My Day

Today, I went to Copinsay to help gather the sheep, it was a beautiful day if a wee bit cold. The seals were still there - this one was enjoying the rays.

Lots of seal pups!

View from up the hill on Copinsay

I then went for a wander around Stromness



Hoy with snow

Stromness

Brewster in the snow

Dog sitting

I am currently dog sitting, I'm looking after Brewster for a couple of days. He's currently wondering what he's done to deserve getting left alone with me for a couple of days.

Things are a bit weird in Brewster's life just now - strange house, strange garden, strange person!

It's fun having him but I'm not looking forward to the early start tomorrow - dog walking in the dark. Now that it's properly winter, I'm struggling to get up in the mornings. In fact I slept in on Wednesday, I ended getting up at 8.20, and having this mad panic, running about the house to get ready. It's lucky I only have a ten minute walk to work.

I am now the proud owner of a radio alarm.

Stromness

Puffer's Close

The garden

This is Stromness (if you can see it through the rain) and Hoy is hiding in the background in the cloud, which is not unusual.

You'll guess from the last photo - it's been a bit wet the last few days.

New Camera!

Ha! The camera has arrived, however I've not taken many photos yet. I mentioned the waxwings in my last post, a colleague caught some in the RSPB garden on Thursday (to ring them) and here is one!

The big event this week of course was my birthday! I didn't have anything planned but ended up going out which was fun. Thank you for the lovely pressies.

More photos coming soon!

It's a wee bit chilly!

This month I'm going to try and blog more than I have in any other month. Which, if I'm honest is not going to be hard as my monthly total so far has been two. I will have already have equalled last month with this one!

It's a wee bit cold up here at the moment (please forgive the talk about the weather - it kind of dominates your life up here!) but dry and bright.

This week I went to the song shop choir for the first time (folk singing), I got thrown in at the deep end as we were learning a new, quite complicated song. I'm not sure if I'm a good enough singer but we'll see how it goes!

I also got see some waxwings up close (birds that visit Britain in the winter - very pretty - look them up in a bird book). A colleague had caught some to ring them - I'm majorly chuffed that I got to see them.

Copinsay

Today, at the last minute I got the opportunity to go out to the island of Copinsay. It has been a lovely weekend here weather wise - calm and bright, if slightly cold. Copinsay is an RSPB reserve, mainly important for seabirds but today's visit was to go and see the seals. It is the time of year for grey seals to be pupping and last year there was over 2000 of them! The beaches were covered in fluffy white pups of various sizes and their very large, angry mothers!

We only had a short time on the island and I did have some work tasks but it was a fab day to be there and the views from the lighthouse were amazing - right over the east side of Orkney with Hoy (as with most Orkney views) lurking in the background.

A gentle breeze!

Blimey it's a bit breezy at the moment, proper knock you off your feet stuff. I realised I failed to mention that I am now in Stromness but you may have guessed that. I still don't have a camera but hopefully that will be remidied soon.

I had a slight problem yesterday, as in my excitment that my fuel for the stove had arrived, I went to fill up the scuttle in the shed and shutting the front door behind me I realised that the keys were still in the house. It was just at the moment that the door closed over that I suddenly remembered that I hadn't put the snib off and I had now locked myself out of the house. After a little swearing, trying various windows, finding one that I could open, persuading it that it really did want to open just enough to let me squeeze through I did eventually get back in, pick up my keys, sat down for a minute to recover from the thought that I might have had to break into my own house and went back out to fill the scuttle.