Moulting finches

The man who drives the combine harvester starts work on the wheat field at exactly 4:45 am. An hour later, when it's clear sleep is impossible,  we're up and about and  heading down to the beach.  The driver stops to tell us that this is the time of year when the local finch population moult. They shed their feathers in mid-August and then spend a month hiding from the hawks in the wild blackberry thickets that line the field walls. Neither of us had ever thought of goldfinches or chaffinches moulting but it's also true that there are none of the cheeky wee things to be seen. The starlings, crows and sparrows seem to have the village gardens to themselves. Google, once again. provides some useful background on an unlikely topic :https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00063650902792031

The old course is closed for what is still referred to in these parts as the Lords Day. Groups of complaining foreign golfers traipse up and down the sacred turf wondering why they can't play and estimating the scale of lost revenue. Other less 'iconic' local courses are open and doing a brisk trade but they are, it has to be said,  nothing like playing the 'Old'.

If moulting finches didn't convince you autumn was on the way then the dusting of leaves around the pavement cafes in town most certainly would. The staff at the Shawarma House are already busy in the kitchen cleaning and getting ready for todays lunchtime rush. The sound of sitar music punctuated with laughter drifts out onto the street.

We pick up some tangy Isle of Mull cheddar from the cheese shop....

....and some lemon sole from the fishmongers. 

Sunday is shaping up to be warm, sunny and quiet.

The intern on Radio Scotland finds a very Scottish hymn sung in a very unScottish way on this warm Sunday morning :https://youtu.be/vPq9GTZ_-_A?list=RDvPq9GTZ_-_A&t=182

A summer exhibition in Massachusetts :https://www.clarkart.edu/microsites/a-room-of-her-own/about-the-exhibition/introduction

The reading crisis debunked. Our local bookstores are thriving :https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/reading-crisis-perspective

Chirping :https://biologyinsights.com/why-do-birds-chirp-before-a-storm/

This is quite possibly the best analysis on what's happened this week and is one of the few substacks we pay to access : https://samf.substack.com/p/half-baked-alaska