Busy times

  Despite the fact that the last couple of weeks have been fantastic in the way of weather etc, it's not been a holiday . With the imminent arrival of some Shetland mares with their foals (not ours, but a crofters) to graze one of the fields for the summer, I had some fencing to replace and also some fence posts to wedge and re-upright. Along with this I had also to finish a piece of fencing down in to the sea to stop some neighbours sheep wandering along the shore and on to our nice fresh grass. With the fence that went into the water, I wanted to have a fairly substantial straining post midway between low and high water to act as a suitable perch for the tirricks (terns) when they arrive back to breed in the area. Putting the posts in was no easy task (due to the close proximity of the stone jetty and lots of lovely large rocks just below the sand) I can assure you..................

  The fence will have to go about the same distance again for when there are really low tides but that can be done in a while.

Below are some shots (some taken with the camera phone) of before and after of the lawn and field cutting.................

 Before..............

How to cut a lawn................
 

After

  Actually, cutting the front lawn wasn't as easy as it looks. I started off by strimming it which, after a total of around 8hrs over several days, still looked like I'd hardly done anything. Once Dougal had been over it with the tractor mower, it then took several hours with a wheel barrow moving the huge cuts of grass and raking it over 4 times before I could get my motor mower on it - several more cuts with that. The grass is starting to green up nicely now which in turn has given some of the local Rock Doves a place in the garden to look for food.

  Part of one of the fields (often called 'parks' up here) had to be also cut as it was now just tussocks of matted grass and was no good for anything. If there were voles on Shetland I'd certainly have left it as it was, but as it was there was no choice but to cut it. Unfortunately, as it had been left for such a long time, there is no goodness left in it and so can't be used for livestock...........

Looking north

Any ideas for several tons of dry grass ?

  Earlier on in this latest update, I mentioned the fence posts that go in to the sea, well, only a few days ago the Tirricks arrived and are now using them on a daily basis. If I can find the time, I would like to get a photograph some food passes etc such as the one below which I took a couple of years ago at Haroldswick ..........

And this is from the other day................

Arctic Tern at Ordaal

  Sorry for the delay in updating but as I said earlier, things have been pretty busy here. I'll post another update in a couple of days of what's been happening on the wildlife front etc.

    Robbie