Lessons in never taking nature for granted, be it garden birds or storms

Scattered grey feathers below the feeders for the garden birds told their own story - a wood pigeon had met a sudden and violent death. There were two likely perpetrators – a cat or a sparrowhawk. The sparrowhawk seemed unlikely as, though we live on the edge of the village, our back garden is surrounded by other gardens, and sparrowhawks are notably wary birds, cautious of getting up close to us humans.

So, a cat it had to be. But we have high fencing all round our garden and a pigeon is a heavy bird for a cat to carry over it. I traced the feathers round to the back and underneath the summer house where our hungry visitor had settled down to a meal. I spent 10 minutes on my stomach with a torch and a long stick pulling out the remains to prevent visits from much less welcome callers.

I continue to feed our garden birds. It hardly applies at the moment there’s so much rain, but it is beneficial to provide a shallow tray of water for drinking and for them to bathe and keep their feathers clean and in good condition. In winter, a small ball put in the water will stop it from freezing.

I fancied a drive over to the coast to get a breath of sea air. There’s a tracery of roads, some of them old drove roads, which criss-cross the spine of hills separating the plain of the Mearns from the coastal plain.

Turning off the A90 on to the B9120 Garvock Hill road, I stopped briefly at the viewpoint on the summit where my father used to read me Violet Jacob poetry. I turned east past the Tullo Wind Farm, a paradoxical title if ever there was one as they don’t sow wind seeds and I haven’t met a farmer yet who harvests wind.

I drove along on the quiet roads as the mood took me – I’d rather lost my bearings until I came to a bridge over the Bervie Water which was familiar. The farms are big, the fields are big and farmhouses are few and far between. The narrow, unclassified roads have passing places marked with diamond lozenges on poles you normally associate with Highland driving. It must be bleak up there in coorse weather but a strong sun in a blue sky was shining on a damp landscape.

I joined the Arbuthnott road (B967) at Townhead and headed for the Grassic Gibbon Centre and museum which commemorates the life and work of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, probably the north east’s most celebrated 20th Century writer.

Gibbon was the pen name of James Leslie Mitchell, taken from his mother’s maiden name. His best and most enduring work is the harshly authentic trilogy A

Scots Quair. Set in his native Mearns with a lyrical use of the Mearns dialect and drawing on social realism, it is regarded as one of the defining works of the 20th Century Scottish Renaissance.

It’s worth following the finger post and making a detour down the hill to 13th Century St Ternan’s Kirk where Grassic Gibbon is buried. Few pre-Reformation churches are still in use for regular worship and this peaceful building has survived the centuries in remarkably good condition.

Snow hadn’t cleared in the sheltered spot and I saw the tracks of pheasant and rabbits, which explained the tracks of a hunting fox. Members of the congregation were putting up a Christmas tree and sunshine streamed through the three stained glass windows in the east wall of the chancel which dates back to 1242.

I headed back up the hill to Inverbervie

– Bervie. There’s a ghost story attached to a cottage in the village that I’ve never been able to verify. In 1341 King David II, returning from exile in France to reclaim the Scottish crown, was shipwrecked and narrowly escaped drowning on rocks known as Craig David at the mouth of the then Bervie harbour. Several cottages in the village were roofed with timbers salvaged from the wreck. It is said one is haunted by the luckless ship’s cat which drowned when the king’s ship foundered. In stormy weather its pitiful cries and mewing can be heard in the loft space.

By the time you read this, we may be recovering from the devastation of Storm Barra, as the successor to Storm Arwen is known. Does giving names to these natural disasters in some way mitigate the effects of their destruction? I think not.

What has been striking about Arwen is

how fickle, capricious almost, it has turned out to have been. It devastated one wood, leaving hardly a tree standing. Yet the next wood, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, has remained barely touched.

With more winter storms forecast, we puny humans do well never to take nature for granted and to respect her destructive powers.

I drove along on the quiet roads as the mood took me

PEACEFUL DETOUR: Sunshine streaming through the stained glass windows of 13th Century St Ternan’s Kirk at Arbuthnott.