Lochwinnoch RSPB reserve & second-hand books

I've been meaning for some years to go to the RSPB's Lochwinnoch reserve in Renfrewshire. It's only 25 minutes from Glasgow Central, and trains run every hour. RSPB members (I am one) get free entry and so do visitors arriving by foot or bike or train or bus. Come by bike and you can also claim a free hot drink. Anyway, it was about time I did another of my railway days-out and it happened that a free Saturday in my diary coincided with a sale of second-hand books at the reserve, so I made the effort to go.


Leaving Linlithgow at 8am got me to Lochwinnoch at 9.40am. The station is nice, really nice. It obviously has a dedicated someone or several someone's looking after its platforms, probably as part of ScotRail's Adopt-A-Station scheme. There are planters all along filled with mixed herbs: rosemary, thyme, mint; yellow cornflower or marigold, chamomile or pineapple mayweed; (I need to learn my plants) some heathers too. In one of the planters I noticed a green-veined-white butterfly, perfectly camouflaged, perched with closed wings showing the thick furry veins that the name suggests. A black dot is on the underside of the upper wing. It's a great idea having such a variety of flowering and scented plants on the platform to liven things up for both humans and pollinating insects. I wonder if anyone's been tempted to sneak a sprig of rosemary to add flavour to their sandwiches...


From the station it's only a five-minute walk along a not very nice busy road to the reserve. Don't worry though, there's a pavement the whole way. I spent 3 or 4 hours, walking south for a way alongside Barr Loch then north-east to explore the paths and hides running alongside Aird Meadow Loch. Also I chatted for an hour or more with volunteers and staff in the visitor centre. There are telescopes and binoculars set up to watch the happenings on the reserve.


I didn't actually see a great variety of birds but I enjoyed taking the time to sit and do a few sketches of the scenes around me. The first was a panorama looking west across Barr Loch. Out on the water were mute swans, tufted ducks, mallards and one solitary pochard with its warm chestnut rounded head. Flying over the water were gulls and crows and swallows, having to battle a bit in the strong wind that blew drizzle the length of the loch. The reeds didn't take up the fight - they bent strongly under its force. I was sheltered by a stand of saplings as I made my sketch and ate a packed cereal breakfast.

Lochwinnoch panorama, pencil in sketchbook, 14.5 x 41cm

My other two sketches were of a wooded archway that I looked at across the reed beds. I've always had a taste for the fantastical - my paintings at art college were pretty much dominated by this (see the imagined worlds gallery on my website). As I've become increasingly interested in natural history I've not really done these imaginative landscapes. Not because I've lost that interest, just because there's never enough time to paint all that could be painted. Anyway I've felt that urge creeping up a bit more recently and have decided to start building a collection of sketches - scenes I encounter in the real world that have something of that other-worldly feeling about them. They may or may not be turned into something more finished one day. These two sketches are a good example.

Lochwinnoch woodland archway, pencil & pen in sketchbook, 14.5 x 20.5cm

Lochwinnoch woodland archway, 2nd sketch - much quicker, pencil & pen in sketchbook, 14.5 x 20.5cm

And the books - I came back with a wallet £17 lighter but a rucksack six books heavier - two about owls (Always my favourite. I seem to dream of owls, perhaps more often than is healthy - I've had eagle owls, snowy owls and at least one great grey owl, all in my West Lothian garden! Jennifer knows.) Also The Life of the Robin by David Lack which has been recommended to me lots of times, and a book of sketches by Charles Tunnicliffe - beautiful to look at and important to learn from. And a book to go in the present stock for Jennifer's Christmas...

painting birds in the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh

I was asked by Art in Healthcare to run two art workshops at the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh, on 10th & 11th September 2012. I was to base my workshop on an artwork from the collection of 1400+ paintings, drawings, photographs and prints that Art in Healthcare makes available for display in hospitals and healthcare centres. You can look through the collection by clicking here. It was great fun browsing so many works of art and deciding eventually on a lovely lithographic print by Edinburgh-born artist Colin Thoms of a cheeky dark bird standing against a sunny yellow background.

Colin Thoms - Bird, Tree and Red Sun - lithograph, 49x65cm - image courtesy of Art in Healthcare

Working in a hospital was a new experience for me, one which I now hope to repeat. The atmosphere in Sick Kids is great, staff are friendly and relaxed, wards are bright and airy, the playrooms... well... they make you want to stay all day! And most importantly of course - the children. The kids I worked with ranged in age from 3 to 11. All were really enthusiastic and had a great time using paint and crayons and pastels and glue to make their own collaged pictures of birds. Every child who took part created a beautiful artwork which will hang on the hospital walls to brighten the days of all who visit and work there. Here they are for you to enjoy too...

barn owl, by Luke, age 8

blackbird, by Finn, age 5

two owls, by Toni-Lee, age 7

colourful bird, background by Keegan, age 4, bird & leaves by Jessie, age 6 

buzzard, by Bethan, age 11

eagle, by T.J. age 8

flying gulls, by Sean, age 7

kingfisher, by Rhian, age 4

owl & woodpecker, by Caitlin, age 7

rainbow owl, by Joy, age 11

robin, by Abby, age 3

owl, by Adam, age 11

(thanks to Amelia Calvert, Volunteer and Outreach Manager, Art in Healthcare for taking all the photos)

an ancient beech, before and after

I was delighted yesterday to be back at Avonmuir House near Linlithgow, invited for the second year running to be artist in residence -for one day only- whilst the garden was open to the public under Scotland's Gardens Scheme. Entrance fees went to charities supported by the scheme and to Combat Stress.

Avonmuir is a beautiful house built at the very end of the 18th century. The garden is large with a walled area of lawn and fruit trees and beautiful flower borders - yesterday attracting small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies, but not as many as you'd expect. And as seems also to be the case across Scotland this year the apple harvest is disappointingly low, although those that were on the trees were juicy red and tempting. I had a display of my work in the little lichen-green summerhouse here, and another in the tea tent (wonderful mini carrot cakes!) I did my painting elsewhere, in my favourite part of the garden - by a little burn that babbles under trees and ivy, a path winds alongside. It's shaded there but dappled sunlight filters through, twinkling in the branches.

tree stump and burn, watercolour, 28 x 38cm

I finished the day with a half-hour sketch done from the exact position I painted in last year. What a difference a year makes... 364 days ago I was looking at a beautiful wide spreading beech - now all that's left is a massive stump with logging all round. Major boughs were lost in the winter storms 2011/2012 and the rest had to be felled. It's sad to see such a magnificent tree gone but I'm glad I was able to paint it last year. It'll be interesting to see what new plant life develops now that the area is open to light. Counting the rings showed that the tree was 400 years old. Think of all that's happened in those four centuries.


Here you can see my 'before' and 'after':

blackbird & wren by the ancient beech, acrylic on card/board, 18.5x23.5cm, 4th Sept 2011

no blackbird, no wren, but a robin singing merrily beside me, watercolour & pencil, 27.5x38cm, 2nd Sept 2012

mourning cloak & camberwell beauty...

I was interested to discover in our book that the mourning cloak butterfly -Nymphalis antiopa- so admired by myself and Jennifer in a park in New York in June (read more here) is the same species as the camberwell beauty which can sometimes be seen here in the UK, being a rare migrant to our shores.

It's so hard to believe that such seemingly fragile creatures actually can migrate, but they can and do...

The monarch butterfly in Canada and northern states of the USA is the best-known example - it makes a 3,000 mile journey south each year to overwinter in Mexico and California. A number of species that we see here in Britain are migratory too - red admiral and painted lady butterflies and silver-Y and humming-bird hawk moths all travel to us in the spring from as far away as north Africa and southern Europe.

Read more about the camberwell beauty on this excellent website - www.ukbutterflies.co.uk, in association with Butterfly Conservation.

mourning cloak butterfly, New York, photo taken by Jennifer Alexander, 17th June 2012

My Favourite Place in Scotland

I've just posted my entry to BBC Radio Scotland's Out Of Doors Programme and Scottish Book Trust competition to write about 'my favourite place in Scotland' in 1,000 words or under.

Here's my entry:

............................................

My Favourite Place in Scotland 

What a difficult task the Out of Doors Programme and Scottish Book Trust have set.

To write about 'my favourite place in Scotland' sounded simple enough, until I actually started to think... Just what is my favourite place?

I know – Orkney! I've been only twice but long to go again: birds, sealife, incredible coastal cliffscapes. Gentle inland farms, numerous small isles. Ancient history, archaeological digs. On the Brough of Birsay tidal island it all comes together as fulmars and rock doves glide and dive around sheer flagstone cliffs. A wheatear flitted amongst the stones of the 12th-century monastry (built atop a 9th-century Viking settlement). There's a Pictish stone there that's older still.

The Ring of Brodgar stone circle - Jennifer and I cycled here aided by a powerful tailwind. Returning to our Bay of Skaill cottage the tailwind became a headwind too strong to cycle in. Mrs Poke's husband collected us in his farm truck. In nearby 3,000 year-old Maes Howe chambered tomb the Historic Scotland ranger mistook us for a married couple, discovered we weren't and offered to perfom the ceremony there and then. The awkward situation was averted when I pointed out that we had no cake.

Rackwick Bay on the Isle of Hoy - Stopping part way at the huge Dwarfie Stane - what apart from faerie magic could possibly have so crisply carved its two-celled interior? The walk from Rackwick to the Old Man sea stack - mountain hares in mahogany-grey-white summer coats watched us intelligently. Great skuas -bonxies- circled overhead. At the headland fulmars wheeled below and beside us.

In Kirkwall we marvelled at the red sandstone of St Magnus Cathedral and had hot chocolate and a kitkat each in a quiet church cafe.

In Stromness we ate wholemeal pasta in the living room of our hostel and played Scrabble as the evening sky darkened outside. Quirky buildings, giftshops and galleries of the cobbled main street. Elegant stringed instruments in a window near the museum. Artist Tim Wootton in his wildlife art gallery - told me of a Sandhill Crane sighted on a nearby island. Cycling out of the town to look at fossilised wave-ripples on a flagstone shore. From a derelict gun emplacement I sketched a distant lighthouse and watched curlews that flew low across the waves.

That's Orkney.

I also rather like the area around Montrose, where my mum has a static caravan. Miles of pristine white beaches, river estuaries, red-earth landscapes. Just walking up the dunes from the caravan you spot eiders and cormorants, guillemots and gulls. In spring and summer terns flap balletically and scree scree their creaking calls as they dive for little silver fish. Come here if you're into birds - the Scottish Wildlife Trust's Montrose Basin visitor centre overlooks the tidal lagoon. One evening they led a dusk walk and a brown hare came leaping and bounding towards our group, closer and closer through stubble field, completely unfazed. We listened to pipistrelle bats on electronic detectors then walked in the dark to the old Bridge of Dun where a tawny owl glided silently away towards a group of barns.

In woodland above the Basin a ruined mill offered its treasures in the stream that bubbled below what must have been a midden. Coloured glass and copper buckles, pitted and greening. Clay marble stoppers to keep the fizz in lemonade and a glass jar with three bears prowling around its sides - one little, one middle, one large. A white doll figurine less than an inch high - to carry in a purse, or hide in a special steam pudding?

Yes, Montrose is the place.

Or... what about the north-east coast, between Aberdeen and Peterhead... The cliffs are what you go here for. Arches and caves and a giant stone-walled cauldron known as 'the pot'. A mile or two north of Cruden Bay are the ominous ruins of Slains Castle. You can see why Bram Stoker was inspired to write Dracula here. The drop from the tallest tower is the height of the castle then the same again, down near-vertical rockface to crashing waves below. On a spring day I painted here and counted 15 bird species in an hour. Short-eared owls flew to and fro, rising from coarse grasses to quarter over field and cliff. One came directly towards me and hovered above for a few wingbeats before uttering a single shrill shriek and flying back the way it had come. I don't know whether or not I passed its test …

Below the cliffs between Cruden Bay and Peterhead boulder-floored caves resonate with the otherworldly wails of colonies of seals. If any map should still show the words 'here be dragons' it's the Ordnance Survey Explorer 427 of Peterhead & Fraserburgh.

And seabirds nest all around - razorbills and kittiwakes, guillemots and shags, lesser and greater black-backed gulls. Fulmar and of course the iconic -and comic- rainbow-beaked puffin. My best ever views of a peregrine falcon - a lone bird sitting surveying the grasslands. I sketched it over and over before it flew to the cliffs to give me perfect close-up views of its cadmium yellow talons and eye ring, its puffed white chest speckled with dark and that wonderful but terrifying hooked bill.

Shortly after the peregrine I heard far below a splashing blow... A whale! I looked just in time to see a long blue-black shape slide below the water, heading north. Rushing that way I saw its dark mass break the surface several more times, ploughing a straight line through calm water. Finally the curved blades of the tail flipped right up vertically before the whole thing disappeared completely. It must had dived.

But wait, I nearly forgot - Linlithgow, my hometown! Our winter starling roost in the station monkey puzzles, and the springtime displays of great crested grebes on the Loch...

Oh dear.

Is it cheating to say that Scotland is my favourite place?

Loch Awe to Cruachan Dam, castle & kirk

Another great day out on the West Highland Lines can be had from Loch Awe, 40 minutes by train from Oban or two and a half hours from Glasgow. Travelling south from Oban you go through the Pass of Brander where the rails run beside and above deep black water, hemmed in on both sides by steep scree slopes. It reminds me of the Symplegades clashing cliffs that Jason and his Argonauts adventured through & defeated in their quest fro the golden fleece. Loch Awe station comes soon after the waters of the pass start to widen into the sweep of the loch itself.

I spent half an hour absorbing the scene and sketching Kilchurn Castle from a little disused landing stage down by the water. Beside me was a railway carriage used as self-catering accommodation and in a ragged pine above was a raven. Across the surface of the water honking geese flew in ones and twos, and one solitary cormorant. In tree nearby were chaffinches, goldcrests and house sparrows, and two blue tits that flew in a frenzy then came together to consummate their courtship dance.

As this was my first visit to Loch Awe I headed to the village store to see if I could pick up any tips. I was given a very friendly welcome by the woman behind the counter who suggested a well-managed track that runs into the hills to Cruachan Dam. Total distance - 6km from station to dam. This sounded about right considering that I wanted enough time to stop and get some drawing done. I left the shop and immediately bumped into Jim who was busy working outside his cottage. Jim has taken on the upkeep of the Loch Awe station platforms under ScotRail's Adopt-a-Station scheme. We hadn't met before but were aware of each other through our contacts with ScotRail. We had a brief chat then I set off on my walk.
 

looking across Loch Awe to Kilchurn Castle, pencil & watercolour in sketchbook, 14.5x41cm

looking across Loch Awe, pencil & watercolour in sketchbook, 14.5x41cm

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The walk 

Head south-west along the A85 road for a little over a kilometre until you come to St Conan's Kirk on your left. If you've got time -and I suggest you make sure that you do- go in for a look around. Entry is free but there's a donation box and an interesting little leaflet to buy that tells about the building. At first glance you think the church is old but in fact it was completed in 1930, less than a century ago. It's an eccentric amalgamation of Gothic architecture ... mediaeval monastic style ... the little sheltered courtyard of an abbey ... it has gargoyles galore, to rival Notre Dame, and a set of eight dark-wood heraldic seats, details picked out in gold. Look for an owl too, and some intricately carved head studies. The eastern end of the church has a smooth curved wall with full height non-stained-glass windows that offer a beautiful sweeping view across railway and loch. It was difficult to drag myself away from such a fantastical place. 

a rather serious-looking person, St Conan's Kirk

looking down & across Loch Awe

a lichened boulder far above the Pass of Brander

approaching Cruachan dam

Directly after the church, on the right-hand side of the A85 a smaller road starts to lead uphill. This is the way to the Cruachan Dam and once you're on it you can't get lost. It isn't open to public vehicles so it's nice and quiet. As it bends upwards along the edge of the hills it offers some quite stunning views across the valley and the Pass of Brander below.

I was surprised that once I was up on the hillside I saw very little wildlife, only a few crows and hooded crows. At least it meant I got quickly to my destination. Walking fast it wasn't much more than an hour before I found myself confronted by the sight of a huge hydroelectric dam nestling in a great corrie, hugged on three sides by typical highland hills. 

I walked to the far end of the dam and did a quick sketch in pencil of the view across the dark lochan waters before retracing my steps to Loch Awe village. If you had all day you could keep walking beyond the dam and high up into the hills. The summit of Ben Cruachan can be reached from here.

the reservoir lochan at Cruachan Dam, pencil & watercolour in sketchbook, 14.5x41cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got back to the village in time for half an hour chatting with Jim. We shared a beer and talked about the wildlife and history of the area. 

Finally, back at the station waiting for the evening train home I stood on the passenger footbridge and sketched the curved rails and old railway cottages.

Loch Awe railway cottages, pencil & watercolour in sketchbook, 14.5x20.5cm

N.B. In summertime Falls of Cruachan station is open, giving access to the Cruachan visitor centre. Directly downslope of the dam, the station is a request stop between Loch Awe and Taynuilt. I hope to go back to visit the centre with its tunnels under the mountain, and to try the steeper walk directly up the hillside to the dam.

New York galleries & birds then an Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2... more birds... dolphins... & whales...

looking down on the prow from open-air deck eleven, underneath the Captain's bridge. watercolour in sketchbook

Jennifer and I recently spent seven days and nights crossing the Atlantic by ocean liner. It was an amazing trip.

This is far from my normal type of holiday - Cunard's Queen Mary 2 is an absolute luxury ship, modern but harking back to the 1920's & 30's when Art Deco ruled. Basically she's a floating high-starred hotel. A last-minute offer gave us a pretty good price compared to what you'd pay for return flights to New York plus seven nights accommodation with full board. It was so much more satisfying than flying. 

standing on the prow. watercolour in sketchbook

New York

New York overwhelms with its galleries and museums - the Guggenheim... MoMA... the Met... the American Museum of Natural History. I could have happily spent my five days within the walls of those last two. If there wasn't so much else to see...

Central Park is huge and remarkably good for birdwatching. Unsurprisingly there were numerous house sparrows, starlings and pigeons, all just like we have here. But also:
American robins - named by homesick early settlers from Europe but in fact more closely related to our blackbird than our own red-breasted robins.
Northern cardinals - little hopping pirate birds in bold red coats with a slightly spiked hairdo and black eye patches and beard.
A hawk ('red-shouldered' perhaps?) - as large as a buzzard it sat motionless in a tree whilst various songbirds frantically attempted to drive it away. Unknown Orioles in stunning gold and black plumage were swooping continually at the hawk, actually striking it with their beaks - yet it still didn't move.

In nearby Morningside Park (a reminder of Edinburgh!) we saw a beautiful black-crowned night heron that skulked at the reed edge.
Nearby on a rock - the closest I've ever been to a cormorant. What an amazing jewel-blue eye. Red-eared terrapins swim together in all the ponds and pools, emerging from the water to clamber lazily across one another as they seek the optimum sunspot.

Once the torrential rain of our first two days had subsided we saw a good assortment of butterflies. Some were species we get here - small whites, green veined white, perhaps a comma and perhaps a red admiral. The tortoiseshells are a different type to ours. Most striking of all was a large and dark butterfly we didn't know, the wonderfully named 'mourning cloak'. Metallic maroon with a pastel yellow border to the wings and a row of aqua-blue dots running above, the same colour as the cormorant's eye.

Several times we saw racoons which in Central Park scavenge around the waste bins as squirrels do here, or like foxes in our bigger cities. They were almost totally unfussed by human presence, even by a group of tourists that peered right into a bin at one.

One evening we sat on a bench in the dusk eating cupcakes (don't tell) and watched fireflies glowing gently over the grasses. The colour and effect is exactly that of yellow LEDs turning silently on and off. They're incredible, unreal. To man before electronics they must have been more amazing still.


Then onto the boat:

from the stern of the ship, above the open-air swimming pools. watercolour in sketchbook

The Ocean Crossing

Queen Mary 2 is huge, taking up to 2,620 passengers and 1,253 crew. Our cabin (stateroom is the term used) had a balcony that looked directly onto friendly orange lifeboat 'Hamilton 8'. Lots of entertainments are provided - cinema, library, planetarium, lectures and two corridors of board game tables. A gym and swimming pools. Dancing performances and lessons. Numerous musicians. The best of all was a group of six actors from RADA who brilliantly performed Canterbury Tales and the Merchant of Venice. 

in the QM2 library - one of the few times I felt sick!.. high up and at the very prow of the ship. coloured pen

Even just chatting with fellow passengers is a nice and regular happening:
There was Kim and his wife Jennifer (she a writer of historical fiction) who were travelling to their current home in Germany after a year back in the States;
Dennis and Janet, biologists on their way to visit Charles Darwin's Down House in Kent. Excited to meet people who'd been there and could enthuse about it (we visited last year and thoroughly enjoyed);
A Scottish couple and two daughters, moving back to Edinburgh after living in the States. She and Jennifer (of Leo & Jennifer, not of Kim & Jennifer!) had attended the same school.

container ship passing, mid-Atlantic. watercolour in sketchbook

I did sketches in pen and some quick watercolour studies but most often I just wanted to walk on deck and look out at endless miles of waves. The more time spent out there the more likely it was I'd see something. There was quite a lot of wildlife but for two or three days in a row I didn't see any other sign of man, no passing ships. It feels quite amazing to be in the middle of the ocean, alone and days from land. (It feels even more amazing when you're looking at that whilst sitting in one of the on-deck swimming pools!)

from the stern of the ship (2), above the open-air swimming pools. watercolour in sketchbook

Despite being so far from land there were birds to see. Fulmars and great shearwaters were the two most common. At times among the shearwaters there were some much smaller dark birds (all dark?) which were some sort of petrel but I couldn't ever identify. There were a few gulls but none seen well enough to identify either. A few all-dark skuas except for a white patch towards the end of each wing. Two followed one-another in high and low swoops, seeming friendly rather than hostile. In the UK I'd say they were great skuas, 'bonxies', but looking at the north-east America books it seems there are other possibilities.

Both fulmars and shearwaters came really close to the boat. Fulmars following us but shearwaters flapping up and away as our bow wave started to ripple their ocean resting places. The shearwaters look the larger of the two, but only just. They fly low, taking advantage of wind to increase speed and glide low and fast in zigzagging flight, wingtips skimming the waves.

shearwater sketches & notes, sketched from my photos whilst sitting in the board-game corridor. pen & pencil

Often we saw dolphins or/and porpoises but we couldn't ever decide what species. In books borrowed from the cosy library on deck 8 we learned there are many to choose from. Sometimes we'd see a whole large pod of them. One particular evening as the sun set below the horizon around 8:30pm (on the west to east crossing the clock moves forward an hour every day) the whole sea turned to molten metal. Smoothly rippling yellows and silvers and blues. Dolphins kept appearing all around. Almost always they were in groups of several but often in groups of many more. It was difficult to count but one gathering had at least 40 separate animals. Scanning across the sea with my binoculars I could see them dotted all around, as far away as 10x42 magnification would allow. Sometimes they were just white turbulence on top of the water, sometimes fins were rising above, sometimes sleek or squatter bodies would leap fully out of the waves. 

unidentified dolphins or porpoises, from the QM2 one beautiful evening

And most exciting of all, the same evening, amongst all these dolphins - sperm whales!! At least two. A curved right-angled nose would appear, then a long stretch of sleek wet dark, then a shallow fin, then another long length of dark body. One of them, after all that flesh and fat and blubber had slid across the water, showed its tail, raised it perfectly upright, gave it a flick and dived down below the waves.

me painting on QM2, below the Captain's bridge, knowingly photographed. photo by Dennis Kolesar

me painting at the prow, unknowingly photographed! photo by Jennifer Alexander

A brilliant trip.

Next time I hope we can take the boat both ways.

 

looking down on the prow from open-air deck eleven, underneath the Captain's bridge. watercolour in sketchbook