Wednesday 28 May 2014

Back to sheep work

Farmer has been checking the sheep on a daily basis, but despite this, he does not have eyes all over the farm all of the time.  One of the advantages of having holidaymakers walking here is that they do sometimes see something that Farmer didn't see when he was checking along the coast - and more importantly they let us know.  That is always good! It means we can do something about it. Yesterday a woman mentioned a ewe on a cliff, so he went off to see if the ewe was still there.  She wasn't.  Thankfully there was no sign at the foot of the cliff of an accident either.  So all was well.

The lambs are growing well, and it is time to bring them into the fank for counting and a bit of TLC - tick repellent and a vaccination.   Farmer has some maintenance to do on the fank before they come in, involving a gate and recycling some sheets of tin from the old schoolhouse, which he has been saving for just that reason.  (They might come in handy - they certainly have.)


It was unbelievably calm and ethereal this morning as I drove back from posting my camera to the repairers.


There are dozens of heath spotted orchids flowering just now.





This tiny nest of eggs is right beside the track in the Haunn field.  It illustrates just how important it is to keep dogs on leads, as these eggs could be gobbled up fairly fast by a hungry dog..



The fank repair.


Down to beyond Haunn this evening, the light was beautiful. 




Prasad has moved his blog to a new website: It is now at www.treshnishbirdlog.co.uk.  He saw two leverets yesterday, which was really exciting. However the brutality of nature had its way, and one of them fell prey to a hooded crow.  We can only hope the other one managed to survive.  What a rocky road.  

We are really fond of the hares, they appear to trust us by coming so close to our house and Prasad's  - so much hope invested in them breeding successfully, so it was really sad to read that account on his blog.