Shorefield Project - Fixing up the dry-stane wall

There is a rather splendid old dry stone wall that marks the border between the road and Shorefield.  I have no idea how old it is - but like most of these old wall it represents an enormous investment in time and effort and materials for someone at some point in the past.  I know very little about dry stone walls, but you can tell that this is essentially two separate walls, locked together at intervals with stones that tie the two together.  The 'space' in between is filled with rubble.  This one then has an attactive run of capping stones along the top.

Sadly, the wall has been knocked down at a number of points along its course, almost always through being hit by cars, which usually go right through it.  Rebuilding the wall is a long-term ambition, but it takes ages, requires a highly skilled craftsman, and therefore costs a lot of money.  In the short term we need to make it stock proof so we have blocked up the gaps using stobs and rails - avoiding wire if at all possible.

 

We had a good afternoon - James did most of the hard work, Dolly provided the expertise and I fetched and carried a bit and generally got in the way.  We just have one gap left to fill now - but James has an old gate that he reckons will do the job perfectly.  We are another step along the way to introducing the beasts onto the ground...

The picture above is from a Guardian article and shows the two walls that comprise the finished article quite clearly.

Whooper Swans and their food

Loch Skerrols with some of the c.130 Whoopers

The gathering of c.130 Whooper Swans (plus up to 100 Greylags and a few hundred Wigeon) on Loch Skerrols in the last week is because of a larger than usual growth of Canadian pondweed in the loch. This weed was brought over from North America in the 19th century and has colonised virtually the whole of Britain where it can choke ponds and ditches, though its main damaging aspect is to shade out native aquatic plants. It is popular in aquaria, but be aware that it can grow from a single small piece if you throw it out into your pond and can quickly become the dominant underwater vegetation.

The loch shore showing drifts of Canadian pondweed plus swan feathers

Canadian pondweed in the hand

It's fascinating to see the Wigeon gathering around the up-ending Whoopers and then gleaning the broken bits as the swans feed, exactly as they do in Loch Indaal in front of the generating station when the swans are feeding on the underwater Zostera beds there.

Malcolm

Great Northern Diver (Gavia immer) - Mark and Sally Johnson

Many thanks to Mark and Sally for these lovely shots of a Great Northern

Robin (Erithacus rebecula)

Checking out whether the chickens have left anything in the leaves at Lorgba.

Troglodytes troglodytes

Another from a sequence on my shed roof at Lorgba a week or so ago

Why its nice not living in the real world

Video by Damian Waters


  Liverpool Echo
 
A Merseyside beach is opened up to commercial cockling

http://www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/

Necklace Shells

Walking along Kilnaughton Bay yesterday I came across a lot of small Venus shells with holes in them as shown above. I also came across a couple of Necklace Shells (Polinices catenus) and thus the murder mystery was solved!

The Necklace shell might look attractive and I used to think it had rather an attractive name until ..............

............. I discovered its true identity and the reason for its name. It is the Bonxie of the shell world. A hunting carnivore, it feeds on small sand-dwelling bivalves (shells made up of two halves) which it opens by drilling distinctive round holes through the shells. Still, let's not be too hard on them; after all, they do make it easier for us crafts people to make necklaces!

Becky

The Guardian - Environment

Icelandic Birding Blog

http://notendur.hi.is/yannk/birdnews.html

Sundown - Kilchoman this evening

Widgeon (Anas penelope) at Loch Skerrols

There are around 500 Widgeon on Loch Skerrols at the moment, with further concentrations at both Loch Gruinart and Loch Indaal.  Smaller numbers can be found pretty much anywhere around the coast of islay at this time of year

The Kilchoman Cross

Kilchoman Cross stands in the burial ground of Kilchoman Parish Church. Dating from the 14th or 15th century, it is a fine example of West Highland medieval sculpture. An inscription on the cross shaft indicates it was erected by Thomas, son of Patrick, the doctor. It is likely that Thomas and his father belonged to the family of hereditary physicians to the Lords of the Isles who held the nearby lands at Ballinaby and who later adopted the name of Beaton.


http://www.ambaile.org.uk/

© Copyright Julian Dowse and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
http://www.geograph.org.uk/reuse.php?id=341154

The surface of the cross is heavily encrusted with lichens.  Thanks to Ian for this detail shot

Winter colours

The lack of too many deciduous trees on Islay means that we perhaps don't get the big seasonal variations in colour here that many parts of the mainland do. The heather, gorse and bracken are always changing though, which has its own charm. The bracken looks particularly nice in certain lights at this time of year, I think. My botanist housemate tells me that it's one of the few plants that grows on all the world's continents, except Antarctica. Anyway, here's Kilnaughton Bay looking all pretty in the winter sunlight...

The famous Machir Bay...

Hello all. Here's me having what I believe is referred to as a "bracing" November stroll around Machir Bay.

The wild weather of last week has been and gone, no doubt soon to return, but it's amazing what a bit of sunshine can do...

Brent Geese (Branta bernicla)

Pale-bellied Brent geese feeding on the shoreline at Bruichladdich yesterday..

The species is divided three subspecies:

Dark-bellied Brant Goose Branta bernicla bernicla
Pale-bellied Brant Goose Branta bernicla hrota (sometimes also known as Light-bellied Brant Goose in Europe, and Atlantic Brant in North America)
Black Brant Branta bernicla nigricans

Some DNA evidence suggests that these forms are genetically distinct; while a split into three separate species has been proposed, it is not widely accepted, with other evidence upholding their maintenance as a single species.

The body of the dark-bellied form is fairly uniformly dark grey-brown all over, the flanks and belly not significantly paler than the back. The head and neck are black, with a small white patch on either side of the neck. It breeds on the Arctic coasts of central and western Siberia and winters in western Europe, with over half the population in southern England, the rest between northern Germany and northern France.

The Pale-bellied Brant Goose appears blackish-brown and light grey in colour. The body is different shades of grey-brown all over, the flanks and belly are significantly paler than the back and present a marked contrast. The head and neck are black, with a small white patch on either side of the neck. It breeds in Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, Greenland and northeastern Canada, wintering in Denmark, northeast England, Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland and the Atlantic coast of the U.S. from Maine to Georgia.

The Black Brant appears blackish-brown and white in colour. This form is a very contrastingly black and white bird, with a uniformly dark sooty-brown back, similarly-coloured underparts (with the dark colour extending furthest back of the three forms) and a prominent white flank patch; it also has larger white neck patches, forming a near-complete collar. It breeds in northwestern Canada, Alaska and eastern Siberia, and wintering mostly on the west coast of North America from southern Alaska to California, but also some in east Asia, mainly Japan.

The Asian populations of the Black Brant populations had previous been regarded as a separate subspecies orientalis based on purported paler upperparts coloration; however, it is generally now believed that this is not correct.

A fourth form (known variously as Gray Brant, Intermediate Brant or Grey-bellied Brant Goose) has been proposed, although no formal subspecies description has been made as yet, for a population of birds breeding in central Arctic Canada (mainly Melville Island), and wintering in the Puget Sound on the American west coast around the U.S./Canada border. These birds are intermediate in appearance between Black Brant and Pale-bellied Brant, having brown upperparts and grey underparts which give less of a contrast with the white flank patch. Given that this population exhibits mixed characters, it has also been proposed that, rather than being a separate subspecies, it is actually a result of interbreeding between these two forms.

(Wikipedia)

Oxford University Climate Change Project

Link to explanatory video

Bird Population Trends 2010

http://www.bto.org/birdtrends2010/

Shorefield Project - Costs

We have the invoice for the first two Highland bullocks.  They weighed in at 485 and 425 kilos and cost £0.9011 per kilo.  This does not include transport costs from the mainland

Whooper Swans (Cygnus cygnus) at Loch Skerrols

George had told me that there were around 130 Whooper swans on Loch Skerrols yesterday - so I had pedalled over on a perfect afternoon to take a look.  It really was a very dramatic sight - and one which I could not even begin to capture on camera.  Skerrols was alive with wildfowl - hundreds of Widgeon and a scattering of other duck, flocks of Greylag geese and a backdrop of Greenland White-fronts feeding on the fields surrounding Octovullin.  We get a good passage of Whoopers ever autumn, but they do not usually hang around in these kind of numbers for very long before moving off to Ireland which is their winter destination.  There were good numbers of juvenile birds with them - and they all seemed to be mingling very happily with the resident parties of Mutes...
Carl