Towards the end of last week we had a couple of days of pretty horrible weather. Strong winds and rain from  the west resulted in a gale and a big sea running in at Westing. I went over on Friday to take a look and found a few gulls feeding in the breaking waves, amongst them were a couple of Iceland's, a Black-headed  with the rest being mostly Common and Herring Gulls. The wind direction and state of the tide was just right for watching them feeding - westerly and it was at high tide. Unfortunately the light wasn't, it was from behind the birds which meant most of the time their heads were in shadow. Black-headed Gulls aren't particularly numerous around here so I wanted to get some pictures of it feeding..................

  and the sea at the edge of the bay taken with the 500.................

  By early evening it was blowing a real gale - but it was a lovely clear night. An hour or so after sunset, over to the south west from our house, I could see the lovely sight of Jupiter, Venus and the moon in a perfect (if diagonal) line. I would have loved to have taken a photograph of it but as the wind was almost taking me off my feet, putting a camera on the tripod was out of the question. Unfortunately, the way our windows open, I couldn't even do it from inside through an open window.

  The following morning was one of those days you step outside and feel 'wow' - there was no wind, not a cloud in the sky and .............. sunshine ! We decided to have a family walk and Catriona suggested that we could leave the car at Helliers Water and walk over to the deserted village of Colvadale and then up the east coast and back to Ordaal............

Helliers Water looking north west to Valla Field

  Helliers Water is where Unst's water supply comes from and from here it only travels a couple of miles to the tap and in my opinion it's some of the best tasting drinking water I've ever had. As we approached one of the old croft cottages at Colvadale, a small herd of Shetland ponies came to give us the once over. These incredibly hardy ponies spend most of the year on the hills in all weathers. I have heard of a story of a person (who lived on Unst a while ago) regarding Shetland ponies. The person concerned had a horse of her own and basically reported several folk for leaving their ponies out in the fields and on the hills during cold weather without putting a blanket on them (the ponies that is). Needless to say, nothing was done about it by the animal welfare people...............

 Sula, our eldest and 'friends'

..... the wall is over 5ft high

  My father built dry stone walls in the Cotswolds so I know what goes in to building a traditional wall down there. The ones up here - also called drystane dykes (or versions like it)  are like nothing that you can see down south in the Cotswolds. All of the walls down there are built in 'courses' ie each course is a similar thickness stone and are laid in a horizontal line (the next course is often stones of a different size to the previous course) and then usually finished off with vertical 'toppers' across the width of the wall. The ones here are totally different and I can't begin to understand how long it must have taken to build the wall in the picture above. Without wanting to sound rude, I think it could be called 'random rubble' - which is in fact a type of walling technique.

A Shetland dyke

  Continuing up the east coast of Unst, we had a cracking walk, I even had my coat off for an hour and it must have only been 7 or 8 degrees, but due to the lack of wind it felt warmer. As far as wildlife goes we only saw one 2 Iceland Gulls (plus a variety of other common birds) but I also counted 10 Great Norther Divers between Colvadale and home..................

........... not a bad place to be on a sunny day.

  Later on in the early evening it was still clear, this gave us good views of Jupiter, Venus and the moon. However, they were no longer in a line but still looked good but alas didn't make for a good picture, so I took one of Venus and the moon instead for the record. By March 12th/13th Jupiter and Venus will have converged to be only around 3 degrees apart..............

Venus and the moon

  Another event occurred on Sunday which will bring a bit of piece and quiet to our shoreline for a while (hopefully); one of the neighbouring crofters has moved their sheep back to their croft over to the west of Baltasound. For much of the winter during very low tides and also after the fence was destroyed in the Christmas gale, its been an almost daily chore of rounding the sheep up and sending them back along the shore. Due to the weather and low/high tide times (sometimes low tide was during darkness) I'd not manged to repair the 'sea' fence, thus the animals would come along to our grass - well they do say the 'grass is always greener' etc etc. What this has meant is both the birds (Merganzers etc) and otters have been disturbed on a regular basis - I only hope they settle down again quickly........................

'Go home' - or words to that effect !

  My next job down there will be to take down the existing fence and relocate it a hundred yards to the west where it's less rocky and also less seaweed (the combination of the weight of seaweed on the fence wire and the wave action is what wrecks the fence). While I'm doing that, I'll also reinstate a 5ft length of post back in the water by the jetty ready for when the Arctic Terns return at the end of April or early May.

  Today (28th Feb) I went to Lerwick with Sula so she could get some physio' on her  knee which she hurt last summer during sports day. As with all trips to Lerwick, we try and do a multitude of shopping tasks etc and today was no exception. My Subaru Forester is in need of an MOT at the moment and one of the things needing doing is a new cat' converter for the exhaust. Getting one through the Suby' dealer  would be rather expensive - at least £250 + so I thought I'd get one through one of the other tyre/exhaust dealers in town. I ordered one a couple of weeks back and as it was due to arrive at the end of last week, I thought I'd pick it up today. Going in this morning, the guy looked rather embarrassed and then said he was sorry that he'd had another Forester in yesterday needing one, so he put it on that one instead !  Sometimes I do wonder if folk in Lerwick actually realize that Unst isn't very far away and that yes, we do have phones up here. Needless to say, I was not a happy chappy.

   Robbie