Suicidal ducks

As reported before, the ducks do tend to go out for a wander. They do come back though.

So I was coming up the hill and met an obstruction in the road  . Stopping , sounding the horn, advancing menacingly towards them in the car  all had no effect .  After a  minute or so  they clearly got fed up with wandering round the middle  of the road and went off to explore the neighbours' field.

And i was the permitted to go on my way.

But they are probably safe here. Livestock in the road is not that infrequent. True , someone lost one of their ducks when they went exploring the main Stromness to Kirkwall road  but the chickens that regularly  hang round  next to the main road don't seem tot be diminishing in numbers.

Broody goose

The geese (Gertrude and Gloria) usually go around as a pair, hissing enthousiastically at anything that passes close by . this includes hens and ducks as well as people. But for the past few days they hasn't been a pair - there's only been one of them.  The other one has gone broody  - it happened  last year as well, but last year she decided to sit on a broken plate for a few weeks.  This year There was an egg and a nest. Sadly  the local hoodies got the egg , but the Goose is still sitting on the empty nest.
She will hopefully get the idea quite soon and rejoin her buddy.

sitting

on an empty nest

Farewell, Fraser

We have only been looking after some of the sheep that we have currently.
And today is the day for some of them to go back to just outside Inverness.
So Fraser , having done the business ( we hope) is on his  way back together with some  Boreray ewes.
We separated them last night and penned them in a   hurdled-off bit of the field 

 And then Dougie and his trailer arrive to take them away .

And so they went

gale vs plastic

Gales vs plastic is an unequal contest.



We are getting a flat roof repaired. The old one was removed but unfortunately the new one couldn't go down as expected. Unfortunately this coincided with the worst gales of the winter. We realised the plastic had lost when water came through the ceilings and then it was buckets to the fore . And it was like that for a couple of days

Orkney harbours have real-time  weather reports.  Heres the weather report for the night in question. Kirkwall peaked at >50 knots (50 kts =58 mph) .  Westerly wind - so it was a worse in the exposed parts. And it didn't get to 1300 kts - a technical glitch with the machinery I think

 It was also a bit 'noisy' through the night.
The roof was well weighted down with timber and breezeblocks (as above) . The exposed bit of the roof was a bit messy - the wind having moved the breezeblocks and timber around 

 But we've now got a spell of good weather and little rain. So it wil all dry out and then we'll get the ceilings sorted

Something has been done

this is what it looks like now . And the picture from a few days ago is here


A trench that drains the water into the existing course and the pond and then onwards has dried up a lot of grass.

  So that is a temporary solution. We will need to do something in the longer term . On te other side of the lawn is a ditch - the opinion is that it was dug  to try and control the flow of water down the hill and divert it into the burn.





And i think it has silted up .  That, with all the rain we have had this winter means the grass isnt draining where it was and instead is finding its own way out.  So i think a summer job will be to dig it out a bit .

Bit like the Somerset Levels really .