Tuesday, September 22, 2026

A two heron morning.

The weather continues to be sunny and bright. After a bitterly cold start yesterday  turned out to be positively balmy. More of the same is forecast for today. You just know there are first year students texting their parents to say " The  climate here's 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. The plants have got leggy so tomorrow I shall cut them way back before the autumn winds roll in. 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.

6 comments:

Lisa in France said...

Well-deserved by the University - the student experience ranking seems particularly strong, so perhaps the weather really isn't an issue?

I free-rode on my daughter's online high-school Latin class for two years - perhaps it will come in handy if these fellows are successful.

Meanwhile, chickens, and eggs, are such a difficult issue. It seems it's very easy for people to write off birds ("bird brain," etc.) but once you get closer, you realize that even chickens are pretty smart and have their own personalities. (Like your heron.) As I recall, the last meat thing I ate, nearly fifty years ago, was a chicken sandwich, and I still feel bad about it. Also about how difficult it is to avoid "invisible" eggs.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari Om
Clearly the herons approve of St Andrews too! YAM xx

Travel said...

Another wonderful day in paradise.

JoAnn in Marylaand said...

The ranking is good news for everyone - students and faculty alike.
I love the awareness of your surroundings that your morning walks produce.

Tigger's Mum said...

Interesting analysis of egg production and welfare trade-offs. The best result it seems might be the Belgian "2 hens per household to eat food waste". Reduced the cost of collecting and processing household waste and produced eggs.

The Bougalou Bear said...

Latin as lingua franca! What a interesting return to Europe's DNA!
Valete omnes