MAN WITH TWO DOGS So shocked as snow drops

Last Sunday was a lovely sharp morning, clear blue skies and there was already warmth in the sun when I was out with Inka for his morning run before breakfast. Two cock pheasants were tuning up in the wood across the field from the house, “klokk klokking” away, just letting each other know the other was there.

It’s a shade too early by the calendar to be spring – the spring months are March, April and May – but the spring-like weather may have brought on an early flush of testosterone and they were sending out encouraging messages to the hen pheasants.

So it came as a bit of a shock to the system when the snow started falling on Monday morning. Our corner of the Mearns has avoided much of the excessive weather that has affected so many parts of the UK. But just to keep us on our toes, Tuesday turned out to be another near-spring day.

I took myself out to call on a galanthophile – a snowdrop lover – whose garden has a particularly fine showing of the gentle, nodding flowers. When Bill Pirie first came to live, more than 50 years ago, at The Parsonage at Fasque estate, outside Fettercairn, there was just a small patch of snowdrops in a corner of the garden. Each spring when they have stopped flowering he has transplanted some of the bulbs until now he has a blooming carpet, and he looks forward each year to the pleasure they give him.

A bit of advice he gave me is to transplant the bulbs “in the green” – when the flower has died but the leaves are still green.

Cushie doos

Wood pigeons are one of the few, perhaps our only, wild bird recorded as nesting and hatching chicks in every month of the year. On my walks, I’ve seen several performing their courtship flight – soaring steeply upwards and at the height of the climb making a clapping sound with sharp, powerful downbeats of their wings, and gliding down again on stiff-set wings. It fair catches the attention of the ladies.

Their “coooo-coo, coo-coo, coo” calls and the males’ courtship displays are indications that mating is probably on the agenda. From my study window, I watched a pair sitting, very cosy together, on the garden fence, with the male hopping up and down the fence dipping and bowing to the hen bird. All seemed to be going to plan until the hen bird flew off – the pigeon equivalent, I suppose, of “Dream, on sonny”.

My father thought a plump pigeon was a dish fit for kings. He covered the breasts with streaky bacon and casseroled them with cider and mushrooms seasoned with celery salt, and a mealie pudding thrown in for good measure.

Happy birds

We shouldn’t attribute human emotions to wild animals, however tempting – but, on their own level, I don’t doubt animals share some of the basic emotions we humans experience.

I was sitting in my favourite roost at the foot of an ancient beech tree watching the duck on the wee loch at the foot of Glenesk. A strong, blustery breeze was shaking the tops of the trees round the sides of the lochan. A buzzard flew out of the wood, its pale undersides catching the afternoon sun. Somewhat ungainly when taking flight, once in the air buzzards are masters of their environment, graceful and unconstrained.

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All seemed to be going to plan until the hen bird flew off – the pigeon equivalent, I suppose, of ‘Dream, on sonny’

For quarter of an hour I watched my bird tacking, wheeling and soaring as it quartered the edges of the wood, banking, side-slipping, stalling almost motionless into the tugging wind – always in control. I was waiting for it to do a victory roll or loop-the-loop.

I have no doubts that this buzzard was having fun – in buzzard terms, it was experiencing pleasure.

Joseph and Mary

I met Sarah who has two donkeys called Joseph and Mary. She – Sarah that is – was carrying a bag of fruit including two bananas to be added to Joseph and Mary’s evening feed as a treat. I was assured they did not eat the skins as well but the older and squishier the bananas the more Joseph and Mary enjoy them, picking them out first from their bran.

So, if like me you didn’t know that donkeys like bananas, remember where you read it first.

Picture: Angus Whitson. Tony, a Japanese Chin, seems to be in his element playing among a carpet of snowdrops at Bill Pirie’s home.