When the the man from St.Kilda first came to Glasgow he couldn’t stop laughing at the horses wearing shoes. When this man from Glasgow came panting off the Lewis moor and gasped to Arnie “I’ve just seen a fuckin’ HUGE eagle!” he nonchalantly replied that yes, he’s sees that pair most days from his kitchen window when washing the dishes. 

My best effort to photograph the golden eagle. All I got was wet feet from squelching directly towards it across the bog. It flew over the cliff edge and out into the Minch, probably rising again behind me. It had been feasting on the carcass of a sheep. According to James MacDonald Lockhart in his book ‘Raptor’ the sheep- which replaced the people on the inland hills and moors of these islands and drove them to the coast in the nineteenth century- provision the native golden eagles with enough food to survive, however, this carrion does not provide the same quality of food as the original inhabitants, mountain hare and grouse, which the imposition of sheep farming all but wiped out thus affecting the eagle’s breeding ability.

One of the most remarkable endings to a book ever written- the Epilogue to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’. It is a book in which I have invested many hours at various periods of this short life of mine. Yet I realise that my time spent reading it is as nothing compared to that of the vast community of readers which has kept it constantly transforming into words, pictures, ideas in their minds for generation upon generation throughout the millennia since it was first conceived, keeping Ovid alive in his fame.

Pellet on the boardwalk, Bankhead Moss.

Today is perfect weather for a barbecue.

Sounding across the moss the voice of the male cuckoo- gowk in Scots-  has an ancient simplicity. Two notes- “coo, coo”-  an echoing. There is a soft quality as if played on a plain wooden flute or pan pipe. The female bird has a more complex song of descending bubbling notes- a foot sinking into the bog.

Cuckoos have been laying their eggs in the nests of the Flanders Moss pipits for so many generations now their eggs have taken on the patination of those of its parasitised victim.

 

Craufurd muir on Mercator’s 1595 map of Scotland.

On the once boggy shores of Edinburgh’s Nor’ Loch, Princes Street Gardens tweed.

The quiet and calm of air travel allows for a different view, height and distance give a wider perspective. At 36,000 feet on the flight from Reykjavík the only suggestion of movement in this vast panorama over the north Lewis moor comes from the sea breaking on Tolsta beach. There is no distracting detail, no hectoring by plover, lapwing, skua or biting wind. The relentless waves thud and crumple silently on the shore below, line after line creating grain after grain of sand, they are the shuttle, the strands of seaweed the threads on a silent weaver’s loom.

Sheep dung rather than peat is used to smoke the barley in this Icelandic whisky.