Today R and I walked part of the Cowal way. We took the Helensburgh minibus from Lochgoilhead this morning and got off at Artgarten. The idea was to be able to do a longish walk in one direction without having to loop back to get the car. So this was part of the Lochgoilhead to […]
I was out walking at around 7am today and just coming round the road near the loch I heard a loud drumming noise. It was a woodpecker – unfortunately I only got a brief glimpse of him (not enough to identify his exact species), but he was making enough noise to make up for his […]
These are the creatures we have seen in the immediate vicinity (our garden or within a mile of the Donich) since we moved in back in October. Pine Marten Badger Fox Otter Red Deer Red Squirrel Short tailed vole Field mouse Bat Heron Buzzard Falcon Garden birds -Tits (great, coal, blue), Robin, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Thrush, […]
This has been a very exciting week for us on the Wildlife front. Not only did we get to meet one of the badgers, and see the encounter between cat and pine marten – but yesterday we saw two new arrivals. The first was when we were sitting in the dining room watching dusk fall […]
Last night I had just put the nuts out for the wildlife when I happened to look out of the window. There was one of our badgers munching away. Luckily R’s sister who is an excellent photographer (her photo included below) was here – so we very quietly went outside to see if we could […]
Since before we moved here I have been a bit worried about the cats and some of the wildlife we have here. Although I have joked a lot about Tora having a girlfriend he can’t bring home because she is a Pine Marten, I did have it at the back of my mind how awful […]
As suddenly as they appeared – in one day all the frogs have departed. Where last week there was a writhing mass of slimy bodies ‘revelling in the joys of fornication’ now there is only a great mass of frogspawn. Let’s hope we get a decent crop of froglets which will eat some of the […]
We’ve certainly changed our shopping patterns a lot since we moved here. Generally for the better I will say because when we lived in Livingston we were constantly in and out of the local shops. There was rarely a day that we didn’t walk past the Co-op and buy lunch – which was nearly always […]
I’d had it in mind to climb Benn Donich on Sunday – it seems ridiculous that we have lived here for nearly six months and haven’t managed to get up ‘our’ mountain (well it is at the back of our house). But when we got up in the morning, it was a typical Goil day […]
Two of the vegetable beds are fully dug now. I’ve not been getting on as fast as I would like because of having a lot on and it being generally backbreaking work of the sort that tends to get put to the back of the queue. I’ve done about half of bed three as well… […]
