A disappearing wood

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Alistair who lives in Leith, a part of Edinburgh. Those familiar with the songs of the Proclaimers will know that sunshine and Leith are inextricably linked.

Once again, the forecasters proved fallible, and what should have been a rainy day turned into a fine day with only occasional showers. It was unfortunate that Mrs Tootlepedal was caught in a short but very sharp sleety shower as she cycled back from a shopping trip. As I had got back from my shopping outing before the rain started, I was very sympathetic.

Generally though, I had a quiet morning. I did manage to put some of the newspaper index into to the Archive Group database, and coffee and crossword solving also featured.

I found that the birds at the feeder reflected the changing nature of the weather.

At ten to eleven, we had siskins in the shade:

At twenty to twelve we had chaffinches in the sun:

Then there was an interruption of by a goldfinch . . .

. . . and after a moment’s peace . . .

. . . by ten past twelve, the sunshine and most of the chaffinches had gone.

The goldfinches fell into dispute . . .

. . . and by half past one, the sun and the chaffinches were back in charge.

It looked as though the weather might stay fair for the rest of the afternoon, so in spite of cool temperatures (4°C) and quite a bit of wind, I decided to get my bike out again and make use of the unexpected chance to add a few miles to February’s meagre total.

I put on waterproof over trousers just in case another sleet shower turned up, and these, combined with the brisk westerly wind made progress very slow as I headed west over Callister with a view to being blown home again.

The bullocks at Wauchope Schoolhouse were wisely turning their backs to the wind when I passed them.

Far from encountering any rain, I had a dry and often sunny outing . . .

. . . which was lucky as my legs were not nearly as keen on cycling as I was, and pedalling the twenty miles took me nearly two hours.

There was added time for taking pictures of cows posing for me at Allfornaught.

I stopped again to take a picture which may not look very remarkable in itself . . .

. . . but it is what is not in the picture that is quite striking. This was the view two weeks ago.

The tree eating machines have polished off the whole wood. Things were being tidied up today.

I had an unhappy meeting with two buzzards as I got near to home. They were standing in a field not far from the road as I went past. Then an old dance played out. I stopped, turned, got my camera out and switched it on, and the buzzards flew away as the I pressed the shutter button to get a focus. One of them then played ‘annoy the photographer’ by hopping from fence post to fence post every time that I found it in the viewfinder.

I packed the camera away and cycled on. I was most surprised to see the two birds standing at the other end of the field when I got there. Regardless of the knowledge of how this would play out, I went through the same rigmarole all over again, with the same result, and the only thing that I got was a crow who stuck around, and a lot more birds in a tree who were disturbed by the buzzards as they went off laughing.

I didn’t make much of a better job when I tried to photograph the winter honeysuckle when I got home. It is doing really very well. To be fair, the light had gone and it was windy.

After a reasonably quiet morning tomorrow, we are offered a mixture of sunshine and showers, perhaps heavy, and some strong winds for tomorrow afternoon as Storm Dudley arrives. It would be good if the forecast turned out to be too pessimistic again.

Mind you, my knees tell me that they will be very happy if it has to be a quiet day indoors as far as they are concerned. I don’t know what went wrong with them today. They were quite happy yesterday. Too many biscuits perhaps.

The flying bird of the day is a chaffinch.