An absolutely wonderful Scots Adventure .: A two heron morning.

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

A two heron morning.

The weather continues to be sunny and bright. Yesterday, after a bitterly cold start, turned out to be positively balmy. You just know there are first year students texting their parents to say " The Scottish climates wonderful and not nearly as cold or wet as we feared ". Give it time.

The last of the bees have gone and the lavender is now completely bee free. It's got leggy so tomorrow I shall cut it back. Overhead the geese continue to head south west in flocks of fifty or sixty. Earlier in the year they flew over low. Now they're flying at a much greater height and with greater urgency. The starlings have suddenly returned ( where did they go ?) and perch in squabbling lines along the telephone wires that run alongside the track to the potato barns. The farmers wife is at that schizoid stage where the last of her offspring is about to leave home. Half of her wants to celebrate, the other half can't believe he's going. This morning she's heading down to the sea in her one piece bathing suit with a towel slung over her shoulder. The dogs follow on behind.

Down by the harbour we see a heron sunbathing by the lock gates. It ignores passing humans with what can best be described as lugubrious disdain.

Up the hill by the old cannon there's another one. On the rocks below it hundreds of tiny eider ducks are learning to swim. They have remarkable buoyancy and bob around on the swell like feathered corks under the watchful eye of their mothers. This is one of those annual rites of passage that make us laugh. Some days, as Rilke said, ' begin as a meal and end as a feast '.

The university administration building open and busy. Over the weekend they got good news on the UK rankings. The decision to have kept a cap on numbers while everyone else expanded has proven to be a good one.