By Bernie Bell

Pics by McB

April the Ninth……..”You don’t need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows……” – Bob Dylan

April the Tenth………..Wigglers!!! ….The taddies in the pond have been frozen solid twice….then the sun shone, the pond thawed….. and there they are…wiggling away like mad.  It lifted my heart – lifted my spirits to see them. 

April the Eleventh…………Mooching at Tingwall……watching a Grey Wagtail………though why it isn’t called a Yellow Wagtail beats me!

April the Twelfth……..The wind has dropped…..the sun is shining….the earth is thawing out.  I went out and collected the broken daffodils and brought them in. 

In the winter, the stove looks cosy with a fire inside it – in the spring, it looks cheery with daffs on top of it!

April the Thirteenth……..Sun-shining…..Heron-hunting…….He’s by our pond most mornings – so he must be getting something!

April the Fourteenth…….Looking across from one point on the track..…’reading’ from right to left, through time.…A cairn on a skerry – maybe from before the sea levels rose and it became a skerry?….The site of an Iron Age broch, and a Medieval Kirk. Then, the Rendall Doocot, last remnant of the old Hall of Rendall, dating from the 17th Century………….

Not forgetting the  Neolithic cairn and Vikings on Gairsay, across the way.

All that history, all that life, in one small area. What a place to live. https://theorkneynews.scot/2020/04/25/walking-out-from-the-house-again/

April the Fifteenth…………Down by the Hall of Rendall……….To paraphrase Alfred Tennyson….’In the Spring a young swan’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’

In the garden…2 blackbirds…2 thrushes…2 Wrens…2 Dunnocks…Pairs of Pigeons dancing round each other, cooing and head-bobbing. It’s hard to tell what’s happening with the Starlings and Sparrers – a bit of a free-for-all!