BY HILL AND SHORE
Angus Martin

Part 3

    A couple of oddities on successive days.  On 2 April, at Chiskan, near Drumlemble, I saw a BLACKBIRD with a perfect, snow-white head - it looked as though it was wearing a made-to-measure hood.  On the previous day, walking with my daughters towards the Learside, we saw an all-black MALLARD at the Stinky Hole.  Walter and Maureen Bell, whom we encountered loading seaweed into a trailer at Davaar Point, confirmed the sighting.  There was a PIED WAGTAIL dead on the road at Stewarton junction on 12 April, the first such fatality of that species I believe I’ve ever seen.  Normally they are brisk and daring evaders of traffic.

   The first report of SWALLOWS I had was from Archie and Mary Menzies, who saw a pair at the Second Waters on 23 April.  Their son John and his wife Moira heard a CUCKOO on the previous day near Glenramskill, my first report of that bird’s arrival.  Retired sexton at Kilkerran, Davie Stalker, told me, one evening I met him in the cemetery, that - going back to the ’30s - the gravediggers used to record, on the back of the mortuary door, the date of the first cuckoo.  That date was usually 21 or 22 April; Davie himself first heard the cuckoo this year on the 23rd.  I myself was late in hearing it: Sunday 6 May from Kilkerran Graveyard just before dark.  Teddy Lafferty reported, in mid-May, the return, after some years’ absence, of COMMON TERNS to the Stinky Hole, Glenramskill, a past nesting-place.  Terns also returned in force to Sgonn Mor at Machrihanish, and bred there.  I heard them shrilling daily during the summer for the first time since mink depredations devastated the colony.  Hilary Oman reports a sighting of several SAND MARTINS at Old Drumgarve while on an outing there with Frances Hood on 4 June.

   While George and I were in the graveyard on Thursday evening, 9 May, he commented on what he took to be a covering of smoke on the northern part of visible Arran.  I thought it more likely to be mist, but, as evening fell, from the top terrace of the graveyard we began to discern lines of fire above Drumadoon, and, on our way home by the Prom, there was a distinct smell of muirburn and - I’m certain - a couple of waves of heat on the easterly breeze.  The smell of burning was still hanging about town on the following - Friday - morning and the fire could still be seen that evening from Kilkerran.  Travelling to Carradale on Saturday evening, I could see a plume of smoke rising from the island.  I got hold of a copy of The Arran Banner of 12 May and, under the headline ‘Inferno!’, read the report of ‘one of the most extensive hill fires ever on Arran’.  The blaze was believed to have been started by a camp-fire and ultimately burned one-sixth of the island, causing unquantifiable damage to fauna and flora.

   The day after the fire began - 10 May - word reached George that Ben Gullion had officially reopened.  We arranged to meet on the Hawk’s Peak that evening, and I duly set off over the graveyard wall at 7.30, having first browsed for half-an-hour among the gravestones.  When, however, I reached the top of the forestry trail, there was no sign of George and Sandy anywhere.  I discovered later that they were called out by the Coastguard to a boating mishap near Bellochantuy.  Anyway, I sat on a heathery outcrop and drank my coffee, thrilled to be back on the hill again - no menacing traffic, no people and no dogs but my own; just birds singing in the forest and bees droning among the abundant pink flowers of blaeberry.

   I was up again on Saturday afternoon.  I took the forestry track that runs parallel with Knockbay Road, cutting back whins as I went, for it was badly overgrown and neglected (it was subsequently cleared and levelled again by a digger) despite the smart green gates and route-markers installed last year by the Environmental Task Force along the new-made preliminary section which begins at the Grammar School.  I then cut up the ‘Birch Trail’, as described on p 15.

   The previous time I was up there, with my daughters Amelia and Isabella, on 19 February, there was one blackened fireplace to be seen - I counted four on 12 May, and feared for the forest, particularly with the Arran inferno fresh in my mind.  On 17 May, I was back up that trail with George and Isabella and we came on a tent pitched by the side of the trail and every form of litter imaginable scattered around.  It was a scene of utter defilement, which didn’t go unnoticed by other visitors, a Forestry Commission ranger included.  How these characters could imagine they’d go undetected is beyond me.  They were even felling trees in daylight!  After a week, however, the tent was removed.  That episode demonstrated how a few irresponsible individuals can damage the interests of the many who use the hills considerately.

   During that February walk with Amelia and Isabella, we came on an OAK - probably planted around 1979 - which hadn’t broken free of its protective plastic tubing, not least because the tubing had been secured to a wooden post by twisted wire.  I freed the tree and the base of its trunk was pulpy and diseased-looking.  I had a look at the tree, 11 weeks on, and found the bark dried out and much healthier.  One so often sees deciduous trees planted inside tubes on afforested ground and obviously never attended to again.

   I was walking my daughters home from school one afternoon in mid-May and happened to notice several immature GULLS feeding in shallow water in the harbour.  What caught my attention was that the birds were paddling furiously, but weren’t moving in the least; then I noticed that the rapid paddling was churning up clouds of silt, into which the gulls would plunge every so often to seize something in their beaks.  I couldn’t make out what it was that they were catching, but it may have been tiny crabs.  The strategy put me in mind of how gulls will drum their feet on grass to simulate the sound of rain and thus bring worms to the surface.  It’s a wonder to me how such skills evolve and are perpetuated.

   I was up the eastern end of Ben Gullion forest on 28 May - a Monday holiday - and had the rare sighting - on Ben Gullion - of a FOX.  He was a big fellow - carrying something, which I couldn’t identify, in his mouth - and came slinking through the mist just below the crag I was seated under.  I put the binoculars on him at once, but minutes afterwards lost him behind an intervening larch.  On my way off the hill, I took Benjie on to the fox’s route and he smelt him right away and followed the scent into the forest.  Lower on Ben Gullion, I came into a cluster of SMALL WHITE butterflies and knelt to look at one clinging to a bluebell.  Then I saw a tiny TOAD, newly emerged from its watery birthplace, going by me, and I thought, as I often have, how potentially destructive the hillwalker is, tramping brutally here and there.  Perhaps the true - and truly moral - naturalist nowadays is the one who stays harmlessly at home and watches the wonderful world of nature on television or video!

   While delivering mail at Machrihanish on 2 June, Mr and Mrs John Storey, who have a house there, directed my attention to Scart Island, the rock out off the now-redundant post office and shop.  There was a patently unhappy SIKA DEER huddled on the windward side of the rock, not looking as though it intended swimming back ashore.  Admittedly, there was a strong westerly wind and the sea was loud and choppy.  We speculated on why it had gone there in the first place.  Perhaps it had swum out during the night to escape the attentions of a dog?  It was about 1.30 pm when we spoke and the couple had already sensibly notified the Police.  I learned from George McSporran, later that evening, that Coastguards and Lifeboatmen had been out to Machrihanish earlier, and the Lifeboatmen, using their small ‘Y-boat’, had succeeded in driving the deer into the sea and towing it to land, not, however, before it had headed in the wrong direction, out into the Atlantic!  Deer - and particularly the largest of our species, the Red Deer - will swim prodigious distances.

   Sandy and Lorna McKinven had a curious experience with a BUZZARD one evening in June.  They live on Davaar Avenue and their house backs on to Hillside Farm.  Lorna saw the buzzard descend, with loud flappings, straight into the back garden and lift one of the McKinvens’ golden retriever’s soft toys, a rabbit.  She shouted to Sandy and together they watched the bird fly about 30 yards into the field, where it proceeded to rip the toy to bits.

   Gratifyingly, I’ve had a few responses to my appeal, in the last issue, for local place-names.  Hector Galbraith and his son, John, at Polliwilline, gave me Jeck Black’s Patch (739111), which is a small, three-sided field on the left-hand side of the road where the cattle-grid used to be, close to the top of the big brae as one heads north towards Glenehervie.  I was able to identify ‘Jeck’ right away.  The Census of 1851 records an 86-year-old Irish-born handloom-weaver, John Black, living at ‘Polliwilling’ with a 33-year-old unmarried daughter, Flora, born in Southend, and a seven-year-old grandson, John Nelson, born at Lesmahago.  The John Black who appears in the Argyll Estate Census of 1792 is obviously the same man, the three-year age discrepancy being nothing unusual for the time.  He was living then at ‘Inishroill’ - part of Dunglas Farm - and gave his age as 30.  His wife was Barbara McEachran, aged 28, a younger sister of Angus McEachran, tenant-farmer at Kilblaan, and they had two children at the time, Barbara (3) and Archibald (1).  John Black’s Quarry - another Learside place-name - was also called after him.  There is some doubt about its location, but Hector, and his neighbour, Iain MacIntyre in Glenehervie, both assumed that it’s the quarry (738110) on the opposite side of the road from the Patch.

   Iain MacIntyre was able to supply several names hitherto unknown to me, including Jimmy Lee’s Slip, Fraser’s Daik, John Shaa’s Concertina and Colin MacKertir’s Cove.  The bend in the road after Iain’s bungalow, ‘Gartnagerach’, as one heads north on the Learside, is known as John Shaa’s Corner.  This John Shaw was a roadman who apparently lived at Point, the ruin in the field opposite the Doirlinn carpark.  Incidentally, Iain’s grandfather, John MacIntyre, who farmed Feochaig, took over road-mending duties with his sons in the 1930s.

   Another name which Iain had was of particular interest, because the character perpetuated in it was already familiar to me.  This was Sweetie Bella’s Quarry (768161), which is now a car-park convenient to the First Waters - except Bella wasn’t breaking stones there for patching the road, she was depositing her bag of wilks there after she came off the shore.  I encountered her years ago in the Poor Rolls.  Her name was Isabella McMillan and she was born in 1856 in Bolgam Street, a daughter of Peter McMillan, fisherman, and Jane McKay.  She married, in 1878, another McMillan, Duncan - son of Hector McMillan, carter, and Mary Ann Coffield - but the married broke up six years later, and Duncan took up with one Elizabeth Ferguson and had seven children by her.  Bella herself died in 1920, in the Poorhouse Hospital.

   Hector Galbraith died on 20 July, 2001, just at the end of my caravanning holiday at Polliwilline.  I, and many others, will miss his company.  He was always eager for a yarn, yet never had a bad word to say about anyone.

More next time

No 50 Autumn 2001

Wee Drams  - E-mails, comments, queries and enlightenment from around the world.

Page  2:       A History of the Gilchrists...............continued

Page  3:       A 'What if?' Tale from Cindy Nunn

Page  4:       Ian & Helen's Scottish Trip - May 2003

Page  6:       The Editorial from Number 50 - Autumn 2001

Page 7:        By Hill and Shore - Angus Martin

Page 8:        Mesolithic Flints at Rosehill Farm