Sunday bird blogging

Here's the mate to the mallard I posted last weekend, and another picture of the pair watching the waves break on the beach at Loch Lomond.

Sunday bird blogging

A house sparrow by Loch Lomond.  Thousands of miles away, and the birds in the hedge outside my room were the same as the birds in the trees outside my bedroom in New York.

At least in the British Isles they're regarded merely as common; here, they're considered imported interlopers that barely qualify as birds. I have always had a ridiculous fondness for them (one of many reasons why I will never be a serious birdwatcher) since they are part of the reason I became interested in birds at all.

Six years ago, I was juggling a hugely stressful job with being a long-distance caretaker for my elderly mother in San Francisco when I began to have my own health issues: ulcers, severe anemia, migraines. After I had fainted one time too many in the office, my going out on disability started to seem like a very good idea to everyone in the vicinity, and I abruptly found myself at home, ill and alone.

You don't realize how much the structure of a job keeps you going until it isn't there anymore. I was really sick; I definitely needed to take some time and get better, but sometimes I felt as though there was nothing to hold me together and I was going to melt away like the witch in The Wizard of Oz.

I read, I watched tv, I did the crossword puzzle in the Times every day, I went to doctor after doctor for test upon test. I spent days barely able to get out of bed, and lying there, looking out the window, I started to notice the birds.

Mostly little brown birds that the guidebook I ordered informed me were house sparrows, but also starlings and crows and mourning doves and blue jays. One morning I watched a crow eating a pigeon on a nearby roof, while a pair of blue jays were flirting angrily on my fire escape: life in a microcosm, it felt like.

Mostly the sparrows kept me entertained. They hopped around the trees, yacking excitedly, yanking out the young leaves, reminding me of teenagers having a party while the parents were away. And at the same time they're somehow so alien. When you watch birds closely they seem far closer to reptiles than to mammals, and sometimes they barely seem terran. They are so strange and so beautiful, all around us, but nothing like us. And yet, I often think they saved me during that awful spring because they were so alive and that life was something to hold onto.

Sunday bird blogging

A barn swallow at Loch Lomond. They liked to hang out on the deck railings, and there were usually one or two to keep me company while I read or just watched the loch.

The shots below aren't as clear but you can see the tail feathers that give swallows that tuning fork shape when they fly.

Microclimates

Even for the British Isles, the weather in Loch Lomond has been remarkably indecisive. It's not just that it drizzles, then the sun comes out, then the rain pours down, all in the space of fifteen minutes; frequently it does all of them at the same time. More than once when I was out walking around in my plastic rain poncho, I'd be sweating from the sun beating down on me, but I couldn't take the stupid thing off because I was also being rained on. This morning I was sitting on my deck looking at a magazine when the sound of rain made me look up. It was raining, rather hard, on the deck next to me, but I was still dry, apart from the occasional ricochet.

I haven't actually read much since I've been here, and I haven't bought a paper or turned on the TV, because I'm finding the weather more than enough entertainment. The endless parade of microclimates, the light peeking through, growing, and then suddenly vanishing, the way the fields to my left can be bathed in sunlight while in front of me it's raining -- sometimes it actually makes me laugh out loud.

And the midges, by the way, seem to be bothered even less by the rain than I am.

Wild kingdom

Loch Lomond may be the most ridiculously idyllic place I've ever been. As I sit on my deck I can watch ducks and gulls on the loch, while a hedge full of sparrows chirps away. Plus a family of swans out for a swim. Plus bunnies.

Oh that magic feeling -- nowhere to go

The village of Luss is just down the road from the Lodge on Loch Lomond, where I'm staying. It consists of a couple of streets of flower-covered stone cottages, a rocky beach and a pier on the loch, two tearooms, and a parking lot and visitor center for accessing the hiking/biking trails.

Apart from using the hiking trails, or having some tea, or going for a speedboat ride on the loch, there is absolutely nothing to do here. It's perfect.

Under the rainbow

The weather changed every few minutes. It was mostly gray and misty, with brief downpours and even briefer flashes of sun.

But I never mind a little rain, especially if it's followed by rainbows over Scottish lochs.

Ye'll take the high road, and I'll take the low road

I left Edinburgh for Loch Lomond this morning. The good weather had vanished and it was pouring. The cab driver who took me to the train station said he thought those three days were it for summer. I told him I was going to Loch Lomond and he roared with laughter. "The weather's even worse there!" Then he shrugged. "At least when it rains, there's no midges."

The actual getting to Loch Lomond was a little challenging. I'd checked the transportation options before I left New York, and I knew that Balloch was as far as I could go by train, and that I probably had to change trains in Glasgow. I bought a ticket to Balloch from one of the machines, then asked the customer service people which train I should take.

That was quite the head-scratcher. Three different people considered the question, and the consensus was that I should just take the train right over there to Glasgow and ask again when I got there. "The lads in Glasgow will know where you go," one man told me. "This train goes to Queen Street Station and you'll need to go to the Central Station but it's just across the street. Then ask them which is the train to Balloch."

So an hour or so later I got off in Glasgow and found that the Central Station was not exactly "across the street." It was a ten-minute bus ride, but the bus came quickly and was free and I figured this gave me a chance to see a little of the Murder Capital of Europe.

And the lads at the Central Station were indeed able to help me -- they told me to go outside and take the free bus back to Queen Street Station.




The Scots sound so charming when they're giving you bad information that it's impossible to get irritated. Besides, if I hadn't made the unnecessary detour to Central Station I wouldn't have seen this lovely facade. Or these interesting windows across the street.






So finally I was on the local train to Balloch, and after thirty or forty stops (only a mild exaggeration) I was there!

Which appeared to be, at first glance, nowhere. A platform, an empty ticket office, and a few houses. I knew there was a Loch Lomond visitor's center, and water taxis to Luss, and buses, but there were no signs indicating where they might be. And I didn't feel like dragging my luggage around looking for them.

Fortunately a taxi appeared and the very nice driver promptly agreed to take me the last ten miles to my hotel. At least, I'm assuming he was nice because he appeared when I needed him and he took me where I wanted to go. But though he chatted most of the way, I only understood maybe one word in ten he said.

So after all that, could the very expensive room with the deck overlooking the loch possibly be worth it?

Yes. Definitely yes.