The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Birds are a real eye-opener
F rom our bedroom window we can see that two of our nesting boxes are occupied by tree sparrows. There was a great deal of activity and interest the moment
I put the boxes up. Now nests have been built and a clutch of three-five eggs laid in each. Both birds share the job of incubation, which is 11 or 12 days. They are good parents and both birds feed the nestlings, which will fledge in about a further fortnight. The parent birds will likely have at least one other brood, possibly another two.
Blackbirds and their cousins, the song thrushes, started laying about a month earlier and we watch them hunting through the grass for earthworms to feed their chicks. A fat blackbird fledgling appeared on the back lawn patiently waiting to be fed. For once I had the camera ready to take the perfect picture and the irritating bird hopped into our neighbour’s garden.
The thrushes’ habit of cocking their heads to one side while they are foraging gives the impression they are listening for the furtive whisper of worms stirring in the soil. But they don’t have ultra-sonic hearing. The reality is that their eyes are set further back in their heads than many other birds, extending their range of vision as part of their defence against predators. As a result their near vision is restricted so they must tilt their heads to spy their grub.
All birds have nostrils but their sense of smell is generally little use in identifying a food source and some species like owls, night-time hunters, rely on sound to locate their prey in the dark. They have forward-facing eyes and can turn their heads almost full circle to maximise their field of vision. Daytime-hunting raptors such as eagles and peregrine falcons have the most highly developed eyesight in the bird world, enabling them to spot the smallest prey from hundreds of feet high in the sky.
By comparison most, though not all, mammals’ survival is dependent on both sight and sound to catch prey and evade predators. But badgers and hedgehogs, being nocturnal animals, have poor eyesight and rely on their keen sense of smell. Could it be that in evolution’s progress birds have lost their dependence on smell because they can rely on flight to escape danger, while mammals are landbound? I don’t have an answer to that. ***
Fettercairn Distillery along with the Fettercairn community have made their colourful contribution to the village’s praise and appreciation of the NHS frontline workers. What you might call a special blend of uisge beatha, the blessed water of life, and those saviours of life on whom we rely more than ever these days.
Occasionally the Doyenne and I permit ourselves a sustaining – medicinal even – glass of the cratur, the auld kirk as my old father used to affectionately call the precious ardent spirits. Barley, the vital ingredient of our national drink produced in Fettercairn, as likely as not came from a farm on our doorstep which, along with the maltster’s magic, the distiller’s cunning and the blender’s imagination, are as good reasons as any to have another dram.
Drouthy Scots had been distilling whisky legally for a couple of centuries when King Charles I spoilt everybody’s fun by slapping an excise duty on it. Then they had more fun distilling the strong waters illicitly and dodging the excise men.
The late Alastair Skene, farmer in Glenesk, several times offered to show me the sites of some of the historical illicit stills in the glen and,
“Droughty Scots had been distilling whisky legally for a couple of centuries when King Charles I spoilt everyone’s fun by slapping an excise duty on it
and silly devil that I was, I replied “another time, another time”. The glen has long associations with the illicit whisky trade. The track leading down the Hill of Rowan to St Drostan’s Church is known as the Whisky Road down which, in the 18th Century, the illicit spirit was brought on garrons (Highland ponies) from Deeside, and even Moray, to satisfy the demands of the Lowland thirst.
William Macgonagall, Dundee’s poet laureate and the world’s best worst poet, was surely thinking of lesser spirits when he wrote, “Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer; / Thou curse of society, and its great annoyer …”
***
Like most readers I have extra hours to fill each day, imposed by current restrictions. I’ve gone back to reading favourite schoolboy classics by John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson and Montrose author Violet Jacob. I’m looking forward to reading John Buchan’s autobiography, and next will likely be Seton Gordon’s The Life and Times of a Highland Gentleman. Maurice Fleming was editor of The Scots Magazine for 17 years. His book, The Sidlaws, Tales, Traditions and Ballads, has been a joy to read, bringing to life familiar places I’ve driven through and passed without a thought of their history.
It is charmingly illustrated with black and white illustrations by Montrose-born illustrator Alyson Macneill whose GP father Dr Donald Macneill will be remembered by many Montrosians.