A Perfect Week in Jersey

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We had Sabine’s brother and sister-in-law, Mike and Susanne, to stay at the end of April.  Their home is near Lake Constance in Germany.

The choice was Jersey or Rhu and I thought that they’d find Jersey more interesting, especially as they hadn’t been there before, or at least  Susanne hadn’t.  It turns out that Mike had done a day trip while on a summer exchange in Caen in 1983 and still has the photos to prove it.

Well, first off, the weather was glorious – 7 sunny, warm days and no rain whatsoever.  And Mike and Susanne were so appreciative of suggestions as to what to do and where to eat that we just got on with it.  At the same time, we were careful not to do too much, but fortunately the weather meant that the balcony at Good Hope was always calling.

First: the Culinary Experience

At some point, we had to apologize for seemingly organising the itinerary around food.  But whereas what you do and see can be flexible, you still need to eat, so why not make it as special as possible.

Mike and Susanne arrived late afternoon on Saturday on BA via Heathrow, so dinner was at Good Hope.  Sabine and I had bought freshly caught scallops from Robbie, our fisherman neighbour who opens his new shop out of his garage on Greve D’Azette every Friday afternoon.  I wrapped them in bacon and we served them with Jersey Royals and a salad.

Sunday breakfast was a variety of croissants from Roberts Garage across the road.  We’d booked Sunday lunch at The Anchor Club in St Aubin’s because we wanted Mike and Susanne to experience a really good Sunday roast with all the trimmings.  Which we did.  The meal was superb – both food and service.

On Monday we had lunch outside at Portelet Inn.  We had the first of several close encounters with herring gulls, but at least these ones simply threatened us by circling away from us and watching us eat from their vantage point on the roof.

It was Tuesday outside at the Zoo café that one tried to help itself to our lunch.  Fortunately it was off its game that day and although it flew down to the table, it was unsuccessful in grabbing any of the four possibilities on offer before we recovered from the shock of having an uninvited guest and our outrage drove it off. 

So we were very wary later that day as we sat outside at St Brelade’s Bay Hotel to our 3 tiers of afternoon tea goodies.  Like the day before, the omnipresent gulls flew over and looked down at us longingly but fortunately didn’t practice dive bombing.  The tea itself was possibly the best I’ve had, with a wonderful top layer of the sweet delicacies – normally this tier is a disappointment (too heavy, too sweet, too experimental) and as a result only gets picked at, but not this time: light, delicious and all gone 😊.

Wednesday was promising to be the hottest day of the week so it was the obvious choice for a lobster dinner on the balcony.  Which is exactly what we did, with gambas, Jersey Royals and salad plus strawberry and rhubarb crumble topped off with Jersey vanilla ice-cream to finish – and no gulls to spoil the occasion.

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly our lunch on Thursday – and the bar was already quite high.  We ate sitting outside in the sunshine at Green Island and it was fantastic.  The food was absolute perfection, and it was amazing how all the tables were served by the owner and one waitress. We lingered on the patio for as long as possible, giving me the opportunity to tell my Uttoxeter Wetherspoons joke, prompted in my mind by the five men sitting at the table next to us. 

They hadn’t seen the north coast, so lunch on Friday was at the Plemont Café.  Another glorious day.  The food was fine but, as Sabine had seen a display showing they had won an award for the best Jersey ice-cream on the island, we had to have a 99 each for dessert.   It was ok but only ok – I still maintain the van at Grouville Beach is the best.  The owners had strung wires up over the outside picnic table to deter the gulls, so we weren’t bothered by them at all.

Mike and Susanne love Indian food.  We’d hoped to taken them to The Spice House on Friday evening but it was closed for renovations.  We settled for Saffron (where Nelson’s Eye used to be) within walking distance from home.  The meal was great – we shared 4 mains and our waiter of Indian ethnicity from Barking in London’s East End with an accent to match was called Alfie 😊.  The owner who was also the chef came out to talk to us as we were leaving, which felt quite classy.

Our final meal was lunch in town on Saturday.  We’d planned to take them to La Capannina but because Mike wanted to see the Boat Show in the morning, there wasn’t going to be enough time as any meal at La Capannina cannot be rushed.  So we settled for Colmar and had two of the most miserable serving staff I’ve ever encountered.  Eventually they couldn’t be bothered to serve us at all and made one of their (Kenyan?) colleagues attend to us, who was so charming that he saved the day.

Second: The Tourist Experience

After a leisurely morning at Good Hope, the lunch on Sunday and after a stroll along the quay in St Aubin’s, we went to one of my favourite places – the bird hide at the scrape in St Ouens.  It wasn’t such a problem for the others because Sabine quite likes birding and Mike had bought a new camera for our safari later in the year that he wanted to try out on the birds.  A lot of the photos in this story are his.

I’d never seen the bird hide carpark so full – the ice-cream van was doing a roaring trade, but as almost always when you get away from any carpark, you see no-one and we had the bird hide to ourselves.  Across the road, we took in the great views up and down St Ouen’s Beach, including a lot of people surfing.

On Monday I’d arranged something unique to Jersey in the afternoon, so visiting the German gun emplacements on Portelet Common was the perfect morning accompaniment.  We parked at the bus stop car park and walked over the Common to the complex. 

The German control bunker is only open once a month and not the day we were there, but the wall plaques tell you a lot about the place.  We also saw these UK registered pre-war Austins there, one a renowned Austin 7 – Jersey is so good for people who love cars of all kinds.

In the afternoon, we had a tour with Nicky Mansell of Jersey Uncovered to La Cotte, the Neanderthal hunters’ site, on the east side of St Brelade’s Bay.  The tide was low in the afternoon to give easy access to the foot of the cliff where she told us about the site, the only one like it in Europe – thanks to Don’s Maps for this photo.

We were back home early enough for a swim.  The afternoon tide was never quite right for the sea to have come in over the hot sand and it was cold at first (12C) – go in, go out and then go back in is my secret.  Mike then went in almost every morning after Susanne and he had gone for their kick-the-day-off 6km run. 

The next day, Tuesday, we headed for the Zoo. We arrived in time for the keeper talks and managed to go to three before lunch.  The first was by a newbie keeper about cranes and perhaps unsurprisingly she wasn’t very knowledgeable.  The next one was on giant tortoises and was really good.

On our way to the third one (Orangutans), a whole family of tamarinds ran along the fence next to the path we were on.

By that time the third talk was finished, we had information overload and headed for lunch but that gave us a chance to get a good look at the gorillas which were now all outside (they’d been in their  house earlier).

. A gorilla sitting on grass AI-generated content may be incorrect.

We wandered around a little after lunch, taking in the reptile house, the meerkats,

the capybaras (giant guinea pigs!), the butterfly house, the flamingos and the lemurs around their lake.  Sadly the fruit bat roost was closed for maintenance.  But after a total of 4 hours there, we’d done justice to what the Zoo had to offer –  or so I thought.  The exit through the gift shop wasn’t too much of a problem but I’d forgotten one of Sabine’s favourite places in Jersey – so of course, before we left, she led our guests to the Zoo’s charity shop.  Eventually we were able to head for St Brelade’s Bay.

Our afternoon tea consumed, there was a definite need for some gentle exercise, so a stroll in the still warm sunshine along the promenade was called for, after which we visited St Brelade’s Church and the beautifully simple Fisherman’s Chapel, where some of you attended my marriage to Caroline in August 2016.

Wednesday was market day for us, or more precisely markets day.  We walked into town through Howard Davis Park and down Colomberie.  Our first stop was the fish market to get the lobsters and gambas for dinner.  We then went to the main market to have a look around and to visit Tony at the antique shop, another of Sabine’s favourites.

The next day, Thursday, was Hougue Bie.  We arrived just in time for the tour – we had the very knowledgeable volunteer guide all to ourselves which was an added bonus.  I am impressed that I am still flexible enough to stoop low enough to go down the tunnel into the neolithic chamber below the chapel.  

We also went through the German bunker that now contains a quite moving exhibition honouring the World War 2 slave labourers

and then the very impressive exhibition showing the 2000 year-old coin and jewellery hoard, the largest in Western Europe, that detectorists had found in a field nearby in 2012, so big that it took several years to dissemble.

We went a slightly back way home, so that Sabine could show Mike and Susanne the orchid field behind the St Clement’s Golf Course before then heading off for that wonderful lunch at Green Island.

After lunch, in need of some exercise, we walked out on the La Rocque breakwater, and as it was low tide, it provided a good vantage point to see the oyster beds and Seymour Tower.

Friday saw Sabine and I take our guests to the Occupation Museum.  They did the 3.5km walk-through while we had a coffee in the café.  I had noticed that the reception area was new and much improved.  The facility had been bought recently, and one of the reception staff enthusiastically told us that the new owners had some really great plans to develop the museum.

https://www.jerseywartunnels.com/the-tunnels/

From there, we went to Grosnez at the extreme north-west of the island by the racecourse, to explore the 14th Century castle ruins. 

En route we stopped at The Windmill to window shop for jewellery at Catherine Best’s.  We then walked on the cliff path to Plemont and lunch.  It was a glorious day and we all wished we’d brought our swimsuits. 

On the way home, we drove south from Grosnez, took in the view down St Ouen’s Bay, past L’Etacq and down 5 Mile Road to the main bird hide for a final check on the wildlife.

And then it was Saturday and they were catching a direct flight back to Munich, a new summer route for Air Dolomiti, a subsidiary of Lufthansa.  But that wasn’t till 15.30, so we were able to take in the Boat Show in the morning.  Sabine and I had gone in 2024 and really enjoyed it, and Mike and Susanne were keen to go too (they used to have a boat on Lake Constance).  We caught the bus in to be there just after opening at 10am, and had a great time both on the pontoons looking at the boats that we and most everybody else will never buy, watching a water-jet aerial acrobatics display and

touring the kiosks either side of the harbour.

Fatal – last year I got away with having to buy a paddleboard for Sabine but the Thermomix people were there again (Mike and Susanne have one) and I wasn’t as lucky this time.  We’re taking delivery of one of the new and improved models (just as well we didn’t get one last year, eh?) in July when we’re back in Jersey.  I do quite fancy one of the outdoor saunas we saw at another stand, but for Scotland, not Jersey, so that can definitely wait for another time.

And that was when we had to say farewell to our lovely guests.  We had done a lot but there was still a lot more to see – Goray and Elizabeth Castles, the Jersey Museum and the Maritime Museum, more walks on cliff paths, the Orchid Foundation, Samares Manor gardens (now without so many trees), Val de la Mar (now without so many trees) and Queens Valley Reservoirs, the low-tide walk to Seymour Tower, and St Catherine’s Woods and Breakwater to mention just places that come to mind as I write this.  We really look forward to their second visit 😊.

Western Cape Wildlife – Part 2

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  • Cape Mountain Zebra

Now we really came into our own in Dominic’s eyes.  We were at the end of the day’s tour, on a road running next to the Nature Reserve delimited by a fence on our left with scrubland beyond.  We noticed some bontebok grazing.  Then Sabine said – Oh, is that a zebra with them? – followed by  screeching brakes and an emergency stop.  Dominic got all excited once again – a rare Cape Mountain Zebra that he hardly ever sees, conservation status Vulnerable. 

It’s the smallest zebra species with narrower and more numerous vertical stripes and wider horizontal strips on the hind quarters.  It is only found in the Cape Province, historically the most populated region of South Africa and hence hunted virtually to extinction by the early settlers.

  • Quagga

It seems only fitting to next show you the other zebra we saw, this one on the Idiom Nature Reserve attached to the winery and restaurant, owned by one of Sabine’s Summer School “students” and her husband. 

This breed is actually extinct (in the wild by 1878 and in captivity five years later) but advances in genetics and breeding techniques have spawned a project to bring the species back to life.  But not everyone is enthusiastic about it:

https://nypost.com/2024/11/11/science/scientists-divided-over-resurrection-of-extinct-quagga-species/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga#:~:text=The%20last%20wild%20population%20lived,animal%20whose%20DNA%20was%20analysed

The debate seems to centre around two things – whether it was ever a separate species and the use of a strain of plains zebras that had similar markings to bring it back to life.  You can easily spot that the rear is very different from the markings of both the Cape Mountain Zebra and the regular plains zebras below that we saw a lot in Kenya.  But if you click on the Wikipedia link, you’ll see that it doesn’t look much like the 1870 photo of the one held in London Zoo.  I’m no expert of course but I must admit that I think the shape of the new ones looks very much like that of the plains zebra (collective noun: a dazzle 😊).

  • Springbok

Less controversial is the little antelope that the national rugby team is named after.  We saw them in the Idiom reserve alongside the quagga.  South Africa has a lot of antelope of different sizes and camouflage patterns.  In the bush, they are fearful of predators (one ranger described them as Fast Food).  To say that, generally, antelope in the wild are always on edge is to put it mildly and for good reason, given that our group actually witnessed 9 female lions kill an impala in Kruger what is now 15 years ago. 

The Springbok we saw here were a lot less nervous, probably given that the reserve didn’t boast the predators of the wild, and I have to say they are probably the prettiest of all the antelopes I’ve seen in Africa.

And talking of pretty, here’s the rugby team’s emblem, modelled by Sabine.

  • Cape Dwarf Chamaeleon

We were in the David the potter’s garden in Swellendam with Garth’s birding friends when Kevin, one half of this couple, suddenly had this chameleon on his hand.  He’d seen it in the bush (also in the photo) and had grabbed it to show us.  Quite amazing.  Presumably if he’d held on to it for much longer, it would have changed colour to pink to blend in with his hand.

They are found only in the southwestern Cape around Cape Town.  They are insectivorous and, while very slow moving, catch their prey with a very fast moving tongue.  Interestingly, their eyes can move independently of one other.

  • Cape Fur Seal

I wasn’t that interested in them (hence this isn’t my photo) – there were birds on the shore that I wanted to see, the seals were just lying around all cuddled up or maybe going for a swim and were a bit comical trying to move around on land on their tummies.   And in any case, I’d seen grey and common seals in the Murray Firth. 

But Dominic gave us some information about them that was a bit unusual.  First their numbers have soared recently because of orcas predating the great white sharks that in turn preyed on them.  The sharks have all but disappeared from False Bay where a lot of the Cape Fur Seals live, so they have no natural predators.  However, Mother Nature loves things to be in balance and after it was noticed that the seals have been behaving more aggressively, it turned out that they now have rabies, contracted possibly from a seal being bitten by a jackal.  Swim at your own risk.

  • Mongoose

We only saw one fleetingly on the walking bird tour morning with Lynette, so here’s a photo of a mob of them we saw in Kenya (plural mongooses, not mongeese, other collective nouns being pack, troop, gang).  These ones are banded mongooses, but while the one we glimpsed outside Outshoorn could have been the same, other options include the Cape Grey, Slender, and Yellow.

  • Vervet Monkey

We were on a nature trail in Wildness (now misnamed as it is anything but wild in the most part – very touristy and built-up in the narrow strip between the Indian Ocean and the lakes at the foot of an escarpment.  Cutting into this ridge was the nature trail we were on, a valley lengthways like a Y made by a couple of streams coming together.

Sabine saw it first, about 3 metres up on a branch in a dense foliage – hence no photo.  It was quite shy, seemingly not afraid of humans in that it didn’t disappear into the undergrowth but sat looking at us.  So we got a good look at it.  In fact we saw two of them during the walk, both totally uncooperative when it came to having their photo taken, so here is one from Kenya.

  • Dolphin

On our last Sunday, we were invited to lunch by David, another of Sabine’s “students”, a GP who after retiring at the tender age of 53 went to Canada with his wife and undertook a series of 2 year-long locum roles all over the country including Haida Gwaii in northern BC and First Nations land, and also Churchill, Manitoba where Inuit were his patients – hence his interest in Sabine’s course.  He and his wife have only just returned to Cape Town – in their time in Canada they have seen more of that vast country than any Canadian I know.  Theirs is one of those fascinating life stories I mentioned in the previous story “What a surprise”.

Anyway, lunch was at the waterfront Radisson in sight of Robin Island and to our delight a pod of dolphins swam past while we were there.  What kind they were I have no idea – Bottlenose or Heaviside’s, Common or Humpback are the four options, but in reality it simply felt like a privilege to see them glide by so gracefully and silently close to where we were sitting.

Common Dolphins

And that completes the list of the non-bird wildlife we saw in our January/February 2025 trip.  It was a trip experience bonus added to the lovely people we met, to Sabine’s lectures and the “student” appreciation she received, to Cape Town and the parts of the Garden Route we visited and to the birds we saw (their story is next).

Western Cape Wildlife – Part 1

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I’ve had to split this story in two – too much to say in one post.  This trip wasn’t meant to include a safari of any kind, but we did manage to arrange some birding day or part-day tours that brought us close to non-bird wildlife.  Here’s what we saw.  What struck me was the variety and also how much depended on luck – seeing most of the animals was random, the luck of the draw, completely unplanned (just like birds).   I’d never heard of a lot of them, so I’m guessing neither have most of you.  Each in their own way were quite special.

About half of them we saw with Dominic, the Fynbos (pronounced Fainboss) Guy on the two one-day tours in Cape Town and in the Cape Point Nature Reserve.  Despite being British, he was very knowledgeable – he came out when he was 19, and started off guiding for safari lodges in Botswana before moving south and setting up his own business.  Each day was different and fantastic.  The other main exposure we had to non-bird wildlife was with Andrew, the ranger at the Idiom Winery Nature Reserve, who took us for an hour’s game drive.

  • Baboon

Baboons were everywhere and have become an urban pest.

This might be why there are so many of them 😊

And this is more like where they belong

  • Angulate Tortoise

We came across them in two locations and their conservation category is Least Concern.  Contrary to a tortoise’s reputation, they can move quite quickly when they want to and they are easily camouflaged in the undergrowth.  They’re very territorial and in the bottom photo, two males are facing off – the one on the right came out on top.

  • Cape Dune Mole-rat

We’d only just been talking about moles and mole-rats when Dominic spotted a mole-rat by the side of the track at the sewage works.  It scampered away from us as we went to get a closer look, so this is a picture taken by someone’s camera trap.  Dominic was very excited because you don’t usually see them in daylight as they live most of their lives in burrows in sandy soil.  He said it was either ill or looking for a mate and it didn’t look ill.  They’re fat and ugly with projecting pairs of top and bottom teeth – being mostly blind, presumably looks aren’t important to other dune mole-rats.

  • Dassie

We saw several dassies on Boulders Beach, Simonstown in the same area as the penguins.  Go Wild provides this description of them – fortunately or sadly, we didn’t see any heart-stopping capers:

They’re small, cute and rather special – rock hyraxes, also known as dassies. Visitors of the South African coastline marvel at their heart-stopping capers among the rocks, cheerfully ignoring the plunging chasms below.

They may look like groundhogs, but their closest taxonomic relatives are actually the elephant and the manatee. (My note – what????)

And that’s not the only odd thing about them. Dassies are distinctly sociable – in their mostly harmonious family life, of course, but also in squabbles among themselves. Unusually for herbivores, their foraging needs only take up an hour or so of every day, leaving these sun-loving creatures plenty of time left for playing, snuggling or just lounging around.

They have some pretty unusual anatomic features too: the irises of their eyes can contract to such an extent that they can look directly at the sun, and the soles of their feet are retractable, which makes them extremely well-suited to climbing around their rocky habitat. And last but not least, the male dassie can sing – at least when he’s courting the lady dassie of his dreams. All in all, they are a peaceful bunch but when cornered, they can be fierce adversaries.

  • Bontebok

It’s all in the Afrikaans word bont, meaning colour.  Man has not been kind to these beautiful animals – by the early 1800s, there were 17 left after they had been hunted to virtual extinction for their meat and skins.  These 17 were fenced in by a farmer and unlike other antelope species, they couldn’t jump out.  So today, while they are still protected in the wild – there’s even a Bontebok National Park at Swellendam set up for their protection – we can enjoy seeing them (3,500 of them according to San Diego Zoo which takes part in their continuing conservation programme).

  • Rote Hartebeest

These are weird looking, aren’t they?  But Dominic was very excited at seeing these as well because he has seen them only rarely in the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, even though through Southern Africa they are not in danger.  Our stock as clients was increasing by the minute given the range of beasties we were seeing with him.

  • Cape Crocodile (Black Girdled Lizard)

Dominic gave us lunch in the shade of the Nature Reserve tourist office.  On the way back to the car, we saw this lizard coming out of a wall, looking amazingly like a baby croc.  While they are not found outside the Western Cape, they are locally abundant in rocky areas from sea level to the mountain tops.  Despite their restricted location, they are not endangered – even though they are very popular as pets (ugh!).

  • Green Milkweed Locust

Dominic found this bug. Having never seen a locust before, it seemed harmless enough but then I read the de Wets Safari website entry – the photo is theirs too:

“The Green Milkweed Locust, or African Bush Grasshopper, is a large – up to 9cm long – poisonous locust that can congregate in enormous numbers (as we experienced on Sunday at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden, apparently an annual occurrence there in September and October), and may migrate over great distances, flying strong and high. They feed on toxic plants and are rather sluggish on the ground, preferring to stay in trees and bushes and flying between them. When feeling threatened they will raise and rustle their wings and exude a noxious foam (poisonous if ingested) from their bodies as defense. Eggs are laid in the ground and the nymphs (also called “hoppers”) are highly gregarious, moving around in tight clusters until they are almost fully grown.

And yes, they scare me. Terribly.”

What a Surprise!

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What surprised me about our trip in January to Cape Town?  Well, pretty well everything.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the first thing, given that I now have a new roof on the house in Jersey and I was delayed leaving the island (once again) before Christmas last year.  Storm Eowyn arrived in the UK the same day we were due to leave (Friday 24th January 2025) bringing with it winds of up to 100mph near Glasgow Airport.  Emirates told us on the Thursday we wouldn’t be leaving the next day, but had rescheduled us to go on the Saturday, so we lost a day and that meant we wouldn’t be able to pick up the car rental either because the firm, RentaCheapie, wasn’t open on Sundays (it’s all in the name).

I’d only flown Emirates once before, in 2008 to Mauritius and on the way back, I’d had wanted a stopover in Dubai to visit a former Deutsche Bank colleague.  I seem to remember they were good but didn’t have a clear memory of anything in particular.  However, they fly the A380 daily from Glasgow and I hadn’t flown in that plane before, they were cheaper in Business than BA, and the idea of not having a 12 hour flight was appealing, albeit involving a longer total journey but broken into two parts. 

I didn’t think I could be surprised in a good way by an airline ever again but their service was superb (the A380 was luxury personified, and we even arranged for a driver to meet us in Cape Town at short notice and take us to where we were staying, given that we had no hire car).  I now never want to fly long haul with any other airline ever again –  certainly not BA who, according to a recent poll. have won the long haul race to the bottom.

Look at the number of Emirates A380 cabin crew! They had been walking round with bottles of Veuve Clicquot before serving lunch 😊

Another nice surprise was the welcoming, caring hosts everywhere we stayed.  We picked most of our stayovers at random, apart from staying with our friends Gus in Cape Town and Garth in Swellendam who had recommended his friend Uwe in Barrydale.  Everyone was so kind and the personal touches made that aspect of the trip really special.  One example of this was that our first hosts in Constantia insisted on driving us to Sabine’s 9.15am lecture for the first two days until we finally collected the hire car on the Tuesday.  The fact that four of our hosts were of German origin made Sabine feel even more at home.

Following on from that, the next surprise was to ask how could Cape Town be so congested?  Tom Tom reckons in terms of travel times, it’s #3 worst in Africa, #106 in the world.  We can attest to that – we hit gridlock literally after dropping the car off because there was a rugby match on at the main stadium.  Poor Gus was driving. However, most of the cars were new or newish, there were a lot of 4x4s and a lot of Chinese-made vehicles most of which I’d not seen in Europe.  Generally you got a feeling of relative affluence in a country and continent where any kind of affluence is in short supply. 

The other side of the coin of course is that there is virtually no public transport (buses and trains) with the general population relying entirely on minivan taxis to get to and from work, the owners of which, so we were told, having shown in a recent strike of taxi drivers that they have the region’s economic activity by the throat.  So our host driving us to the University was a true gesture of goodwill as we sat in a five mile jam the first day – he found a much better route the next day which we used for the rest of the week.

And to underline the point about no trains, I can happily say that we saw three trains the whole time we were there, two in Cape Town and one outside a place called Ashton.  One of the Cape Town trains was a freight train at the docks when we dropped off the RentaCheapie hire car.  The other was an almost empty commuter train (but it was a Saturday). 

The strangest one of all was the Ashton train, a steam locomotive in a siding uncoupled from a full set of older style carriages.  We’d followed a narrow gauge track seemingly all the way from Barrydale on our way to Stellenbosch when I saw it.  It was so incongruous, given that we’d seen NO other trains, old or new.  It seemed to belong to a completely different world (which of course it did).  I had to research it when I got back and this is what I found it – https://www.robertsonr62.com/new-cape-central-railway – a fun thing to do on a Saturday next time we visit.  The surprises just keep coming.

On board 😊

We did do two wine tastings (De Krans in Calitzdorp and Marianne Winery in Stellenbosch) and sadly didn’t have time for a third (Idiom near Sir Lowry’s Pass which I think would have been the best).  The surprise with the two we did was that I didn’t really like any of their wines – none.  However, our Constantia hosts put a wonderful bottle of Chenin Blanc in our fridge for our arrival (but we can’t remember the name).  We had other lovely wine in restaurants, one of which was the wonderful red from the Constantia Uitsig winery that I’d really been impressed with on both previous visits to South Africa (2007 and 2009).  It was, however, definitely worth going for the more expensive wines on the wine list (which in any case mostly weren’t very).  And the food was fabulous and also not expensive.  I’ll see if I can do a separate post on our culinary memories.

One of the most important aspects of the trip was the lectures that Sabine gave at the Cape Town University Summer School and I was not expecting the following that she had there.  People signed up for her course (The Frozen North – Inuit Art and Culture, 75 minutes each day for 5 days) simply because they had so enjoyed her previous pre-CoViD lectures.  She had a steady 30+ attendees and they were truly rapt in attention when I looked back at them.  CTU has asked Sabine back next year.  The comments to her afterwards showed how much they appreciated the course.  We were entertained on separate occasions by four of her “students”, who clearly wanted to show their gratitude, and their hospitality together with their really interesting life stories were a surprise to both of us. 

On that note, when I think back to the people we met, it was a surprise that, socially, we came across no-one black or coloured (a specifically South Africa distinction?).  Yes, a coloured cop stopped us at a police checkpoint, and certainly we were served by blacks and coloureds in restaurants and at our various B&Bs.  We noticed that a lot of the blacks in the restaurants were from Zimbabwe.  But everyone we met socially was from the white, educated, older and retired, and relatively privileged section of Cape society.  The life they live, albeit surrounded at home by varying levels of security, is a very good one by any standard and it was important to remember that not everyone lives like that there and I’d say that society is still quite divided.

Another surprise was that driving the 1000km on the Garden Route was so easy and trouble free, and at no time did we feel unsafe.  It was all quite normal, contrary to what I had feared (but with no point of reference).  Certainly we saw townships, both large and small, some seemingly ok but most awful looking, and while we struggled to understand how anyone could live in that kind of habitation, the people we saw didn’t seem bothered.  It may be the old story of what you’re used to, I guess.

The driving took us through some stunning countryside, some with gently rolling hills and long views to the horizon; another landscape was larger rocky hills with the road following the valley floor alongside a river (and often an unused railway line).  Quite a lot of the land had no evident sign of habitation or cultivation while some of the landscape reminded me of parts of the US I’d seen out west.  At times, you felt you were really in the back of beyond, but still on good quality and not particularly busy roads.  All this was a surprise, but what made it even better was the courtesy of the other drivers, who if slower than us almost without exception would pull onto the hard shoulder to let you pass more safely.

As you can see from the photos, the weather was not a surprise, thank goodness – in fact, it lived up to our every expectation.  We had one day in Cape Town when it rained, but after the lecture we went on a wildlife tour that took us south over some hills towards the Cape of Good Hope, into dry and brighter skies.  The rest of the time the sun shone, it wasn’t too hot (high twenties most of the time), it wasn’t humid and there was no wind. A complete contrast to what we’d left behind and would not look forward to on our return.

Talking of wildlife, another surprise was the variety of wildlife, not just birds, in the Cape Province.  We didn’t mean to make the trip all about nature but managed to go on five wildlife tours of different kinds.  Two were all-day in and around Cape Town after Sabine’s lectures with Dominic, The Fynbos Guy, taking in Kirstenbosch Gardens, the city’s sewage works (a particular favourite for birds and birders alike), and the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.  We had a safari-light tour of the Idiom game reserve with the ranger, Andrew, (which is why we didn’t then have time for the wine tasting – you could say we had our priorities wrong) and in Wilderness we did an early morning boat tour of the lake.  The last one was a simple walk over farmland outside Oudtshoorn with Lynette of A 2 Zebra Adventures (she also does tours of the Great Karoo region just north of where we were which would be on our list for next time).  I’ll do a separate post on the wildlife we saw.

Andrew at Idiom, overlooking False Bay

And then there was the potter in Swellendam.  His name is David Schlapobersky.  We went to see the birds at the feeder in his beautiful garden with Garth and a couple of keen birding friends who helpfully knew what we were looking at.  We went back to the pottery on our way out to Wilderness the next day and bought some of his wares.  He was a little eccentric but Sabine in particular was very impressed by his work – a very talented artisan and, as we learnt, with a heart of gold.  I’d love to have the urn as a feature in the garden in Scotland but, with our frost, maybe not a good idea.

https://pottery.co.za/

Our particular thanks go to Gus for letting us stay with him and for looking after us for two weekends.  It was also great to see his daughter and son-in-law again and meet his young granddaughters.  All in all, an amazing 2+weeks which really was just a taster and we can’t wait to go back.

Have you ever seen one?

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It was Saturday just gone.  The sun had been shining all week – absolutely brilliant weather unless you really wanted to ski in perfect conditions all day.  We were in Haus im Ennstal, near Schladming in Austria and we saw 18C at the base of the Hoffi Express 1 lift at 9.30.  We’d already been skiing for an hour, and while most of the runs were still hard-packed from the colder temperatures Friday night, the snow was already softening on the lower slopes.

I hate snow when it turns to porridge – I find it much much harder to ski in any kind of rhythm and much much easier to completely loose it.  And that’s when accidents can happen and at my grand age, even though I’m trying not to let the old man in, I am happy to forgo the extra hour or so on the ski hills if the trade off is that I walk away in one piece happy with what I’ve been able to do.  Which that day was an ok 18km of skiing in two and a half hours, non-stop.

So what to do in the afternoon?  Well, we’d had a 9km hike in the afternoon of the previous day but had missed out the path along the River Enns that in previous years had yielded a dipper and a mistle thrush.  So I was wondering if we might do the path and wind up at the Dorf Café in Weissenbach we’d visited on the hike the day before.  We thought we could then catch the ski-bus back if we didn’t fancy the walk back (a false hope as we’d mis-read the timetable).

I like it when I’m with Sabine because she notices sounds and movements better than I do and in any case it’s always better to have two pairs of eyes than one, no matter.  So she heard the dipper first; it was on a rock on the opposite side of the river, its white front showing well against the darker rocks it was standing on. It flew down the river a short distance and we followed.  We saw it again and then quickly it flew back the way it had come. I didn’t have my camera but it was too quick for a photo anyway. Here’s one I took on an Aigas field trip in the Highlands.

We were still looking at the opposite bank when another movement caught our attention.  Not a bird this time but an animal of a very different sort running along the riverbank towards us.  It was extraordinary looking – a thin, relatively long body and tail, dirty white in colour with sharp facial features that were accentuated by its pointed nose, and the very distinct black tip to its tail.  It was a stoat in its winter ermine coat.

Photo courtesy of the British Wildlife Centre

Sabine, who knows about these things, said they were hunted in their hundreds of thousands to satisfy ladies and gents (kings even) fashion demand in the good old days when this sort of thing attracted no approbation whatsoever. 

Louis XIV

And the days aren’t so old either – I read on the British Wildlife Centre site that in 1937, 50,000 ermine pelts were imported into the UK from Canada for the coronation of George VI, whose preserved robes were worn by his grandson, Charles III, at his coronation in 2023. Presumably the black flecks are the ends of the tails.

Back at the river, we watched this descendent of a stoat the hunters missed run in between and behind the rocks at the edge of the river until it was directly opposite us. It then disappeared into a tangle of rocks that probably hid the entrance to its den.  I hoped that its dirty white coat had looked a lot more pristine at the start of the winter when fresh snow would have been very white too.  As it was, it looked quite incongruous given that there was no snow anywhere on the valley floor through which the river flowed – the camouflage was having the opposite effect by making the animal stand out quite dramatically rather than blend into its surroundings.

Come spring (and that can’t be too far away in the Enns valley if the temperatures we saw are anything to go by), the stoat will moult out of its white coat into one with a brown back but still be white underneath.  Apparently not all stoats will change into an ermine coat at the start of winter but they are more likely to do that the colder the climate they live in (which makes perfect sense to me).  Of those that do go ermine, some will not be pure white but have some patchiness like the head of the one on the photo.  More information can be found on: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/mammals/stoat/

Kenya – Part 4c

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This last instalment is about 12 months overdue, so my apologies to you all.  I got busy last year with other things (Hospice treasurer, a lot of travel, and the house in Rhu) and, as I need a lot of uncluttered time to do the writing and the thinking behind it, I got out of the habit and with it lost the motivation.  Our recent trip to Cape Town and the Garden Route has restored my interest in storytelling though and as we saw another wealth of birds and other animals, and as I’ve just uploaded the photos I took and as the weather is absolutely appalling right now in Rhu, it’s time to get back to it.

On our last game drive, and after we saw the pair of Southern Ground Hornbills I wrote about in Kenya 4a, Simon took us to a glade which turned out to be quite bird rich.  Two birds got our attention in particular, the Woodland Kingfisher and the Paradise Flycatcher.

Woodland Kingfisher

I wrote about two other Kingfishers in Kenya – Part 4a, the Grey-headed and Malachite.  But this one was just sitting in a tree with no water nearby, so very much not the habitat with which we Europeans associate kingfishers.   And while it’s not the best of photos, you can see just see the brilliant bright blue wing panel, a colour that it also has on its back and tail.  And note the large almost out of proportion beak, upper mandible red, lower mandible black.

It’s fairly common within a band across Africa south of the Sahara to Pretoria (not as far south as Cape Town).  It eats insects and small reptiles but doesn’t need water to house its diet.  Wikipedia notes that “It hunts from an exposed perch, often on a dead branch of a tree, or perches quietly in semi-shade while seeking food”, the latter being exactly what the one we saw was doing.

African Paradise Flycatcher

In the glade, we had the absolute pleasure of seeing first the female and then the male.  Both were unbelievably beautiful, the male more so as is normal in the bird world.  They are similar in colouring but the male has a much long tail.  My photos of the female aren’t the best, but I think you can get the idea by combining the two (I love the punk crest and even she has quite an impressive tail) but the male was not as obliging, so thanks to the Waterberg Bioquest website for their photo which shows the very long tail and the strong blue eye ring to great effect.

These extraordinary birds are widespread, favouring well-wooded river or stream valleys and copses, but may also be found in suburban gardens – what a treat that would be to find a pair in your garden!

Vultures

From the beautiful to the positively ugly.  Natural selection has favoured the development of bald heads so as to make burying their heads in the blood and guts of carrion less of a hygiene issue, but as a consequence made them quite grotesque looking, at least to my mind.  Still, they are an essential part of the biosphere and indeed are a great indicator of a healthy natural life-cycle environment.

I mentioned this next part in Kenya 3c.  The return part of our long day trip to the Serengeti took us through lands where the Masi had encroached with their cattle and where, during the night before, lions had attacked the herd and killed at least six, but more likely eight or ten cows.  Not a great outcome for the Masi nor for the conservation-minded Masi Mara park rangers who didn’t need lions attacking very easy prey but nevertheless the wrong kind of animal. 

When we drove through the area, some of the lions were still feasting but others were fast asleep, having gorged themselves on the raw steak and tastier offal, leaving the carcasses to be finished off by hyenas, jackals and, of course, vultures – lots of them.

Jackal and White-backed Vultures

And there definitely was a pecking order (pardon the pun).  The vultures came last – if mammals were at the carcass, some of the braver vultures might try their luck as well, darting in for a beak-full before making a quick retreat, but for the most part, the vultures were standing in huddles a safe distance away waiting their turn, while the sky was full of late arrivals flying in to join the banquet.

In total, we saw 5 different species in this melee (and a sixth, a Palm-nut Vulture, on the coast south of Mombasa).  Below is the huge Lappet-faced Vulture with its massive beak and wings spread and by comparison the much smaller Hooded Vulture on the left.

Not mixing with the others was this Egyptian Vulture.  I last saw one of these flying across the autobahn back to its roost at the Salzburg Zoo in 2018.

The final species was the Griffon Vulture, and I remember Simon being quite excited as it was a rare vagrant.  I don’t have a photo, sadly, doubly so as I read subsequently that there is some dispute in birding circles as to whether these birds are actually the more common immature Rüppel’s Vultures.  Who knows but I’ll happily take my lead from Simon.

Widows and Bishops

Yellow BIshop

Once again, in the UK or Europe we have nothing like these types of birds.   Bishops are in the same genus as Widowbirds, most of which like the Red-collared Widowbirds below have really long tails.  Both like the open grasslands and from their beaks, you can see they are seed-eaters.

Whereas we saw the former on its own, the latter is polygamous and sure enough we saw him with his harem of about five females. We saw these birds a few times when we passed a scrubland area with bushes and high grasses.

Storks

The word “stork” seems to be used liberally in the birding world t describe the birds belonging to several genera and families.  The white stork migrates from Africa to  Europe where it can be seen sitting on top of chimneys or specially built roof nesting platforms, as we found in little town of Rust on the shores of Neusiedler See in Austria.  Except we didn’t see it on this safari.  However, we did see several other types of stork.  

This rather attractive Yellow-billed Stork above was in a reflective mood standing in a shallow waterhole towards the end of day, but was quite different from the ugly Marabou Stork (looks almost vulture-like with its bald head), different again from the stylish Saddle-billed Stork with its amazingly striking beak, and very different from the strange-looking aptly named African Openbill, also categorised as a stork, as shown in the three photos below (the Saddle-backed Stork is from an earlier safari in Kruger as unfortunately we didn’t see an adult in Kenya).

This Marabou Stork was so vulture-like that it was standing just apart from some of the vultures near one of the carcasses.

Saddle-backed Stork
African Openbill

The first time we saw an Openbill, Simon saw it first and explained what the shape of the bill to us, but it sounded so incongruous that we thought we didn’t hear him right. The bird then flew up and stood on a branch at the top of the tree and you could see the blue sky through the gap in its bill.

Lilac-breasted Roller

There’s a European Roller that I’ve never seen – a summer breeding visitor in Spain and Eastern Europe before sensibly migrating back to Southern Africa for the rest of the year.  And very pretty it looks in the book, a feature common to Rollers in general (they’re related to Bee-eaters which says it all).

We saw Lilac-breasted Rollers a lot in the Masai Mara and they were always a delight.  Apart from being stunning to look at, they made viewing easy by perching near the tracks and being obligingly photogenic.  One happily demonstrated its hunting capability by catching a large grasshopper and swallowing it in front of us.

And that completes the Kenya bird story and indeed the Kenya story itself.  I haven’t mentioned a whole raft of other birds, too many to mention, and nearly all with no direct comparison to birds in Europe. The colours, the variety, the sheer numbers, and the ease of seeing them in totally natural surroundings in Africa makes this hobby such a different, special and rich experience.

We saw 118 species in 4 days on safari in the Masai Mara and 11 more at the beach hotel near Mombasa (mainly shore birds like the little sanderlings that run to and fro at the water’s edge), and I still have a few unidentified bird photos.  There is no doubt both Sabine and I have got the African birding bug that I know my friend Gordon has as well (he’s chasing his 500th species).  We added a lot of new species on our next trip to Southern Africa (Cape Town and the Garden Route) at the start of 2025 and while I want to say I’ll do another post or two about that trip, given that this one is a year late, I’d better not make promises I won’t keep …… but hopefully watch this space 🙂

Olympic comments

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It’s been so long since I posted anything that I thought this would make a good re-introduction, courtesy of a Canadian friend who sent it to me:

Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so far during the Summer Olympics that they would like to take back:

  1. Weightlifting commentator: “This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I saw her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing.”
  1. Dressage commentator: “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.”
  1. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother

and  father.”

  1. Boxing Analyst: “Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.”
  1. Softball announcer: “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.”
  1. Basketball analyst: “He dribbles a lot and the opposition doesn’t like

it. In fact you can see it all over their faces.”

  1. At the rowing medal ceremony: “Ah, isn’t that nice, the wife of the IOC

president is hugging the cox of the British crew.”

  1. Soccer commentator: “Julian Dicks is everywhere. It’s like they’ve got

eleven Dicks on the field.”

  1. Tennis commentator: “One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them…

Oh my God, what have I just said?

The Jersey Boat Show

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4th May 2024

We needed a break.  We’d just made 28 lemon posset desserts in 4oz paper cups to be topped off with a compote of summer berries out of the irreparable freezer.  The fridge part works but the freezer is no longer freezing and it got the thumbs down from the Samsung repair man who checked it out. So we had to clear out what we could from the freezer.

The fridge-freezer has had a minor problem for years – a small and slightly annoying leak in the back of the fridge compartment such that there was always a very small amount of water in the two fruit/vegetable bins at the bottom. If the fridge got used a lot, it would frost up at the back and then this would slowly melt and drip down.  But it still worked fine and I wasn’t about to change it – it cost a lot of money 9 years ago and needed a cherry-picker to lift it onto the balcony to get it into the kitchen.

So now it’s inescapable – I’m in the market for a new fridge-freezer.  There’s always something with a house, isn’t there?   It’s early days but I’m guessing from what I’ve seen so far (see below) that this retail experience will warrant another story.

Anyway, the day looked absolutely lovely, a contrast to most of the week.  I was in shorts, much to Sabine’s consternation but it was actually warm.  So we headed out to the Boat Show.  We caught the Number 1 bus into town, and walked across Liberation Square and the main road to get to boats in the harbour and the stalls around it.

Now, please understand that, sadly for me, my boating days post the Muskoka cottage are over, so we weren’t going there with any intention of buying a boat; we weren’t really that interested in what the boats were on display.  It was just a nice sunny day to visit the show.  In recent years the weather quite often has been awful for it, with the show completely cancelled one year, but not 2024.  All good.

We walked up the line of booths on the east side of the harbour, past the RNLI in its prime position, and immediately came across one selling kayaks and paddle boards.  The outfit selling them had come over from the South Coast.  The thing that made us stop was the design of the kayaks – very thin corrugated plastic sheeting folded into the shape of a kayak, that unfolded and could be put into a pictured bag about 75cm by 50cm by 30cm.  Very light.  Could withstand being scrunched on rocks just below the surface that I would find without any difficulty.  The two very solid kayaks I have now are heavy, and cumbersome to carry along the drive, through the beach gate, down the stairs and across the beach to where the sea is, so this light weight design was really appealing. 

We said we’d think about getting one (or two more likely).  Remember I said we weren’t in the market for a boat, a position that really included all types of watercraft, but even so we were tempted.  However, we immediately completely forgot about kayaks because we saw the paddle boards they sold and Sabine’s eyes lit up – it’s been something she’s really wanted to do.  They were blow-up boards, not expensive at all, included the paddle and the pump and were just what Sabine wanted.  So we are now the proud owners of one (repeat ONE) paddle board.   The day was perfect for Sabine to start (falling in) with a flat calm sea too, but we had other plans for later, so we still have that pleasure ahead of us.

We bought an orange one – it fits into the backpack you can see.

One very happy rookie paddle boarder

We arranged to pick it up later – after all, it came in an easy to carry backpack.  The boats in the harbour beckoned.  They’d gone slightly down-market from the last time I was there when there were wall-to-wall Sunseekers with prices in the millions.  There was one beautiful 56 footer with 2 x 1100 litre fuel tanks and an unsurprisingly long line of people wanting to inspect it.  There were a number of ribs of different sizes, very expensive to my mind and, not yet for sale, two Royal Navy Archer Class patrol boats complete with crew, HMS Express and HMS Ranger, similar to the ones we see around the submarine base on Gareloch.

We went for the tour of one of them (on the right in the photo) but drew the short straw. Our tour guide was a rating based on HMS President, a training ship on the Thames moored on the Embankment in London, which meant that he was a raw recruit and wasn’t able to explain a lot about the ship. To confirm his lowly status, he mentioned that he’d had to polish the ship’s bell the day before and how filthy it had been (it was gleaming when we saw it and I got to ring it).  Sabine was quite curious about his impressive braids.

We wandered around the rest of the boats, and managed not to buy one.  One was really striking – a very very fast ocean-going racing boat painted green and gold.  Here’s the link: Thunder Child II – 54 Knots.com(opens in a new tab)

No, the fast boat is behind the inflatable chick.

There was another section of booths on the other side of the harbour, just a short stroll away in the sunshine, so it had to be done.  Sure enough, we nearly bought a Finnish sauna for the house in Rhu at one of the first booths we came across in this section.  It was beautiful, roomy, of an attractive barrel design, the choice of a wood or an electric burner, and not as expensive (especially with the Boat Show discount) as I suspect the garden pond will wind up costing.   Fortunately for us we didn’t buy one – I say fortunately because on our way out we saw another barrel-type sauna by a different manufacturer, slightly more expensive, but that looked a lot better made.

We went up the right hand side of the booths and back down the other side.  After the sauna inspection, there mercifully wasn’t anything that caught our eye until Sabine cried out with glee and ran into a large booth selling …… Thermomix cooking appliances.  I blame her brother and sister-in-law for all this, because they have one and Susanne showed it off to great effect over Christmas.  Like the paddle board, Sabine has wanted one for years. 

Don’t get me wrong, they’re very good (German, naturally) and of course the Boat Show pricing had some attraction (it needed to, given how much they cost). https://www.vorwerk.com/gb/en/s/shop/products/thermomix/c/thermomix  

But the cynic in me thinks it’s a bit of a con because you HAVE to buy through a specially trained agent as you couldn’t possibly understand how to use it, and the agent provides that crucial after-sales culinary service that you didn’t know you needed –  a bit like a personalised Tupperware party.

So we managed to escape from the Boat Show having only bought a paddle board that we had no intention of buying but had two close calls, having found ourselves magnetically attracted to Finnish saunas and kitchen appliances that we don’t need (as opposed to a fridge-freezer that we do need).

And to finish that story with the latest update, our next stop was in town at a retail establishment (no names) that sold these latter products.  We’d been to another shop the day before which had several American fridge-freezers on their website but not available to view and the one I really liked (Fisher & Paykel, a brand I’d never heard of but which came highly recommended) they hadn’t sold for a while.  The next best ones (also not on display) were by LG, a brand I know of but know nothing about (and neither did the salesman).  Hopeless.

The shop we visited after the Boat Show had the same LG model on display (a result), but it was so close to another model that you couldn’t open the doors properly and then you noticed the prices of these display models were massively discounted (several hundreds of pounds) because they had large dents in the doors.  But the huge discount for the LG model that was also sold by the first shop brought the price down fractionally below the undamaged price quoted by the first shop.  Hopeless.  I’ll keep you posted.

RSPB Loch Lomond

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4th April 2024

Thursday was a surprisingly lovely day – i.e. it wasn’t raining.  In fact, it was sunny and warm in the sun.  Sabine went to her Helensburgh quilting group in the morning, so I went over to our nearest RSPB Reserve on Loch Lomond, about 25 minutes’ drive from us. 

A winter view from the RSPB website: https://www.rspb.org.uk/days-out/reserves/loch-lomond

I still have the Audi in Rhu and it needed a bit of a run as it gets used here even less than in Jersey.  Even though it’s 14 years old this year, it’s still a lovely car to drive so, with the sunroof open, it was no hardship to make the journey.  I resisted the call of the garden centre near the reserve as I already have more plants to bed in than I can cope with.

The Reserve carpark is actually about a mile from Loch Lomond, so I got a little exercise as well as doing some birdwatching.  Except I didn’t …. do much birdwatching.  I was warned by the volunteer lady at the entrance that it was quiet.  She mentioned someone had seen a nuthatch, and an osprey had been seen overhead earlier in the week, heading east.  Which is like someone saying to you when you arrive at your holiday destination “Oh, you should have been here last week, the weather was beautiful”.

So I had a stroll down to the loch and back and saw ….. virtually nothing, or so I thought.  The walk was lovely though, through woodland, over fields where recently a couple of large ponds have been dug out and trees planted as part of a restoration project, and across a big marsh on a boardwalk and back to more woodland.  The only trouble was the other people in the Reserve, who were nearly all pairs of dog walkers, not birdwatchers, who didn’t follow the etiquette of keeping quiet and their chatting seemed to travel a long way.

But when I came to write this note, I realised that I had seen a few birds.  The nuthatches were making a lot of noise, more noise even than the dog walkers, as were two chiffchaffs (onomatopoeic name) newly arrived from the Med or West Africa.  There were plenty of robins and blue tits, a pair of geese on the loch too far out to be sure that they were greylags, mallard ducks in the marsh, and round the two feeders a coal tit, lots of chaffinches and some goldfinches.  There was also a blackbird and a crow and some wood pigeons and the ubiquitous gull.

Apart from the chiffchaffs that I hadn’t seen this year, though, they were all fairly common birds.  I looked for the water rail on the marsh – Sabine had seen one there once but, not knowing what it was, didn’t call me over.   This time, it might have been too early in the year for it, though.

I reflected on visit on the drive back  The Loch Lomond Reserve is a wonderful facility to have fairly close by and I only covered about half of the area.  The other half is along the loch east towards a sheltered bay where on another visit we have seen osprey and a whitethroat warbler.  Just walking and hearing all the bird songs was uplifting in itself and I was easily able to appreciate how much care the RSPB, supported by the volunteers, takes in maintaining the Reserve. 

But I realised that if I’d stayed at home, I’d have seen more birds than I had at the Reserve, albeit of the garden bird variety and mostly on the feeders. 

We have four kinds of finches – goldfinches, chaffinches, greenfinches and Mr and Mrs Bullfinch (an unexpected delight – they come round first thing in the morning and dominate the back feeder).  

We have four kinds of tits – blue, great, coal and long-tailed.  Suddenly we have a flock of siskin, having been absent all winter, the males unmistakeable in their yellow and green coat and black cap. 

We have robins and dunnocks, a wren, nuthatches, blackbirds and a song thrush (seen in the front garden for the first time, inspecting the new pond). 

Nuthatch

Every now and then, a pair of blackcap warblers stop by, surprising during the winter.  We have had a great spotted woodpecker this year (but only seen once), on the big trees front and back I’ve seen a tree creeper and even a goldcrest at the back, and at night we hear a barn owl calling (I have only actually seen it once, in January last year).  And of course, wood pigeons and magpies galore, but although crows are overhead and jackdaws and gulls settle on roofs a few houses down, they don’t bother us (fingers crossed).

That’s not counting the shore and sea birds we get at the bottom of the hill on Gareloch, a few minutes’ walk away.  The photo is of an eider.

And from this, for those of you who read about me not wanting to feed the local rats, you’ll be pleased to know that the bowl solutions are working well. Which in turn allows Sabine and me such enjoyment from seeing so many birds using the feeders.

Don’t Let the Old Man in

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17th March 2024

I’ve just watched two later Clint Eastwood movies. Gran Torino is the movie Sabine’s nephew will be examined on in his A Level equivalent English exam in Germany. It was released in 2008 and is a great movie. It is spectacularly politically incorrect. It covers a lot of aspects of American life and Clint pays his character, a Korean War veteran and retired Detroit Ford Plant xenophobe, a man of his era, to perfection at least in my eyes. I just creased up at one one part and I’m still laughing out loud at its memory as I type this. Could he get away with it today – sadly probably not.

You need to know that Clint Eastwood has been part of my life since he played Rowdy Yates in a weekly black and white cowboy programme called Rawhide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawhide_(TV_series); it shows my age as its first series came out in 1959. So perhaps unsurprisingly, at the end of Gran Torino, I was looking at others of his movies on Amazon Prime and, in my excitement reminiscing about all the enjoyment I have had watching him on the big screen, I accidently rented “The Mule”.

I watched it tonight. It came out 10 years later in 2018, and is much less politically incorrect even though the character he plays is very similar except he looks older – 88 in fact when he made the movie. Again, it was a good story with a strong cast. At the end of the film the lyrics to the closing song made me suddenly sit up – they included the words to Gus’s mantra mentioned in other stories that I have taken to heart so much.

Google helped out – here’s an extract of an interview with the writer and singer, Toby Keith:

Keith, 62, remembered a conversation with Eastwood that gave him the idea to write “Don’t Let The Old Man In.” The country music icon said it happened during the time Eastwood was filming The Mule, a 2018 thriller that follows a ninety-year-old horticulturist and Korean War veteran (who) turns drug mule for a Mexican cartel.  Keith’s song ultimately ended up in the film.

“It’s an interesting story, how this song came to be,” Keith said in a video on Instagram. “Clint Eastwood, when asked by me, what he was gonna do on his birthday, he said he was gonna go shoot a movie. He was 88 years old, and I said, ‘what do you do to keep yourself going?’ He said, ‘I try to get up and be productive, and don’t let the old man in.’ So, I wrote (the song, and) sent it to him. He put it in that movie, The Mule, and then it exploded on NBC when I sang it on the People’s Choice [Country] Awards when I was getting the Icon (Award).”

Here’s the Spotify link (you may need to have a subscription) https://open.spotify.com/track/4DLSN6f2Cp5eWIa5Vfn9kj?si=efc5588eda5f49b3 and here are the lyrics:

“Don’t let the old man in
I wanna leave this alone
Can’t leave it up to him
He’s knocking on my door

And I knew all of my life
That someday it would end
Get up and go outside
Don’t let the old man in

Many moons I have lived
My body’s weathered and worn
Ask yourself how would you be
If you didn’t know the day you were born

Try to love on your wife
And stay close to your friends
Toast each sundown with wine
Don’t let the old man in

Many moons I have lived
My body’s weathered and worn
Ask yourself how would you be
If you didn’t know the day you were born

When he rides up on his horse
And you feel that cold bitter wind
Look out your window and smile
Don’t let the old man in

Look out your window and smile
Don’t let the old man in

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Toby Keith”

Both movies and the song are worth your time. Enjoy.