Islay: sand, sunburn and scenery.

My third weekend on Islay. Sunday dawned clear and still. Gone was the mix of rain and hail that, when driven by a blustery gale, really hurts a bald head. So I set out to walk from Bunnahabhain to the lighthouse at Rhuvaal on the north-east coast of the island. I parked near the distillery and went through the deer fence gate. Almost immediately, I came upon the Margadale River where it debouches into the sea. Where a river meets the sea is always the best place to find sign of otters and sure enough I quickly found lots of evidence: fresh spraint that had been perched on top of small mounds. The mounds are actually made of old spraint. If you dig into them it is a mass of old fish bones deposited for decades. 

Looking north towards Rubha Bachlaig and up the Sound Of Islay. Jura is just visible on the right.

Across the Sound, Jura's twin peaks, The Paps, had lost the snowy mantle that had shrouded them for most of the last two weeks. Little tufts of cloud adorned their summits as the air moved across them and its moisture condensed.

The Paps of Jura

The Paps, with their distinctive cloud caps.

As you might expect from one of the Estate's best stalking areas, there were plenty of deer around; even if the otters contrived to be elsewhere. Both red deer and roe deer were making the most of the morning sun. They had found banks and sunny hollows where they could sun bathe. With the sun at my back and the light breeze in my face off the sea, I was in a good position to stalk in close with the camera.

A roe buck let me get very close, about ten metres away, before he quit his sunny place and moved off.

I spotted a stag lying fast asleep in the sun. He heard the first few shutter clicks (I had not silenced the shutter) and stood up to get a better look before ambling off.

I took my time as I made my way up the coast, taking every opportunity to descend from the ATV track to the pebbly shoreline. Ringed Plover could be seen flittering across the pebbles in small flocks.

Ringed Plover.

As I scanned the rocky foreshore for otters, a large bird came into view flying powerfully along the coast towards me. A juvenile white-tailed eagle flew past at head height as I stood on the small cliff over a beach.

White-tailed eagle

White-tailed eagle

A little late I saw it flying across the hill just inland of me. They are hugely curious birds so, the second it saw me, it veered towards me and came to soar above me. Then, having satisfied itself that I was not going to do anything that some other more interesting humans do such as throw fish from boats, shoot deer and find dead sheep, it grew bored and flew away over the hill.

Whit-tailed eagle

Almost as soon as the eagle left me, two juvenile peregrine falcons appeared over the Sound, chasing each other across the line of snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Looking northwards to the snow caps of Mull.

Colonsay rears up white and wintery to the north of Islay.

Rhuvaal Lighthouse, from near Glen Dubh.

I finished the day back home, standing beside the monument to John Francis Campbell, watching the sun go down over Loch Indaal and listening to thousands of barnacle geese gently honking as they settled to roost on the mud flats.

An ancient olive tree and a great mystery.

Olive (Olea europaea)

While working at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire, I was lucky to meet the owner of a Hampshire farm and he told me a fascinating story about the ancient olive that he had in his garden. In early August, I went to see him and his lovely tree.

The owner has lived on the farm for most of his adult life, about 60 years. The property dates back to the Early Medieval Period; it is mentioned in Domesday. There is a fish pond that is also Early Medieval and a walled garden, yew avenue and coach house that are testament to there having been much grander houses on the site than at present. There is a long record of occupation on the farm which has kept the same name that it had before the Norman invasion. 

The story of the olive is that it was planted by a crusader in 1307. The tradition was that when a knight returned from the Holy Land, he would carve a cross on the door way of the local church. The knight would also plant a tree and one such crusader, probably one of the Chamberlain family who lived at the nearby Manor planted this olive.

"Crusader Crosses" on the door jamb of the local church.

It does not look 710 years , does it? But could this be the re-growth from an older, ancient bole? Or could it be a cutting taken from the first tree and planted in it's place? Has there been an olive growing here for over 700 years? Whatever the truth of it, it's a great story! The owner has cared for it and defended it. One enthusiastic and very well known botanist and TV gardener wanted to come and dig it up and take it to his arbortum, but the owner very wisely declined that offer. More recently, he has had sycamore trees removed from around it as they were over-shadowing the tree. As soon as this was done, the tree responded and put on much of the top growth that can be seen in this photo above.

The larger stem is hollowing, possibly where another stem has been removed. At 1.3m  above ground level (just below a swelling where the first branch bifurcates) the stem has a girth of 1.3m.

The smaller stem has a girth of 1.2m at 1.5m above ground level.

The sucker is 50 years old (according to the owner) and has a girth of 22cm just below the first branch, about 50cm above ground level.

The tree seems to be growing well. Two stubs, where branches have torn off, are surrounded with epicormic shoots.

I don't think that we will ever know the truth of this tree, but that is one of the great charms of old trees. We do not know their full story, but we are teased with hints and rumours, signs and faint tracks that we can follow to trace their long history. Sometimes, an ancient tree will give us a chance to lift the veil of time and peer into the deep past.

Adventure: the road to revelation.

There is a lovely Scots word, "stravaig", which means to wander without purpose. The natural history writer Robert Macfarlane calls such a wanderer a "Meanderthal". I neither stravaig, not am I a Meanderthal. I love to have a purpose and a destination when I walk. More often than not, I carry a heavy load with which to do things; cameras, tape measures, collecting equipment, binoculars, rifle.

Each walk must be a journey. A successful journey should have an element of discovery. That's what makes it an adventure. Adventures are about discovery. You don't have adventures until you feel the thrill, the wonder of seeing something new or spectacular, something that stands out in your memory, something you talk about and recall with friends.

I have always found that the natural world thrills me more deeply, touches me more profoundly, than anything else. Natural discoveries can be small, happenstance encounters. Last week I watched a raven performing a display flight over the chalk hills near my home. I heard it’s deep croak “prruuk”, and looked up to see it flip over upside down, then roll back again. It dipped and rose again, effortlessly surfing the great green wave of the downland escarpment. Or they can be more dramatic, profound encounters such as the journey I made last year to photograph tigers in Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari National Park.

Raven


Lou and I often go out with the express purpose of a certain discovery: to find otter signs, to see the great bustards on Salisbury Plain or visit some hidden coombe in the folds of the hills. These purposeful walks are some of the best, they combine the art of the hunter with the hopeful expectation of the naturalist: I have a set purpose but am also open to a joyful serendipitous encounter that will divert me from my mission, leading to revelation and inspiration.


This is one of the great things about hunting for ancient and veteran trees. I know that I will meet a remarkable tree; that I will measure it, photograph it and know it. I also know that these trees hold many secrets. They have holes where bats live, mammals burrow around the roots and fungi gradually hollow their centres. So any meeting with an ancient tree holds the promise of meeting one of it's close family that will supply me with the joy of a surprise encounter.

Two trees, an ash and a willow, entangled one in another.

I remember meeting a wonderful ash tree in the Glyn Valley, Cornwall. It was a huge old tree standing near an old mill site. When the corn mill was working in the Nineteenth Century, the tree would have been quite venerable even then. When I encountered it, the top had blown out years before and new stems had sprouted up from it’s bole. The original trunk of the tree had hollowed out and I squeezed inside it to see what I could find. As I had suspected, it harboured bats and owls as evidenced by their distinctive droppings. But to my great delight I saw that the tree had started to grown internal roots. From high above my head, roots had sprouted and were writhing down through the rotting carcass of the old tree: the rejuvenated stems were feeding on the decaying remains of the original tree, extracting and recycling nutrients that it had first acquired in the previous century.

Such encounters open windows on the natural world, brief glimpses into lives and ways of living that are completely alien to humans. This is what makes purposeful walking so important to me. It is the mode of travel that enables the journey to take place. When I walk I am part of the world, I am in the landscape. In a car, or even on a bicycle, you travel over the land not through it. The Meanderthal on his or her stravaig will do so wrapped in thoughts of themselves, their mind free to dwell on their lives and loves past and present. My purpose consumes me, it removes all spurious cares and considerations from my life and focuses my mind on the job in hand. In my search for the designated target, I will inevitably come upon the unexpected revelation that brings delight as well as data.

Great Bustards!

The heat haze was streaming across the fields. As I looked through the 600mm lens, the buildings on Netheravon Airfield shimmered and shook as if rocked by an earthquake. Hot air burst in gouts from the top of fence posts, roofs and the old farm machinery that was lying beside a trackway. In front of the wobbly air stood one proud, erect figure. Once extinct, now returned, the Great Bustards of Salisbury Plain are spreading out across England but the centre of the Plain is still the best place to see them.

A lone bustard on the wide expanses of "Schedule 1" farmland on Salisbury Plain.

There is a huge amount of public access on Salisbury Plain and all the best places to see the bustards are accessible on foot. Having said that, the signs on the military training area are not just 'wooden falsehoods'; you need to take note. On the day when we were out looking at bustards, we were not far from the "Impact Area" and we could hear shells landing over the hill.

Bustards are often seen as figures on the sky-line and they have usually seen you long before you see them. Their heads are raised like periscopes as they examine you, then they slowly walk away over the hill with a slow, stately gait.

As we admired the lone, distant male we could see, I suddenly realised that much closer, only about 75 metres away, there were three males, their heads just raised above the spring barley. The two older males stood up and began to walk away from us.

We watched them for some time before they decided to fly over onto a more distant field. The Great Bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world, yet it flies with such power and speed. You might imagine that it would lumber into the air like a swan and then heave it's way across the sky flapping madly to keep its great body airborne. Quite the opposite, they are truly majestic in the air. To see bustards flying across the open expanses of the Plain is to truly understand why they are called "Great" Bustards.

A mature, bearded male Great Bustard flies across Salisbury Plain.