A Kestrel hung in the wind; wind that swept around the sill of Stirling castle and slammed into the northern side of the city. From further down the sill, beneath the castle by a pair of imposing cannon statues, the view stretches from the Hills of Touch, to the Trossachs, to Sainsbury’s and down the Forth until haze obliterates scenery and fades land and sky to horizon. The Forth meanders its ways across this land in spate; full of thundering muddy brown water, on which a Goosander floats under Stirling bridge; waiting for fish. This end of the sill is covered in scrub and desire line paths beaten through the bush at the behest of drunken rambling, or so the random, topography belying paths littered with the fruit of the Tennants Extra tree would suggest. Insalubrious in appearance, its generally neglected air is pervaded with possibility. Not in redevelopment, not in tidying up, but in the possible biodiversity of this muddy, overgrown fringe. Warblers (what few there are this far north) look like a shoo-in up here, as do the other scrub loving passerines of summer. I’m guessing at 6am, heroin zombies and staggering drunks are the only people you meet up here. Cutting up over and descending in the sill in the shadow of the castle, the wooded end also holds promise, despite its tidy nature. I would hesitate to speculate, but only observe the staggering increase in socio-economic gradient. The Hills of Touch look really good from here. I think I’m coming down with hill envy.
Bridge of Allan
Under supplementary –sodium – lighting, a Buzzard slips through the pre-dawn. Verging on invisible to these human eyes; a chaotic torrent of corvids mobbed it regardless. On the mostly frozen loch, some swans loaf on ice, waiting for the light of dawn, and the loaf of passers by.
An austere dawn revealed the standard Bridge of Allan: Dippers on the river, Goosanders flying upstream, backlit Waxwing’s wispy crest quivering in the breeze. Eight then flew over: flashing translucent bits of wing and contrast in the tail, landing unseen in backgardens.
Edinburgh
An hour later I arrived in Auld Reekie; apparently the most miserable place to live in Britain. I like it.
And from up here it looks good. Perched on the ex-volcanic, sub-highland craggy heights of Arthur’s Seat, the spires, crowns and follies of historic buildings populate the skyline. They feel natural; as if they emerged from a bog in the hollow between here and West Lothian, like Edinburgh itself were a geological feature, eroded into roads, colonised by people and defiled by their paraphernalia. London wishes it were half as interesting. St Margaret’s loch far below lacked its Iceland Gull when I walked around, but now I see. Flying off into the sun, the translucent wing tipped gull. Banishing the spectres of previous dips and appallingly bad views, it settled down on Dunsapie loch, were I pioneered the art of using my phone and binoculars to record a vague impression of the scene in front of me.
Followed up with art galleries and whisky shops, this sub/urban birding lark could grow on me.
Stirling
Rain lashed down on the grey stone street. Wind played, knocking over shop signs, ruffling hair, slapping exposed skin and stealing breath. In a pot, a tree, a high street hazel sat incongruously in the city centre. And yet this weather - anarchic weather that wrecks, weather that can’t be controlled - is somehow evangelical of the wilderness. And in this tree, this tree stood outside a post office turned super pub, this sop to greenery, perched a pair of Siskin. Fragile, spindly branches black against the sky, catkins dangling, the male sullied yellow and black faced contrasted against the white background of a bus, the female perched close to the trunk, sodden feathers humbly streaked green. Amazing what turns up anywhere, what a bit of wind and rain will do, with a fortunately chosen type of tree. Did the desk, from the office, of the building, of the county council ever considered this as a consequence of their actions? You don’t need to imagine buildings as cliffs to go urban birding. You just need to look as all the shoppers speed by, running out of the rain, and wind, and buses buzz past and life carried on its hectic interpretation of ordered chaos.
Bridge of Allan
A clear night and recent rain meant a thick frost was developing; the first few cracks of which were now appearing under foot. Inky blackness stretched from the Ochils to the carse, gently fading to the ubiquitous pinkish orange stain of light pollution. Oh sodium, how we have a bitter relationship. You keep me safe, yet I hate you. You spoil the sky, yet you illuminate the vibrating white underwings of a pair of Oystercatcher displaying over the golf course. You spoil the mystery, the very appeal of nocturnal walking, yet you bring out the clumps of snowdrops like a constellation on the leafy woodland floors and show the rustling in the hedgerow is nothing but a February Hedgehog.
A February Hedgehog?
That’s rather early isn’t it?
Dunblane
And then it ceases to work. Walking around Dunblane in a dismal coating of snow and sludgy ice, another miserable failure of a Waxwing twitch. I could tot up the hours wasted, the birds not seen, the streets pounded, slid on and stood on, but… it would suggest that I had a better use for my time…
Rendlesham (not dipped over the Christmas break).
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