Morvern Wildlife Diary. November 25th to December 31st.
These December days are our shortest, but what days they’ve been, many of them anyway. Day long sunshine from the time the sun appears, to its setting, and what beautiful winter sun settings (and risings) we have had, the sun having crept along and kept low to the snowy southern horizon. Winter sun rises and sun sets are long lasting affairs, as the sun at this time of year crosses our north-western sky in a shallow arc, instead of jumping up into the sky and dropping at a steeper summer angle, appearing and disappearing quickly.
Bright, dazzling days, white and blue, ice, frost, snow, all lit by that winter sun. Not a breath of wind, and silence, except for the sigh of distant falls of water, the ebb and flow of the tide, the calls of curlew and geese, the cheery chatterings of sparrows enjoying the weak winter rays, of dawn and dusk robins, tick-ticking and even singing a few phrases. The tiny bells that those waxwings ring to keep in touch with one another, there were still half a dozen in and around the village until the middle of the month. And a starling, singing its full song of clicks and squeaks and whistles, along with very life like snippets and inserts and accurate impressions of the songs and calls of other birds, such as curlew, blackbird, and buzzard.
Perfect days, wherever you are, by the sea, at the estuary, in the woods, on the hill, yes, perfect days, in the depths of winter, and there’s just no one around!
My time in the woods and hills this month has been all too brief and infrequent. However, there are always rewards for getting out there, no matter how little time you have.
An Otter, that single animal seen several more times, hunting in water like glass, its dives and resurfacings and bubbles while under water the only things disturbing the stillness reflecting the sunlit yellow orchre coloured shoreline woods and snowy hills above and beyond. ( Where is that otter family? The mother and three cubs that a friend saw a couple of weeks ago. Just how small are the cubs? I’ll keep looking). Great northern divers, a welcome addition to our winter birdlife, frequenting sheltered coastal inlets and bays.
A couple of hours on a small hill separating two long glens…I have to say small hills have a lot going for them, you have all of what you would get from a day on a bigger hill, with half the effort! And these small remote and wild little known hills attract so very few people…one cold frosty pristine blue winters afternoon, when the hills were an amazing colour, almost like that of grazed skin, pink and raw, and the lower the sun became the darker and redder that winter glow became. Eagles that day, a distant sea eagle, and a closer second or third year golden eagle, soaring above the sunlit shoulder of a hill on which a heard of grazing red deer stood out clearly in the sharp light. And what light, so sharp, and those colours! It was as though the winter had breathed the frost upon the hills and the sun had polished it off, where it reached, that is. Where it didn’t, the frost remained.
Another hour spent walking along a track through a wooded gorge during another perfectly still quiet winters afternoon. The trees were sound asleep, so still and silent are the woods on such cold cold days, where in the shadows of the deep gorge ice encrusts the rocks about the falls of the burn like crytal. A few deer in the steep gorge woods, sheltering from the bitter open hill and catching the weak winter rays, more to eat here too, I’d say, wise deer. Just one robin seen, how do they cope out here, not the easy life of a garden robin. And what about the tiny wrens in such freezing weather.
Looking at the sunlit side of the gorge, my thoughts turned to the hidden life that lies there in the winter grasses and dead bracken, spring flowers and butterflies, waiting for warmer days to wake them and warm them into life, just like the trees, days that aren’t so far away.
Novembers and Decembers can be the darkest, drabbest greyest months of the year, but this year they have been dazzlingly bright and beautiful for the most part, but now they are behind us, and every new January day will be that bit brighter and lighter than the last, taking us towards new life and the spring.
