on one of the good days earlier this month. Rubbish run and all the bits and pieces you need time to get in Portree when not rushing. Especially a bacon roll from ‘Relish’ in Wentworth street.

That Friday Ewen on ‘Seaflower’ took over our final delivery of Kerosene for this winter/spring. I topped up the tank the next day at the Lodge and when filling the tank I remembered that last time it was nearly empty the central heating shut down. The problem was water. So I quickly stopped filling and reversed the pipes clearing out the bottom of the tank before filling. That was an interesting exercise.

I was astonished to take three drums of dirty fuel out of the tank, I don’t know where it came from but have my suspicions. They will settle and we will get some out of it as fuel out here is pretty precious. The dirty water I’ll have to deal with accordingly.

Weekends lately have been quieter than usual with no guests. It has been good to get out and have walks round the forest and other areas where we have not been for some time. In this case through the woods to the East side just above Dry Harbour. This is described in Duncan MacSwan’s article as fields. I’m sure it is quite common in the West Coast but we have a lot of trees, mostly Birch growing on top of rocks, posts and in a gutter (now cleaned). A small hollow that moss has grown in and created a small area of mulch for the seeds to get going, I love the way the roots spread, holding onto their base.

We have many of these almost ‘ancient’ Willows, they are quite common with some colossal specimens but invariably they get too heavy and fall down. Really fascinating trees.

Taking advantage of the walk we positioned the camera where I know the stags pass, only this one young fellow having a look at the camera. (The camera has a glitch that the date does not reset on removing the card).

We have many owls here, I’ve never gone out of my way to see what we have but I have seen Barn Owls, Tawny Owls (I suspect above) and I am sure I put a Short Eared Owl out of the heather one day. This guy has obviously spotted something in the grass.

Finally in the bird stakes from that stance a pair of Woodcock which was nice to see. We moved the camera but no luck at the next site, hopefully better on the next move.

Great to see and it gives us a good idea of what is moving about at night when the animals are best left alone to get on with it. And at night I can get on with making things. This last month Lorraine asked for steps to get to the books and stuff on the high shelves.

So I made her ‘Painter Steps’. A first try and maybe a bit heavy, she can hardly move them, so back to the drawing board.

That is the blog up to date. I have missed out lots of things that have happened in the sporadic blogs of the last few years. What with a house build, new folk here working with us and the strange Covid times it has been difficult to concentrate on Posts at night when I usually do them. But I have a few projects up my sleeve. Hopefully the momentum will continue and I’ll get these posts up.

The Red Deer page is next with reports and records to be posted but the good weather is coming, lambs are certainly coming and for sure the visitors are definitely coming.