BY HILL AND SHORE
Angus Martin
On 3 November of last year, my wife Judy, daughter Bella and I had walked north along Smerby shore from Isla Muller and were intrigued by a long well-constructed stone jetty extending out into the wide bay south of Stackie. James McNair identified this as the ‘Quay Rocks’ and explained that flat-bottomed boats came in there, before his time, to load up with potatoes, which were grown extensively on Smerby ground, as elsewhere, before dairying came into such prominence. High Smerby got its wrack, for manuring the potato and turnip fields, from that shore, and Low Smerby wrack was collected from around Isla Muller. One of the Low Smerby outbuildings - latterly a barn - had bulging walls, a feature which was attributed to the pressures of potato-storage. Along the overgrown track which we walked - barely wide enough now to allow pedestrian access - James used to drive a tractor.
Argyll and Bute Council Roads Department caused extensive and unnecessary damage and destruction to roadside trees last winter by the use of a heavy-duty tractor-drawn strimmer. I first noticed the shattered and mutilated trees along the side of the High Lossit road, Machrihanish, but was later told that other Kintyre roads - including the Carradale and Southend roads - were just as badly affected. The Courier published my letter of complaint on 27 December, and a surprising - and heartening - number of people told me privately that they agreed entirely with the points expressed; in the following issue, a letter by Agnes Stewart was published supporting my complaint and extending it to cover damage to and destruction of plant colonies on the Learside by the spraying of weed-killer and ‘over-vigorous verge-cutting’ (previous issue, p 26); finally, Gilbert Milne in Tayinloan had a letter published on 10 January pointing out that verge-cutting damage extended to milestones, heavy drain-covers and public service markers, and advising the Council to ‘choose responsible contractors and supervise them more carefully’.
If any reader should witness damage and destruction of the kinds described above, might I suggest that he or she complain to Argyll and Bute Council or else write to The Campbeltown Courier, in order that the issue remain alive and, in the long term, perhaps, exert a moderating influence on Council policies.
Agnes Stewart, whose interest in botany is well-known to readers, is researching an article, which should appear in the next issue, on the FAIRY FOXGLOVE Erinus alpinus, that beautiful purple spring Alpine which can be seen in particular abundance on the wall at the foot of the Big Kiln and along the east end of Argyll Street and round into New Quay Street. Happily, it appears to be on the increase. Does any reader know who introduced it? Where else can it be found and when did it appear there? Where does it occur outwith town? Agnes can be contacted at Creagdhu Mansions, Campbeltown.
A domestic GOOSE mysteriously took up winter residence in the Glenramskill area. By night, Brian Cook reports, it was to be seen in the Stinky Hole, seeking - as do its wild kin - the protection of water. In spring, it mingled periodically with the colony of Canadian white-fronted geese at Smerby and towards the end of April I sighted it with a companion Canada goose in the Stinky Hole one evening. Archie Anderson of Drumlemble, on holiday for a couple of days, was at Killypole Loch on 24 January to photograph the morning light there and had the pleasure of watching three OTTERS swimming. George McSporran reports the chance sighting - a first for him - of a wintering WAXWING Bombycilla garrulus in his back yard on 25 January. He happened to go upstairs to collect washing and, glancing from a window, saw the bird alight and take a few sips from a puddle of rain water before flying off towards Main Street. From George also came the earliest 2003 report of FROG spawn. He and his son Sandy were up Uigle Glen on 29 January and noticed a blob in a ditch. On that same day, Malcolm Cook in Limecraigs saw his first frog of the year. It was a yellow-coloured specimen and retreated sluggishly into one of the garden ponds. On 30 January, George spotted a DIPPER in Craigaig Water, and that night Bella and I, returning from a walk, heard a SNIPE’s distinctive alarm call as we crossed the marshy ground on the east side of Meadows playing-field. On Saturday 8 February, Harry Hood, Peninver, saw two GOLDEN EAGLES near Strone, Southend. A TREECREEPER was seen by my wife from the shore just south of Peninver on 23 February.
In the early days of February we had sleet and snow, which lay patchily on the hills. George and I were on Ben Gullion on the night of the 3rd and derived great interest in studying where sheep and deer spoor came from and went to, disclosing their routes through forest and across fords.
My friend from Carradale, Lachie Paterson, walked with me from Peninver to Campbeltown on Sunday 9 February, a sunny ‘pet’ of a day. Much of the walk was taken up with discussion of the decline in fish-stocks and the dire state of the fishing industry. I believe that certain species in the Kilbrannan Sound have been fished to extinction by trawlers, but Lachie takes a more optimistic view and believes that as fishing effort diminishes, stocks will recover. I had told him of how, as a boy paddling at Kilchousland, I could hardly put a foot down without disturbing a small flatfish, which would swim off in a puff of sand to settle again, half-buried, a short distance away. Imagine our astonishment when, beneath Kilchousland churchyard, we came upon a four-inch-long DAB lying on the stones of the upper shore. I assumed it to be a dead discard from a trawler’s net, but when I reached down to lift it, it began flapping. Without delay, I took it to the water’s edge and slipped it into the sea. It swam off in an instant and will never know how fortunate it was that we happened along the shore when we did. How did it come to be out of water in the first place? My theory is that a gull caught and then dropped it in flight, perhaps pursued by other birds. When I told the story to my daughters that night, Amelia recounted the finding of a similar-sized flatfish in the playground of St Kieran’s School, but it was dead.
I was in the Inans, for the first time since 29 May, 2000, on Sunday 16 February, accompanied by George and Sandy McSporran, John Brodie and another Royal Mail colleague, Jamie Girvan, who had wanted, for years, to see the Inans, having heard his late grandmother, Nancy Girvan - nee Durnan - talk of her trips there. There was a disappointing lack of wildlife to be seen: some FROG spawn on the south side of the glen and 26 GOATS - including two kids - between Uamha Ropa and Uisaed. We looked unsuccessfully for toad-spawn in the rivulet-bearing rock-channels south of the bay, but were probably too early. Our way back was by the coast and we spent a couple of hours at Craigaig. Nothing remains of ‘Hamilton House’, the Coasters’ hut there but the cast-iron stove, broken in two. Sandy McSporran recalled having seen strings of toad-spawn in a rock pool near the shore of Craigaig Bay last year; but there was none there when we looked.
The following Sunday, 23 February, I walked the coast between Peninver and Campbeltown. The most interesting sightings that afternoon were man-made and the results of the persistent south-east wind: a yellow balloon publicising a ‘Big Book Bash’ in Coventry, which I sent off to The Coventry Evening Telegraph, one of the sponsors, explaining where the balloon was found and asking when it was released; a big dhan, or fishermen’s marker buoy, festooned with thousands of GOOSE BARNACLES. The boat’s registration on the buoy was BW 6070, which locates it in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Goose barnacles are so-called because it was long ago believed, from their shape, that they developed into geese. For example, Giraldus Cambrensis, in 1185: ‘I have frequently seen with my own eyes, more than a thousand of these small birds, hanging down on the sea-shore from a piece of timber, enclosed in their shells and already formed.’ On the subject of geese, I counted, from Isla Muller, 26 CANADA GEESE, eight of which drifted past me on the inlet to the north, showing off their awry white neck-scarves. A big tree that I saw washed in on the rocks north of Isla Muller, I investigated two days later. The poor thing, though perfectly healthy, had been felled, and, by its topmost leaves - still aromatic - my wife identified it as a CORSICAN PINE. The branches provided firewood for 13 Saddell Street. A few days after posting my letter to The Coventry Evening Telegraph, a female reporter interviewed me over the phone and promised to send a copy of the issue containing the feature, but nothing came of the promise.
More next time
No 54 Autumn 2003