BY HILL AND SHORE
Angus Martin
The SCALLOP (Pecten maximus - locally clam) used to be a common shellfish, but the fishery, which began in the 1930s, has progressively reduced the species to insignificance in Clyde waters. The main method of catching clams is by dredges, which are simply iron-framed rakes, with a bag attached, towed astern of the boat. Some boats tow up to seven dredges per side nowadays. Clam-dredging is a pretty exact method, and not every skipper acquires the knack of catching worthwhile quantities. I remember one skipper I fished with telling me that, when he was introduced to the job, he assumed that it was simply a case of throwing the dredges over the side and towing them along in company with the other clam-boats. But he was quickly disillusioned: with the same lengths of wire out, towing at the same speed, and on the same tracks, he simply couldn’t begin to match the catches of the more experienced fishermen. He seemed to be doing everything right, but wasn’t.
It used to be fairly easy to pick up clam shells on the shores, but nowadays you can walk miles of coast and not find one. Hauls with the ring-net occasionally produced a few clams among the herring, particularly when the sole - or bottom - of the net was taking the seabed in shallow water. The method of cooking these was to place the unopened shell on to a gas ring and heat it slowly until the unfortunate creature died, and the shells sprang apart. Having added a dod of butter and some pepper, a delicious bite awaited you.
Some of the Carradale skippers have specialised in clam-fishing and become very adept at it. A few, indeed, are able to spend virtually their entire year fishing nothing but clams.
Early in March I noticed, several days in succession, a few boats towing out off Machrihanish Bay. It transpired that these were Carradale clammers, operating in depths of between 30 and 35 fathoms.
I learned later from one of the crew-members of the Monarch that a scientist from the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen was out, counting, measuring and estimating the ages of the clams. One of the clams caught was reckoned, by counting the annual growth rings, to be at least 17 years old, a venerable age indeed. Evidently, age calculation is fairly reliable up to 10 years, but after that it becomes more difficult, owing to the compression of the rings as growth slows down. This specimen, however, was unusual in the clear definition of its rings. Scallops, of course, in common with most other shellfish, lay down annual rings as a result of seasonal variations in growth, analagous to the rings of a tree.
I wrote to the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen for
further information, and was replied to by Mr Trevor Howell, who stated:
“Specimens of 17 years, or more, are by no means uncommon, particularly
in areas where exploitation is low. . . I am sure scallops exceeding 20 years
exist. He added: “Our work on scallops, at present, is exclusively geared
to the assessment of stocks around Scotland, and biological work in support
of this.”
The clam-shell in Gaelic is slige-chreachainn, and the lower, convex, shell used to do service as a receptacle for whisky-drinking. Indeed, there is a piobhearachd tune celled Bodaich Dubha nan Sligean - ‘the Black Old Men of the Shells’ - which alludes to the custom. Nowadays a clam-shell would be more likely to be seen in use as an ashtray. But enough of vice! On a higher note, the scallop-shell - specifically the Mediterranean species, Pecten Jacobaeus - was the badge of St. James and was worn by pilgrims to his shrine at Santiago di Compostella in north-west Spain. Hence its French name, ‘coquille de St. Jacques’.
The other scallop species common locally is the queen or queenie (Chlamys opercularis), known as the creachan which is of course Gaelic, as in slige-chreachainn. It too was formerly abundant offshore, and its daintier shells, brightly coloured, likewise could be picked up on certain beaches. Post-war trawling operations, however, have seriously reduced the queenie stocks too.
Another species of scallop found locally is the hunchback scallop (Chlamys distorta), the shell of which is still smaller than the queenie’s, and, moreover, most irregularly shaped, except when it is young. Unlike the other species of scallop, which can swim freely and swiftly by closing their valves suddenly and sending out a propulsive jet of water, the hunchback attaches itself, like the mussel, by byssus threads to stones or rocks on the seabed. I have found its shells, and few of them at that, only in the Galdrans.
Towards the end of February, while delivering mail in Machrihanish, I noticed a GUILLEMOT on the golf course, close to the Professional’s Shop. When I approached, he made no attempt to fly off, though his wings were undamaged, as I noticed when he flapped them. Nor did there appear to be any oil about the bird’s plumage. I decided that he must be suffering from exhaustion and starvation, the previous days having seen westerly gales; so I notified John Orr and Julia Pinch, both countryside rangers wintering in the village.
They caught the bird without difficulty - he was very docile when handled and put up no resistance - and installed him in a blanket-lined box in the livingroom of Lossit Gate Cottage. At first the bird - an adult in winter plumage - refused to eat, but Julia force-fed him on strips of skate, using a kebab skewer. Thereafter he ate voluntarily. Initially his excrement was mustard-yellow, which is an indication of an empty stomach.
On the first day he was very weak and kept falling over, but by his third - and last - day in captivity, he was very lively, and running around the room.
John and Julia took him to Campbeltown harbour to release him. They reckoned the sea to be too rough to free him at Machrihanish, but were satisfied that, being an adult, he would be able to reorientate himself. “As soon as he saw the water he was going mad - he dived immediately,” Julia remarked.
There is an odd sequel to this. John and Julia returned the following day to the harbour and saw five guillemots off the New Quay. When they called out their nick-name for the bird, ‘Gillie’, one bird in a group of three “very pointedly came over to the harbour wall for a minute or two, then went back to Join its group. A coincidence, or did he recognise our voices?” Julia wondered.
I enjoyed a walk over BEN GULLION to the Black Loch with John and Julia on 4 April. We stopped for lunch at the top of the eastern shoulder, and it was there that John discovered he had lost his ‘tickler’ tobacco. His agitation was pitiable to see and as a smoker myself, I could sympathise with him, and did.
I reminded him of a hike I had some ten years ago, with John MacDonald, over Ben Gullion and down Balnabraid Glen to the Leerside. We stopped on the moors beyond Ben Gullion for our first ‘piece’, and I cut and rubbed tobacco and filled my pipe. Then I discovered I had no matches. I smoked a good deal more in those days. and my misery increased as the hike progressed. I’d hoped to meet some smoker at the Second Waters, but, appallingly, there was no one there, and no cars appeared.
I was miserably resigned to doing without, when - a veritable marvel! - we came upon a still-smouldering picnickers’ fire on the foreshore of the bay. I quickly had a blaze of driftwood going, boiled a kettle of tea, and set back for one of the most enjoyable smokes of my life.
But, to John... By good chance, he was able to spot the tobacco-pouch through binoculars. It was some 250 feet below him, by the burnside. Undeterred, however, he took off down the steep slope, retrieved it, and climbed back to rejoin us and enjoy the smoke that almost never was. The rigours of addiction, indeed!
Our next smoke was in a delightfully sheltered spot among trees overlooking the Black Loch, and we were hardly seated there when we were rewarded with the sighting of a female HEN HARRIER and a PEREGRINE FALCON flying rapidly and close together across our vision.
Tony and Trish Lambert have a circular, stone-built pond in their garden at The Kennels, Limecraigs, and were interested to observe, late in May, a pair of nested BLACKBIRDS ‘fishing’ it from the edge. At first they supposed that the birds were catching small aquatic snails, but having watched closely, they discovered that, in actuality, the birds were poaching their tadpole stock, which seemed to them - and seems to me - an unusual prey for blackbirds.
The tadpoles got the same treatment that sticklebacks get from kingfishers - a knock on the head and then down the hatch.
Stranger still, the sparrows about the place began to try to emulate the blackbirds, but without success. The tadpole survivors were given some protection by the laying of plastic covers around the water’s edge.
On the last day of January - which was wonderfully clear and sunny - I was with the Coastguard on an exercise to locate the LIBERATOR bomber which crashed at the head of Balnabraid Glen in 1941. We divided into three teams and converged, from different departure points, on the area of the crash. It was left to George McSporran to find the spot - he alone had been there before, taken in his youth - and we all entered the forest clearing to view the marker, a metal plaque bearing the inscription: ‘The Liberator, 7 Sep 1941’. The grid reference, for the record, is 733157.
There are many such crash sites in Kintyre, particularly around the Mull, but it is very difficult to come by particulars of those which belong to the period of the Second World War, owing to the embargo on reportage in the press, and of most of them there are no visible remains.
The Liberator, together with the Flying Fortress, was the main American heavy-bomber of the Second World War, and 18,031 were built by the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation of San Diego. These craft were 67.1 ft long with a wing-span of 110 ft. and carried a crew of 12. They were armed with ten 50-inch machine guns and had a maximum bomb load of 12,800 lbs. Their maximum speed was 270 mph. and their range 990 miles.
On 27 March I was involved, again with the Coastguard, in the rescue of two EWES from the notorious Goings cliff, west of the Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse. The weather couldn’t have been worse - continuous rain, blown through an unremitting mist cover by a strong wind. We were expertly guided to the clifftop by a lighthouse-keeper, Mr David Murchie, and quickly had the gear set up. Robert Houston want over, and had these words of advice to dispense later: The best way to approach sheep on a cliff is to go below them and work back up. They are placid if held by the horn while the harness is attached. Today the weather may have subdued them a little. His performance, in such appalling conditions, was admirable.
I had no such success several years ago in Glenramskill when I tried to catch a ewe stuck on a ledge in the Mare’s Tail ravine. She jumped, and rolled to the bottom, but I was surprised and delighted to learn, a few weeks later, from Mr Archie Clark, manager of Kildalloig Estate, that notwithstanding her tumble, she gave birth to two fine lambs.
The Galdrans WILD GOATS displayed a remarkable degree of boldness at the end of last winter. From late February to late March, six billies were to be seen grazing daily in the vicinity of the bus terminus. Miss Betty Kerr was able to photograph them at close range at the back of her house on the outskirts of the village. She reckoned they must have been sleeping between there and the old lifeboat slip, because they appeared very early each morning to resume their grazing. No one to whom I spoke in the village could remember goats having been seen so close to habitations.
The decision, early in June, by the Scottish Wildlife Trust to slaughter 13 goats from its feral stock on Carradale Point was a shameful one. There were complaints locally of billies foraging beyond the Point. Undoubtedly, the stock had grown too numerous, but several parties were working hard to find homes for the surplus animals, and, given time, their efforts would have produced a humane solution to a problem which had no other origin than mismanagement.
I remain at a loss to understand how a so-called conservation body could try to justify the transportation of feral animals from a wildlife reserve to the abbatoir at Paisley. Susan Maxwell and I set out our objections in letters to The Campbeltown Courier which were published in the issue of 18 June, and little need be added here.
Unfortunately for goats, they have no protection in law, being classed as domestic animals. This is an anomaly which needs looking at, because hypothetically a stock of goats which has been roaming wild for, say, three centuries, can be exterminated overnight on the whim of a landowner.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust has set a harmful precedent in its role as a conservation body, and in so doing has alienated that section of the local population from which it ought to be drawing its support.
I had a hike to the INANS on 10 May, a local holiday. I was alone, as I sometimes desire to be. One’s thoughts are one’s own, which, in my case, is no bad thing for the health of the mind; and I was able to write three small poems, the products of my solitary meditations.
The day was mostly bright, but with a persistent north-easterly wind from which, even on that west-facing coast, there was little shelter. The botany of the area was what preoccupied me with notebook and camera, and I was especially thrilled by the profusion and diversity of the spring flowers on the embankment of the old road that runs along the north side of the Inans Glen.
My interest in botany has deepened in recent years, owing to the influence of my wife, who, unlike me, is prepared to enter into a painstaking learning process. She is studying plants, and I learn from her, which suits me fine. It may be that I am simply noticing plants to a greater extent than before, but it seems just as likely that the abundance on Ballygroggan ground can be attributed to the very low density of sheep there.
A horrible contrast to that innocent beauty awaited me, however, in the bay itself. A party of campers had preceded me, that week-end, and left their rubbish behind. Tin cans galore and empty gas-cylinders had been flung on to their fires and into the burn. I believe I know who they were, and would love to name them, but decency forbids me.
The trash that is cast ashore by wind and tide is bad enough, but I cannot understand the mentality of campers and hikers who wilfully litter the countryside, which is, after all, presumably what makes them campers and hikers in the first place.
The time has come, I think, for a clean-up of the remoter beaches of South Kintyre, not just for the sake of appearances - reason enough - but also to give the vandals the message that there are individuals who resent their intrusions. Litter is not only unnecessary - it should be carried home - but can cause injury to animals, and cause landowners to look darkly on all strangers moving across the face of the land.
I had another hike to the Inans, on 7 June, the day after the American wedding at Kilchousland. The bridegroom and bride, Brian and Jennifer - themselves keen and experienced backpackers in their native country - were with me, and Alan and Becky came too. We were rewarded with several fine experiences.
We left the car at High Lossit and headed out across the moors. While on the old peat road that winds with the windings of Craigaig Water, we disturbed a male HEN HARRIER at close quarters; and we were hardly seated for lunch, at the side of the track, when a GOLDEN EAGLE appeared to the south-west, circling and circling towards us until right over our heads. We enjoyed a splendid view through binoculars, and as the the bird passed northward beyond us, first one and then a second BUZZARD appeared and began harrying it. We watched these antics until the dispute passed out of our sight.
After a ‘drum up’ in the bay - sitting in sunshine round a stick fire - we explored the shore and found a veritable multitude of TOAD tadpoles in several freshwater pools south of the bay. Some of these pools had virtually no green growth in them, and I can only suppose that the creatures were feeding on algae from the rocks, while others, more developed, were managing to find animal matter carried into the pools by the streams. Indeed, tadpoles could be observed crowding around silt deposits within the pools, obviously engaged in feeding. Tadpoles will settle on, and consume, any dead animal which they find, including fatalities among their own kind.
It has been calculated that, in a warm summer, the whole process of development from egg to toadlet - the stage at which the animal is able to emerge from water on to land - can take as short a time as 65 days, while in a cold summer it might extend to 108 days.
In one pool we found four NEWTS, but whether these were smooth or palmate I am as yet unable to say. The newt tadpole differs from that of frog and toad by having, from the earliest stage, three gills on each side of its body, just behind the head. Neither toad nor newt is recorded, for that area between Machrihanish and the Mull, in The Atlas of Kintyre Vertebrates, which was edited by Dr J.A. Gibson and the late Mr Duncan Colville, and published by our Society in 1975. I hope soon to confirm that species of newt, so that it can take its place in the record. The revision and republication of the Atlas is becoming overdue.
En route by bicycle to our caravan at Polliwilline, on 1 July, my daughter Sarah and I stopped for lunch at the Second Waters. After we’d eaten, I sat smoking on the grass near the bridge while she prowled on the shore. She suddenly held up something and asked me what it was. I merely glanced at it and answered thoughtlessly: "A bit of shell.” Fortunately she knew better and brought the object to me. It was a FLINT ARROWHEAD with a broken tip, a marvellous find which enlivened our conversation until, near the top of Glenehervie Brae, we began finding BLAEBERRIES by the roadside. These were as early as I’ve ever found ripe blaeberries.
Sarah, Amelia and I - accompanied by a friend from Tayinloan, Gilbert Milne - went up Ben Gullion on the 7th to look for more, our first collecting excursion in what proved to be the finest blaeberry season for several years. The signs were good on the forest trail - splatters of blue-stained bird-droppings - and sure enough we found a veritable abundance all around. The kitchen shelves are well stocked with jam this year.
The berries were thick too on Ballygroggan ground when, on the 10th, I accompanied my nephew Donald Docherty and his wife Gillian to the Inans. We didn’t pick any to take home, but had plenty to satisfy ourselves, and found, of course, that the activity seemed to shorten that sometimes rather dreary trek across the moorland. The most noteworthy sighting of the day - and a wintry day it was, with a strong cold westerly wind carrying big rain showers - was a BLACKCOCK, which rose not far ahead of us on the northern edge of the moorland. Donald also watched a family of WHITETHROATS near the shielings.
While we sat at lunch on the moor, Gillian remarked on the peace of the place - no sound but the restful gurgle of Craigaig Water - and I could not but raise the prospect of the wind farm which threatens there. The application for outline planning permission for a WIND FARM - 18 turbines with towers 128 ft high, and having operative heights of about 190 ft - has been made, and an environmental assessment by the applicant’s agent is awaited. In the meantime, permission has been granted by Argyll & Bute District Council for the temporary erection of a 98 ft-high wind-logging mast at 619178, as part of a feasability study of the development.
My own attitude to wind-generated electricity is that it makes environmental sense, and I am in favour of such developments in principle. I am not, however, in favour of wind farms springing up willy-nilly on the landscape. Ballygroggan, I believe, is too valuable an amenity to spoil in the interests of mere speculation. I shall no doubt return to this subject in the future, but, in the meantime, I ask all concerned parties to watch the planning section of the Public Notices in the Campbeltown Courier for further developments.
One of the most colourful ornithological sightings locally in recent years has to be that of two FLAMINGOES which passed northwards along Machrihanish Bay close inshore. The birds were first spotted at 8.55 p.m. on 28 July, by Professor Robert Sommerville, his wife Dr Jennifer, and daughter Fiona, who watched them through binoculars. The birds were more likely to have been escapees than vagrants, but who knows?
The SEABIRD OBSERVATORY at Uisaed, Machrihanish, was opened on 1 August. The 12ft by 6ft shelter - which will be administered by the committee of the Kintyre Bird Club - is embedded in a foot of cement and well-guyed to withstand Atlantic storms. I haven’t yet (August) visited the building, but hope to do so soon, and will duly report on the facilities there.
Earlier in the year I was puzzled to see, on the TREES along Kinloch Green, yellow plastic attachments bearing numbers. On enquiry, I discovered that these serial numbers form the initial stage of a management plan for Argyll & Bute District Council-owned land. All major trees in the Council’s care have been surveyed and numbered, and a file will be kept on each tree. Short-term management will involve removing damaged, diseased and dangerous trees, and, where practicable, these will be replaced by young trees. Long-term plans include creating more tree belts and other schemes (50-plus trees per year are scheduled). One interesting idea is to create a miniature arboretum at Saddell Graveyard, where conditions are ideal for growing some of the choicer conifers, rhododendrons, azaleas and hardwoods.
The PEATS on Killeonan hill gave a lot of trouble this year. The cutting was mostly over by the end of May, but the ground failed to dry and I was in attendance weekly, moving wet-ended peats on to barer ground. Most of them, however, were bagged by the end of July (the time of writing), and I have no doubt that the remainder will be duly secured. As ever, the successive stages of the work gave myself and family and friends many pleasant days on the hill, and, though the labour is certainly not cost-effective, we can, round many a cheery winter fire, reflect on times past.
Page 2: A Maker of Illicit Stills
Page 3: Campbeltown's Protestant Churches - A Brief History
Page 4: Some Descendants of Lachlan McNeill Buidhe
Page 5: Kintyre's "Subtropical" Image // Psalm Practice Verses
Page 6: The Blues of North Kintyre
Page 7: The Evolution of Gaelic Surnames in Kintyre
Page 9: One Interesting e-mail // Machrihanish to Southend: The Townships // Some Bits and Bobs
Page 10: The McShannons of Kintyre - Harpers to Tacksmen