Firwood Cottage, Nethybridge: Christmas dinner plucked from the snow

A month of snow, frost and keeping the garden birds alive. There w

ere several nights of minus 15 degrees C, a low of -20 C and a daytime low of -14 C and there were only 8 days when the mercury rose above freezing, reaching a balmy +6 degrees C on the 10th. I don’t keep daily maximum and minimum temperature record now, but a check of the Strathspey Weather website (http://www.strathspeyweather.co.uk/ ) shows that the -20 was the lowest

temperature recorded since the weather station started in January 2001, and the mean temperature for December was -3.5 degrees C, possible the lowest mean yet recorded for any year. The last time I recorded a below freezing average was way back in the early 1980s when making daily weather recordings at Loch Garten. Brrr. Needless to say, the parsnips for the Christmas dinner remain nicely chilled under two foot of frozen snow. Ice chrystals at sunset (left) make an interesting photo.

The outcome of all the cold and lying snow is that I have had

few outings to look for things and the main camera activity was pointing it at birds in deep snow and very low temperatures – in the garden. The huge fat balls attracted a growing number of starlings (12) and scattered corn up to 10 yellowhammers along with masses of chaffinches, coal tits, blue and great tits and the occasional gang of rooks and jackdaws. Great spotted woodpecker also became a regular on the fat balls. Sparrowhawk also became a regular

visitor during the coldest spells, the deadliest visits being later in the month. Janet witnessed the first of these on Christmas Day when the first terrorising whiz through the garden saw birds dashing for cover everywhere but one blackbird took the wrong option and collided with the glass windows of the patio doors. As the bird hit the decking the sparrowhawk was back and within a split second it pounced on the slightly stunned blackbird before carrying it off into the woods behind the chalet. It was only later that I noticed a perfect set of wing imprints in the snow (left) where the sparrowhawk had captured its Christmas dinner, enough food to ensure it survived another freezing night.

A car service in the Grantown garage allowed me a morning to re-

visit a few trees in the adjacent aspen wood where I had found groups of the tiny Sclerophora pinhead lichens growing in March, but, without the knowledge at the time to identify them to full species. Most turned out to be the rarer Sclerophora pallida lichen (right) with just a couple of trees with S. peronella. I just hoped nobody was watching me staring at the aspen trees for 10-15 minutes at a time – all good fun and adding a few new sites for these amazing tiny lichens. During the brief thaw about mid-month a visit to Tore Hill produced a second Abernethy site for log hugging fungus Erastia salmonicolor, whilst tucked under the snow was a single specimen of the tiny Mycena rosella. How such a small fungus can survive under the frozen snow beats me.

Janet also had a busy mont

h, attending two craft fairs locally in the run up to Christmas with me helping out as the event “gopher” arranging tables and erecting event banners. After the last event in the 18th the Christmas tree came home just in time to be erected in the sitting room complete with lights and trimmings. The “non-event” was the full lunar eclipse on the morning of 21st December – the shortest day. I was out of bed at 5.30am and as I d

rove along the road to a suitable vantage point to ensure I could see the event as the moon was about to set, the full moon was beaming in through the driver’s window. The temperature was -8 C and with everything crisp with frost everything seemed to be set fair to get good photos of the eclipse. 7.45am just as the eclipse was due to start – where has the moon gone? A great bank of cloud, despite the frost, had rolled in and remained

stubbornly in place right through until 9am when the eclipse was just about finished and the sun had risen in the sky. A cold sunny day followed and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen for the next 72 hours as the temperatures remained well below freezing as the photo of frozen trees at Loch Mallachie shows (right). Let’s hope for better luck with the next celestial events in early January.

Throughout the month I had been keeping an eye on the level of oil in the central heating boiler tank. The oil folk usually require an order of about 800-900 litres before they will deliver and by 17 December it looked like this is what we would need, so I phoned in an order, expecting the delivery, as usual, to be during the next week or so. “We will get the fuel to you by 14th January” said the polite voice at the other end of the phone. “2011?” I asked, “yes” came the reply. HELP, would we survive that long? So, pencil line on the fuel gauge, limit boiler use despite the -20 C outside temperatures, and see how much we had used after 5 days. My calculations indicated that we should be okay, on restricted use, until the middle of January. Am I missing something? We are in the middle of winter, the main time for maximum fuel consumption – as usual – and all the oil delivery companies locally are short of oil and with a minimum delivery time of 5 weeks! We now have a Super-ser portable gas heater in the living room and the gas stove in the front room in operation supplementing the couple of hours of heat from the central heating boiler, hoping that Highland Fuels keep to their word. Watch this space.
Just heard that there is a bittern at Insh Marshes, and a great grey shrike in Glen Tromie – perhaps time for a twitch.

We hope you have all had a great Christmas and all our best wishes for 2011.

A few of the highlights of 2010 follow below.

Stewart & Janet