BY HILL AND SHORE
Angus Martin
Part Two
The following report is from Mrs Frances Hood at Peninver:
'Early one morning in March, I saw four SWANS behaving in a strange manner. Normally, if one pair were in Peninver Bay and another pair arrived, the first pair would immediately chase the intruders away. This time it was quite different. One swan was lying flat on the sand with its neck stretched out in front of it. The second swan was on top of it holding the neck of the lower swan in its beak. The other two swans were standing on either side of the first two with their necks stretched up into the air. Suddenly, the two on the sand took off, accompanied by one of the others. The remaining swan went to the cygnet swimming nearby and a few seconds later they flew off after the rest.
'I suppose this was some kind of mating or courtship display, and I hope they have more success in rearing a brood than last year. The swans who have nested for several years in this area had all their eggs destroyed by mink. The other pair for the first time reared tree cygnets, but only one survived the winter.'
A message I sent out in a bottle from Polliwilline, on 10 July of last year, was picked up on the shore near Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, on 31 March of this year by Mr Archie Pryce, Kilmarnock.
We were at Polliwilline for four days in April, during the school mid term break, and the weather was kind to us. On our first evening there, while the tide was at its lowest ebb - and it was very low, a spring tide - the girls took a walk westwards along the sands and discovered a LUMPSUCKER dying in shallow water. Sarah came running back to the caravan, calling to me. I'd just arrived by bike down the Learside and was sitting down to a meal. I ran off, anyway, followed by Judy, and we were soon with the fish, which Amelia was trying to keep alive by splashing water over its gills. I lifted it into deeper water, but it didn't seem able to sustain movement and repeatedly sank to the bottom, ill or injured beyond recovery, I'd say.
I can only conjecture that the fish was attacked out on the Barrels reef, by blackbacked gulls or crows, for the fish could well have been exposed to view. The lumpsucker's pelvic fins are fused to form a circular sucker on its underside, with which it can anchor itself to stones and resist wave- action. The female lays tens of thousands of eggs in a sheltered rock crevice, after which the male will guard the eggs for weeks at a time. Dr D P Wilson, in his Life of the Shore and Shallow Sea (1935), records that at low tide these loyal fathers can sometimes be attacked by rooks and carrion crows 'which rip them open and feast on their internal organs'.
Certainly, the specimen that we saw - and it was our second on that shore - had no obvious wounds. The lumpsucker is a grotesque-looking fish- lumpy like a toad - but its colouration is very striking, not least the pinkish belly.
That night from the caravan we had our best sighting of the Hale-Bopp comet, in a clear star-choked sky, before it disappeared from view behind the ridge to the north of the Wee HoIm.
We all took a walk on the Saturday along the shore towards Pennyseorach, but didn't, in the end, go that length, settling for a picnic at Kilmashenachan. Below Coledrain, I was eyeing up a 30ft-long tree trunk that had been washed up, mentally measuring it into logs. It was the best of wood, scoured smooth by wave action and dried out and whitened by wind and sun. When I looked along its length and came to the roots, I observed something that interested me very much. The roots were still fastened around chunks of red sandstone from the tree's native soil, and it occurred to me that here was a means by which stones could be transported across great distances and deposited on foreign shores, perhaps to confound a geologist!
I had another brief hunt over the Erradill ploughed land and found two more flint flakes. In one of the newly-ploughed Benton fields, which I decided to walk an edge of, I also found a chunk of worked flint, but subsequent examinations, albeit of brief duration, yielded nothing more.
Back at the caravan two weeks later, we had a gale of wind on the Sunday night, which fairly shook the van, an abundance of rain, and the sight of snow on the Arran peaks as we returned home. May will certainly not be remembered for its spring weather this year!
Getting back to the SHELLISTER/SHEGGAN business which I discussed in my previous 'By Hill and Shore', that article was no sooner off to the printer when I stopped for a yarn at the Old Quayhead with my coasting acquaintance of old, Jock Smith. Ten years and more ago, Jock and his wife, Mary Ann, had a caravan at Feochaig and I used to stop there for a cup of tea and a 'crack' when hiking down the Learside shore of a week-end with my young companion of the time, John MacDonald, or my niece, Barbara Docherty. Anyway, Jock was reminiscing on the 'coconut wells' of his boyhood, those springs around Knockscalbert that were furnished with a half a coconut shell for the convenience of thirsty ramblers. Talking of one particular well, at which he used to picnic with his parents and siblings, he mentioned casually, 'Many a happy time we had playin amang the sheelisters'. Bang went my theory of a roughly north-south divide in the use of shellister and sheggan! Jock was giving me the northern word for the wild iris right in the heartland of sheggan. He insisted that it was the word his father always used, so there we have it: an exception to the rule.
Some unknown SCRAP-DEALERS, in early spring of this year, left a disgusting mess on the shore immediately below Corphin Brig, on the north side of the burn. They had been burning wire to extract the copper, but left behind great coils of the worthless steel, along with a couple of 40-gallon drums and a huge scorched surface which covered both gravel and grassy embankment. This kind of vandalism at a recognised picnic spot is absolutely reprehensible. The least they could have done, if they had to be burning on the coast at all, was to have removed the unwanted scrap in the same vehicle that they transported the stuff there in the first place.
Mr Malcolm Hope, who lives at Machrihanish, sighted the aurora borealis - 'a curtain of moving light', as he described it - from his north-facing house about midnight on Sunday 14 April, and woke the younger members of his family so that they too could witness the phenomenon, which is rarely seen from Kintyre. With the Hale-Bopp comet also visible, off to the west, it was a truly spectacular combination, and one that will never be repeated in their lifetimes.
Following a Coastguard cliff exercise at Auchenhoan on Sunday 20 April - a cold but sunny day - I walked the shore to our caravan at Polliwilline. Its a rough, boulder-strewn shore for the greater part of its length, but one of which I am fond. I was surprised to notice, on the foreshore below the Big Bastard, that BRACKEN shoots were already two feet high. From the foot of the Wee Bastard, where I halted for coffee and a smoke, I could see, and hear, a solitary pair of FULMARS nesting on the rock-face, their low cacklings overlaid by the irnpetuous screeching of a darting PEREGRINE. Pickings were fair - two plastic footballs, a tennis ball, and the usual wood. The plastic litter - most of it dumped from shipping - that strews the Kintyre shores from end to end, never ceases to appal me, though one tends to get used to it; and that's the problem - its hideous imperishability has become all too acceptable.
I was on the shore again, with dog, on Sunday 22 May, heading down to the caravan. I saw nothing of note in the way of wildlife, but did encounter two human beings among the rocks at the foot of the Big Bastard. I don't know who was the more surprised - Benjie and I or the walkers, Phil and Lucy Gardner. It turned out that they were walking the shore using my booklet Sixteen Walks in South Kintyre, and I signed it on the spot. They accompanied me to Polliwilline where they met Judy and the girls and had a cup of tea in the van. Both are keen hikers and, having come up from Kent - Phil is a driving instructor based at Barr Mains - are delighted with the solitude and open spaces of Kintyre.
A couple of rare birds passed through in mid-May: along Low Askomil, a LITTLE EGRET (reported by Mrs Ellen Oliver) and in Carradale a TURTLE DOVE (Mrs Mary McMillan). In mid-June, while at Polliwilline for a Sunday afternoon picnic, we located a COMMON SANDPIPER nest - well concealed below the foreshore bank - with at least three young birds in it, the first such breeding presence there during our nine years at the caravan.
I had four spells at PEAT-CUTTING during the warm spell that spanned the final week of May and the first week of June. As it turned out, I had no help on any of these occasions, but was happy enough on my own, low productivity notwithstanding. A small revelation came to me one broiling afternoon as I came over the top of Ben Gullion and on to Tomaig ground - most of the SHEEP were lying in the shade of clumps of RUSHES. Until then I'd seen rushes as being totally worthless on present-day farmland, but here was a service they were performing. In the old days, rushes had a wide variety of uses - as thatch, as rope-making material, as wicks for the oil-lamps, or cruisies, as bedding for animals, and also as winter fodder. I found a couple of EARTHWORMS in scraws that I cut when stripping a section of bank, the first I'd seen on moorland anywhere, which caused me to wonder about the quality of the peat I was about to cut! Across the march-fence from the peat-bank, on High Dalrioch ground, I rose a BLACKCOCK en route to my labours, and that too was a first up there. One happy characteristic of the High Killeonan ground, where I cut the peat, is the total absence of ticks; and there's not a frond of bracken to be found there either.
The most interesting discovery at the peat-bank, however, was a dozen egg-like objects strewn around the turf wind-break. These weren't bird eggs, for the 'shell' wasn't brittle, but formed of a tough, weathered membrane-like material. This wasn't the first time I'd seen such 'eggs', which are about an inch long and markedly elongated, but it was the first time I'd come across such a concentration of them. I felt that they had to be reptilian, but they couldn't pertain to the adder, which produces its young live, as does also the slow worm which is, of course, a legless lizard. Being stumped for a solution, I did as I always do in such cases and wrote to the Natural History Museum, enclosing a couple of specimens.
Early in July, I heard from Mr Colin McCarthy, Collection Manager (Lower Vertebrates). He too was puzzled. 'They look like snake egg shells to me, but no snake in Scotland lays eggs,' he stated, adding that he had tried comparing my specimens with eggs shells from the grass snake, but that my sample had 'many filament-like structures obscuring microscopic details'.
While at Polliwilline, I raised the subject of the 'eggs' with John McNamee, a keen naturalist, who was occupying a neighbouring caravan. He knew at once what I was referring to and told me that he had been seeing them for many years and had been struck by their resemblance to grass snake eggs ... but, of course, there are no grass snakes in Scotland! He reckoned, however, that he had solved the puzzle. While walking in the north of Scotland earlier this year, he had come across one of the cases and inside it was the remains of a moth. I duly wrote to Mr McCarthy and reported this.
The next person I spoke to on the subject was Davie Gillies, farmer at High Killeonan. Davie too had an idea of what I was talking about. After muir-burning, he finds plenty of the things in the remains of the heather, intact but wholly ash, so that they disintegrate to the touch. He reckoned that they pertain to the 'hairy granny', what the old people called 'brottachraich' (Gaelic bratag fhraoich). I've seen these caterpillars swarming over miles of moorland, even with snow and ice lying.
Early in August, I heard again from Mr McCarthy. He had shown the 'eggs' to the Natural History Museum's moth expert, David Carter, who identified them as the cocoons of the Oak Eggar moth (Lasiocampa quercus). I think, however, that these must belong to the large Northern Eggar (L q callunae) and I quote from Moths (Ford, London, 1972):
'[It] flies in late May and June. It, too, feeds upon a wide variety of plants including heather, and while principally an insect of the moors of the north it strays to some extent beyond the confines of such places. The larva makes no effort to hide itself, being protected by thick coating of irritant hairs. This is a northem form of the Oak Eggar ... [which] flies in July and August, for its short life-cycle is completed in twelve months, and the larva, hibernating when very small, requires most of the summer in which to feed. The northern race, callunae, on the other hand, lives two years, about twenty months of which are passed as a larva. Indeed, it is a characteristic feature of the insects of the far north that, limited by the short summer and almost non-existent spring and autunm, they require two or more seasons in which to feed and accumulate sufficient reserves for metamorphosis ... The Northern Eggar is a moth of considerable size, a female often measuring 3½ inches across the expanded wings.....'
The most notable sightings during our fortnight at Polliwilline were the appearance of a school of RISSO'S DOLPHINS offshore, followed, late in the evening, by two little PORPOISES plunging about in the north end of the bay. I have seen, during the past year and a bit, more cetaceans off the Kintyre coast than in my previous forty-four years on the planet. I don't know why that should be - are the herring stocks increasing again? - but it's certainly reassuring.
Phil and Lucy Gardner and I had a hike out to the Inans on Sunday 10 August, their first ever and my first of the year. It was a clear, sunny day, with, fortunately, a constant cooling breeze. We crossed the Ballygroggan moors to get there and found the BLAEBERRY pickings reasonable. On the way out, in mid-moor, we disturbed a HEN HARRIER, and, coming back, a SHORT EARED OWL and two RED GROUSE. The owl had been resting inside a heather clump, in which it left a pellet and a tiny splash of white excreta. (In Largybaan Glen, the following week, George and Sandy McSporran also spotted a short-eared owl, plus an ADDER, in a forest clearing, Sandy's first such sighting.) There were two MINK among the rocks of the Inans Bay. Benjie pursued one of them with commendable wariness and at no great length. There were two HORSE MUSHROOMS close to the Sailor's Grave, but both of them were maggot-infested. I got more FIELD MUSHROOMS during the first week of August than for many a year. They weren't outstandingly plentiful where I was finding them, but we had several tasty meals from them.
Jackalene Neilson of Lossit Home Farm had the misfortune to break an ankle in the Inans Bay on 24 June. Her husband, Billy, fortunately was with her and hurried back to Machrihanish to organise assistance, which arrived in the form of the Lifeboat Y-boat. Jackalene was taken by sea to Machrihanish and from there brought to Campbeltown Hospital by ambulance whence she was later transferred to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. It was her first trip out to the Inans, and one she won't forget.
My girls and I went blaeberry-picking on Ben Gullion on 17 August and enjoyed a lovely day on the hill. I saw a FOX cross the forest trail ahead of me; we encountered two baby TOADS and two LIZARDS, and among the birds sighted was a PEREGRINE FALCON. There were a few humans on the go also, among them Mr and Mrs Tommy Hamilton of Kilwhipnach Farm. Tommy was telling me that he had a CORNCRAKE for a few days on his secondary holding at Tomaig in June of last year.
On the evening of 15 August, George and Sandy McSporran and I found ourselves on Auchenhoan Hill. It was an evening of remarkable beauty. The Arran coast was catching the last of the sunlight and the cliffs at Drumadoon were outstanding - I could even see the pinnacle of rock which the old fishermen called the Pintle (a pintle being the pin on the stem of a skiff, over which the rudder was shipped). A huge ghostly moon rose over the Ayrshire coast and quickly became intensely bright, laying a corridor of silver all the way across the dead-calm Firth. Then the Claymore, our cross-channel ferry, appeared around Ru Stafnish, homeward bound from Ireland, and beautifully lit up.
No 42 Autumn 1997
Page 2: Janet and Marie Morrison's 1993 Trip to Scotland - Part 3
Page 3: David Whitehead's Genealogy Special - Part Four
Page 4: John and Mary Morrison of Rocky River - The Third Part
Page 5: Campbeltownese for Beginners
Page 6: The Flora of Kintyre - A Supplement
Page 7: Andrew MacKerral. C.I.E.,M.A., F.S.A. Scot.
Page 8: By Hill and Shore - Part 2
Page 9: Extracts from the Records of the Kintyre Farmers' Society // A Kintyre Visitor in 1833