up above the clouds so high...
There's a bit of a strange temperature inversion over the Feugh valley this morning, with the result that there is a narrow band of cloud hanging over the village. From where we live, the cloud layer is more or less level with the downstairs windows, so it is possible to look underneath and see the fields, and hear the distant rumblings of another shoot (possibly a tad insensitive on Armistice Day*). From the back of the house and upstairs, you can see over the clouds, and have a view of the hills and the mountains, although there is higher cloud layer obscuring the peaks.Yesterday I had cause to visit Ballater, in the heart of the tartan and stout walking boots zone, and as I drove back along beside the Dee, I was intrigued by the gathering mist, which collected over the surface of the running water and flowed like a second river. I assume that this is because the river was marginally warmer than the surrounding air, it has got very cold at night, down to -7 degrees for a couple of nights, and the temperature drops very swiftly when it does.
With a perspicacity I wouldn't expect, when I looked out of the kitchen window just now, in the stubble field that currently adjoins one side of our house, I saw a steady stream of pheasants running uphill, away from the guns. I'm wondering if this is a beneficial side effect of hanging out with our neighbours free-ranging chickens, or if it's because, a couple of days ago, I put out a bag of six year old porage oats for them to eat. The prospect of an intelligent pheasant is a little troubling to me. We went to Huntly for the farmers market this weekend, and on our way back as we passed along a back road a large hand painted sign screamed; 'beware of pheasants!' perhaps this is what they meant.
*They did stop shooting at the appropriate moment, allowing a Deer to break cover from behind them and run to safety (not that they would have taken a pot shot at it, but it wasn't to know that, the deer round here are almost as suicidal as the pheasants, just do a lot more damage to the car!).
Labels: clouds, pheasants, porage
posted by Lampy @ 11/11/2009 10:39:00 am
2 Comments:
Though you do wonder if ingesting six year old porage oats (with added ergotism, fermentation etc) actually increased the creatures' brainpower. They are not, in the main, among nature's problem solvers.
I couldn't say, when I made porage from the oats, they gave me terrible wind, so maybe they just got some sort of natural rocket booster. I tried them on week old fruit scones this weekend, that seems to have slowed them down a bit.
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