Hooptedoodle #412 - Personal Audio Time-Capsule

This is a very odd post, even by my standards. I have been sorting out some old archives of sound recordings - all manner of stuff, and I found two surviving examples of nature/wildlife recordings I made 20 years ago, which I have now put in a secure library until I think what to do with them.

I moved to my present address, which is on a farm on the South East coast of Scotland, in August 2000. At the time I was living on my own. I was commuting daily into Edinburgh, so during my first Winter here I only ever saw my house and garden in daylight at the weekends.

I was fascinated by the garden birds here. I had also acquired a good collection of the nature recordings of the Canadian, Dan Gibson, which were sold in airport gift shops in the USA under the general heading of Relaxation Tapes. I found them very therapeutic - this was a stressful time in my private life, and they helped me to sleep! 

 

I had a very good portable tape recorder, and decided I might try some nature recording here as a new hobby venture. I had good mics and everything, so I had a few sessions, which were very pleasing, but it became obvious very quickly that I was going to be frustrated by the number of low-flying microlights coming down the coast here from the airfield at East Fortune. Reluctantly, I shelved the project, and - of course - never went back to it. I have one surviving session which I listen to occasionally - about an hour, in 2 half-hour files, recorded one Sunday morning, 11th March 2001 - that's 20 years ago, and as it happens exactly 6 months before 9/11 (the Day the World Changed Forever).

 

The sun coming up - my garden photographed in March 2001. I note that my garage door was blue in those days (I had forgotten), and a number of mature trees and the electricity pole have disappeared since then. The recordings were made just off the left of the picture, next to the garage...

The recording was originally stereo analog, but I converted it to digital and made some mp3 transcriptions because the small file size is handy, and for nature sounds the quality is probably good enough. I listen to it from time to time because it's a lovely, relaxing thing to hear (at low volume, while reading, for example), and also because it's interesting for me to observe the definite changes in the ambient sounds over 20 years. If I tried it again now, the recording would be swamped by wood pigeons and collared doves - back in the day, there was much lively chatter from blackbirds, greenfinches, jackdaws and all the smaller chaps. Fabulous. Greenfinches have just about disappeared here now.

I set up my mics at the bottom of the garden - there is a wood beyond the wall - and left them to get on with it. Since there seemed to be some fighting going on, for the second half hour I shifted the mics a little further from the wood - nearer to the farm lane, to tone it down a bit. It's a Sunday, but there was noticeably less motor traffic 20 years ago. You can hear occasional parties of ladies on horses trooping past on the concrete road - it takes about 5 minutes to walk here from the stables, so when you hear horses it will probably be 5 minutes past the hour, paying parties of riders setting off every hour from 10am onwards!

At least one microlight appears during the recording (must have been sparse traffic that day); my friend Ian, who is a flyer, tells me that the engines in microlights now sound different, though I don't know what the changes have been.

Also, during the recording there are occasional high-flying airliners passing over, heading from the south east - straight over our farm. These would be planes from Amsterdam and Frankfurt, headed for Canada and Seattle. The transatlantic flights from London used to go out over Ireland, and of course we never saw any return flights, since they came in on the Jet Stream, directly West to East, rather than on the Great Circle. It seems to me that we very rarely see passenger planes flying over here now. Are there less of them? Do they go a different way now? Am I just too stupid to notice? Whatever, it used to be a commonplace here to see vapour trails against the blue sky, coming over the Cheviots at 35,000 feet and straight over here - I seldom see them now. Maybe this is a pandemic thing.

 

Another photo - same day. This is Horace, my 1989 Land Rover 90, next to the gate onto the lane. Horace was a lot of fun, but it cost a fortune to keep him on the road! [An LR 90 was what they called Defenders before they were Defenders]

In case you are mad enough to want to listen to it, the recording - my personal Time Capsule! - is on Google Drive. If you click on this link, you should be allowed to open a folder which contains 2 half-hour files - a Sunday morning in my garden, 20 years ago, horses walking past and the lot. If you know your birds, see who was there! If you wish to download it that's OK, but please don't abuse the share rights!

Hooptedoodle #401 - Maulwurfabwehr, anyone?

 

I have observed over the last week or so that a mole has been making a mess of one edge of our back lawn - just at the foot of the stone wall which keeps out The Deep Dark Forest. I had hoped that this was just a passing visitor, but the mess is getting worse and there are fresh entry holes, so I guess something will have to be done about it.

We've never had moles in the 20 years we've been here. When I first arrived, my next door neighbour had a fine collection of big, cartoon-style molehills, and so I bought myself an ultrasonic mole-scarer. I have no idea whether the thing worked, but we never had a mole subsequently, so maybe it did. When we were getting some landscaping done here, last Winter, we found the old mole-scarer in a border somewhere. I was tempted to fit new batteries (first for 19.5 years) and see if it still worked, but then I realised...

How can you test if an ultrasonic mole-scarer is working? If you can't hear the stupid thing, then the only proof you might get is if suddenly there is a crowd of moles carrying little suitcases on their way out.

We threw out the old gizmo in January, and forgot about it. Well, we may have to invest in another. Nowadays, of course, you can get solar powered ones, but there's still an act of faith in there somewhere. We bought ultrasonic mouse chasers for the garage at one time - no idea if they worked either, of course. Brilliant scope for a scam.

The whole idea of selling someone something that they can't prove works is very good. Echoes of those chaps who sold the Emperor his invisible suit.

I have no wish to hurt any moles, so discouraging them sounds a better idea, but I have to say that the only time you see moles in these parts is when there is a line of the things hanging on a fence somewhere, so maybe needs must.

I had a look online for painless ways of getting rid of moles, and found adverts for clinics in Orlando which will remove them with lasers, so I gave up on that.

Hooptedoodle #392 - An Old Friend, Welcome Back

 We had some new turf laid a couple of weeks ago, and it's been very dry weather since then. Though I've put the sprinklers on a couple of times, the new turf is definitely looking a bit rough.

Since the gardener is due to visit today, and since I am nervous about receiving a telling-off for not looking after the turf, I had the sprinklers going full blast on Tuesday until late. At around 11pm I put on the outside lights and went out to shut off the water. I was walking down the path when I realised that a hedgehog was walking alongside me - not bothered at all. I watched him saunter off into the hedge - I was really glad to see him. He may, of course, have been a her.

 

Not my photo - someone else's hedgehog, in daylight

I knew they were around - I've seen their droppings on the lawn recently. We used to get lots of them - I'm talking of nearly twenty years ago - you could hear them snuffling about in the garden at night, and in the woods at the back of our house. The hedgehogs used to suffer a few casualties - they sometimes used to get caught in the traps the farm ghillie set for rats, and one or two managed to get trapped in the lobster pots which were stacked opposite our house - one of the more complicated forms of suicide. Then they were gone. I suppose there were some around - we never saw any sign  of them. And now, after an extended absence, they are back.

Well, at least one is back. The photo is not mine, of course, it was dark last night and I had nothing with me to take a photo, but I'll try to keep an eye open from now on.

I'm pleased with that - over the years we've lost our Greenfinches and a few other friends, but the hedgehogs are back. Well, well.

Hooptedoodle #390 - March Morning Unlike Others

 

I'm delighted to see that the farming company have been busy smartening up the lane in from the Real World - new turf and daffodils on both verges, and they've fixed all the fences. This section is about 1/3 of a mile of road, and they've done both sides - just the thing to keep you busy on a Sunday afternoon.

Lovely Spring day here, so I am pleased to trot out one of my favourite Ted Hughes poems, which seemed apposite.

 

March Morning Unlike Others  [Ted Hughes - Season Songs (1975)]

Blue haze. Bees hanging in the air at the hive-mouth.
Crawling in prone stupor of sun
On the hive-lip. Snowdrops. Two buzzards,
Still-wings, each
Magnetized to the other,
Float orbits.
Cattle standing warm. Lit, happy stillness.
A raven, under the hill,
Coughing among bare oaks.
Aircraft, elated, splitting blue.
Leisure to stand. The knee-deep mud at the trough
Stiffening. Lambs freed to be foolish.

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out into the sun,
After the frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die.

 

Hooptedoodle #379a - Landscaping Work Complete - Tweaking Starts Now

 

After a complete washout on Wednesday, Thursday was astonishing - everything happened at once - at one point we had 4 guys on site, and everything was finished by dusk. Wow.

On Wednesday, my 5 tonnes of whin chips arrived. I still don't understand how the lorry driver got from the lane into our driveway. I was scared to watch - I was convinced he was going to convert our gates into a hoop, but he managed very nicely. No damage, no fuss. I guess these guys are good at their jobs, basically.

11am Thursday, Grant the Serious Chainsaw Man arrived from Longformacus. No prisoners were taken, our two tree stumps were quickly converted into manageable blocks of timber, he cut them down to below ground level and the holes were filled with soil. No more trees. What trees?

Once some tidying and graveling had taken place, this is where the trees had been - one on either side of the steps in the centre of the photo. The patches of earth will certainly sink after a bit of rain, so I'll order in a load of composted soil to level things up.

Friday morning. With the site almost completely cleared, this is the new aspect to our driveway - it is now straight, and the overhanging junipers on the right are no more.

We have always been very proud of the splendid blocks of stone, taken from our local beach, which line the drive...

...and we now have some more of these blocks visible; since this section was previously buried underneath the trees, it has not been seen since about 1990 - nice stones - pleased with this.

The whole front garden has changed a lot - big improvements in the drive and the parking areas, but it feels a bit odd at present. Our house is now visible from the lane for the first time in living memory, and the garden seems rather flat and boring. Righto - some plans for planting are required!

 

Hooptedoodle #379 - Meanwhile, back in the Garden, Work Continues

The landscaping work continues, though things have slowed down a little as it becomes obvious that we need some heavier kit.

Barry the Iraq Vet has achieved wonders with the unwanted rhododendron bed. This has now been reshaped, squared off, dug out and dressed with hardcore, which has been tamped with a petrol-driven "whacking plate". The work on this part of the job took about two and a half days, and you can already see the potential improvement in the driveway. Gravel to follow.

Which brings us back to the overgrown juniper trees. This (above) is the state they were in at the start of last week - simple enough job? In fact they've been much tougher than expected - inside the greenery, these things have emerged as real monsters. Thus far, three big truckloads of wood and foliage have been taken to the Council's "green waste" site, and the junipers are now reduced to massive, twisted stumps which will require a far heavier chainsaw to cut up - I reckon we've maybe lost two days on this, not that it matters a lot at the moment. Bear in mind that these trees started life as a variety of juniper which was described as a shrub, expected to reach a height of 6 feet or so. Right.

Tomorrow, five 1-metric-tonne bags of 20mm whin chips are arriving from a builders' merchant in Kelso, in the Border country. It's clear that we aren't going to be ready to use them, but we can line up the bags on a "quiet" part of the site. Tomorrow's main tasks are going to be cutting down the stumps, digging down around them and grinding them to below ground level. After that, there is a lot of digging out of rubbish, leaf mould and a very large amount of sawdust which has accumulated during the deforestation exercise - then there should just be a big clean-up of the area and we are ready to spread the gravel. 

The picture here shows the ruin of the eastern juniper, when it was still about 5 feet tall - this is before we started work on the western one, which is looking pretty much intact in this view.

Some beautiful stone blocks are emerging from under these trees - most of this I've never seen before, since it was last exposed to daylight some years before I moved here. I'll get a photo of this when things are tidied up. The whole area is really opened up; we have to be careful here - last time we removed a tree (reluctantly - we had to - it was dangerous) we rather took a dislike to the garden for about 10 years, so we'll have to have some positive forward plans about what happens next. I need to talk to a proper garden designer. My problem with gardens is that I know when I see something I like, but I seem to have great difficulty in visualizing what layouts will look like - especially when we get into the 3D world of shrubs and bushes. 

I have to say, we've been remarkably lucky with the weather - any serious rain would slow us down a lot.