h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gooday y'all.

Good to see you back Wazungu. Glad you had a wonderful holiday. Barra sounds like my idea of heaven: all that sea, light, colour and life. On Key West in Florida they have a tradition of gathering to watch the sunset at the end of the island, so when I was there on holiday I went to see the spectacle. It was very lovely but I have to say that the sunsets I saw at Mallaig looking towards Skye were much more vivid. What were those tyres doing on the beach? Were they part of the flotsam? That old fishing net is lethal to some marine life and birds that get tangled in it or try to swallow it. I saw a wildlife program about the sea eagles. They're real aerial acrobats. I'd love to see them in real life!

The Africam web cams have featured elephants, rhinos, giraffe, some kind of little dogs (like foxes, hard to tell what exactly) and leopards while you've been away. Some friends have been over for the bank holiday weekend and they haven't let me near my computer since I sat them down in front of it watching the Africam site. There was just the odd squeal of delight as another animal was spotted.

I don't begrudge Walter and Tasmania the skylarks - honestly Walter - but I can't help being a bit envious. I've started to get involved with the garden bird survey in my area and now I come to write down the actual numbers of birds in my garden, there are worryingly few. Just over the border in Northamptonshire, red kites and buzzards were reintroduced a short while ago and some friendly person has already poisoned them. What can you say? It certainly can't be worth trying again while there are people with that sort of attitude in the area.

I saw on the news that there's been heavy snow close to where the Olympics are to be held - heaviest for 30 years apparently. We don't really think of Australia as that sort of place - wintry - do we? You'll have to get over there with your shovel Walter. Ben can help. Dogs love messing about in snow. The hay-making season certainly is in full swing here. I work a 10 minute car journey from my home and for the past couple of weeks I seem to get stuck behind one tractor after another moving those huge cylindrical bales of hay from fields to barns. It'll be the corn next I expect.

Anytime Walter will be a pleasure.
Thankyou for the welcomes back.
StM I think the tyres originate on the islands. They have a problem getting rid of large rubbish. There's usually bits of car or tractor in any large area of sand dune. There's so much space there though that it doesn't bother me to see it and the storms and moving sand dunes soon cover it up. Nothing lasts very long. The priest's house on Mingulay that still had four walls and a roof four years ago has now lost the roof and front wall. Another couple of years and it will just be gable ends like the rest of the houses there. Those that can still be seen above the sand that is. The net was flotsam I think. Actually I'm not sure of the difference between flotsam and jetsam. It was unusual to find a large enough piece to use as an obstacle.

I think your african foxes might be jackals, very similar. Unless they were the Wild Dogs.I had the same thing happen when I showed my niece the cams. She wanted to look up pop groups but once she saw the africams wasn't interested in them anymore.

Gooday Wazungu and StM,

Oh Wazungu, you have sent me into a dream, which is very bad because I am supposed to be working with serious intent. Just a quick question: is a 'box of Tesco Hock' what we euphemistically call a 'wine cask' i.e. a foil-ish bladder enclosed by a cardboard outer and usually containing four litres of plonk? The reason I ask is this - how in such ideal drinking circumstances can you make one cask last a week?

StM, it is hard to believe that some warp-brain has been poisoning your kites and buzzards, but then we have idiots shooting our wedge-tailed eagles almost to extinction, shooting seals, shooting penguins. I mean, penguins for goodness' sake, killing one of them must represent the ultimate test of skill and daring to the hunter and of course they are in such demand as food for humans.

I don't know where this snow has been falling - it certainly isn't on us, unfortunately. We've had our usual flurries of snow, and the Mountain has got its usual cover, but nothing out of the ordinary, if anything it has been a 'below-normal' snow year. Maybe it was in the Australian Alps, which is perhaps 500kms away from Sydney. This is such a vast country, so of course you get tremendous variations in temperature form one region to another. Like Hobart will be 15 max today, Darwin will be 35 (that's near enough to 95 in the old money). Australia is actually about the size of the USA. Or put another way, it stretches east-west from about London to Moscow.

Ben the Vandal does like snow. He also likes eating his kennel, which is slowly disappearing before our eyes; at the current rate of attrition it won't see out another fortnight.

Must get on with some work, chat to you again later. Take care y'all.

Walter.

Good morning all.

I like the idea of nature taking care of rubbish disposal - even the big stuff. Nature's very resilient, given a chance. Is Mingulay completely uninhabited by human kind now? "Flotsam" refers to goods lost from ships wrecked at sea and "jetsam" refers to good jettisoned from ships and washed up on shore.

The little dogs probably were jackals. That seems most likely. It was hard to tell because they were some distance from the camera and the light wasn't that good.

Walter you forgot to take into account how many people Wazungu had to share the hock with. All relevant data have to be considered when spending a week or more, miles from the nearest branch of Tescos.

I no longer have any difficulty believing what idiots will shoot at. You may recall that I mentioned some way back in this thread that they breed pheasants to shoot on the land behind my house. How anyone can call pheasant shooting "sport" is beyond me. If they stuck bayonets on the ends of their guns and just stood still, the birds would probably accidentally hurl themselves on the pointy ends. Pheasants are big targets, can't fly very well and don't seem to have very good instincts for self-preservation. Penguins must be even easier targets. How could anyone muster sufficient malice to kill a penguin if they don't even intend to eat it? My brother has ponds in his garden with fish in. There's a magnificent heron that comes and takes liberties with the fish. Several of his neighbours have been very enthusiastic to help him out by shooting it. He would rather not lose the fish, but he's appalled to find there are so many people around who are keen to kill the fabulous heron.

Australia's bigger than I imagined. Maybe our weather forecasters were just gloating about the snow and exaggerating the severity of the weather because they envy Australia hosting the Olympics. Ben will just have to make do with sorting out his kennel then.

Gooday Wazungu and StM,

Wazungu, have you returned to 'normal' life yet? As for my question about the box of hock, I think StM has probably struck the right chord, but then if everyone brought a box along .........

You may recall that a short time ago I mentioned (an entirely apochryphal) tale about a bench seat going missing in my village. StM, your post about pheasants is about the best I have read on pheasant 'hunting'. As kids, we used to just walk up to their roosting bushes at night and literally grab them, stick them in a jacket and carry them home to Dad, who would then decide if we could keep them for a day or so as temporary additions to our menagerie, or whether they were to be released on the instant. We mostly had to let them go, and not without the odd scolding or two, because holding someone else's pheasants was generally regarded as very serious poaching. I've actually caught a rising pheasant as it attempted to do a more or less vertical take-off. If you have ever witnessed a pheasant shoot first-hand, and I hope you have not, you will know just what a disgusting spectacle it is, and I'm not speaking only about the slaughtered birds.

So, as I understand it, one year in that very same village where the bench seat so mysteriously disappeared, an entire season's pheasant hatchings, being readied for the big annual shoot-em-up, were released by an unknown person or persons. The local lord of the manor, as I understand it (and he very nearly became England's Prime Minister in the late 1950s - definitely no more clues) was not amused, and his gamekeeper vowed retribution. But the annual pheasant shoot weekend was undeniably the worst in memory. Sounds daft, I know, but it must have seemed right at the time. Although I still sometimes wonder about the statute of limitations.

Wazungu, any photographs? I have still not come out of the dreamy state that your description put me into. Take care both,

Walter.

Good evening both.
Walter, it was a Tesco winecask . But I'm not sure of the quantity - about 30 glasses I'd guess, between three people over 5 evenings. But we had to maintain a good example in front of the junior. Anyway, more than a glass and a half sends me to sleep. The 30 glasses weren't distributed equally!
I found it difficult back at work myself, my head is still full of sand, sea and sun. I really couldn't take work that seriously. But I only do a three day week so I'm off again today. Hope your work is going better than mine.
I have lots of photos but no way to put them on the net just now. I'll have to see if anyone else has any on which do it justice.

What's Ben's kennel made of? Have you tried putting that anti nail biting preparation on it? That'll stop any vandal - well any vandal that uses teeth. Might not work on village teenagers. Our bus shelter was slowly disintegrating due to them before someone mysteriously removed it altogether. Our disappeared bench has not returned yet.
Do you have a personal interest in the statute of limitations with regard to pheasants too?
I really didn't know Australia was that size either. I did know, mainly courtesy of Arthur Upfield, that it has a lot more to it than the beaches and Ayres rock desert that you usually see.

Why do some humans find it so difficult to live alongside other species. Maybe Kites and Buzzards get the occasional lamb, I know it's debatable but accepting that they do and that Peregrines get the odd racing pidgeon, Penguins a fish or two etc. but surely the human race has enough to share. We wouldn't have all our domesticated animals if it wasn't for the original wild species.

StM, Mingulay is now completely uninhabited. A few sheep are kept there and there was an artist camping for a summer. But apart from them and the occasional boat trippers it's left to the sea birds and rabbits. The man who took us out there had an uncle who was one of one of the last families to leave. His photo was on the booklet he showed us. The uncle's that is, he looked about ten then. All the children in the photo were barefoot. The houses were all one room only, some shared with the animals. But the owner of the island destroyed the pulley system for landing supplies to make it difficult for the islanders to return. So some must have wanted to. They moved to Vatersay and Barra.

Dear All

I don't mean to pry into what appears to be a wonderful conversation, though I hope that being a personal friend of Walter's (I live not 10 minutes drive from him) will allow me a sponsored introduction.

What I really wanted to say was about your astounding description of Barra, Wazungu. I have (apparently) some MacNeil in my background and Barra, as you probably know, is the seat of the clan chief (Kisimul castle to be precise). Your exposition has just compunded my long held desire to go there ... and to have a real bloody holiday for that matter (not a short hop-on hop-off visit). I would leave tomorrow, if I had the time or the money, and wasn't meant to be writing a PhD. Thank you for such an evocative image.

Best wishes to the three of you.
Bran.

Hello Bran, you're very welcome. Do you know why Walter takes such an interest in the statute of limitations?

Barra is beautiful, you should visit if you get the chance. Hopping on and hopping off might be difficult! The ferry from Oban takes 6 hours and returns the following day. The flight from Glasgow is once a day only I believe and is liable to turn back when it gets to Barra if the beach is too wet to land on.
You can't go there without hearing of MacNeils but according to the gossip on the Mingulay boat trip, the chief has sold Kisimul castle to the Scottish National Trust (or equivalent) for £1 and a bottle of whisky. .

Evening all

Hello Bran, nice to meet you. Scotland's children are everywhere aren't they? Have you any Scottish ancestry to report Walter? I admit to a Scottish dad. Wazungu, your moderation as a drinker of strong liquor is an example to us all and I for one will drink to that! Just think, if you'd got to Barra sooner and had thought to take a large bottle of whisky with you, you could have purchased a castle at a very reasonable price. Ah well, never mind.

Yes I have witnessed a pheasant shoot Walter. It's a sort of orgy of excess - a bit of a massacre. So the unknown person or persons who released the birds back at the village of the missing bench should be awarded a medal in my opinion. We don't lock our heroes up in England any more, do we? You should be safe to come back now.

I'm not sure about kites and buzzards taking lambs. I think around here (I live near the Leicestershire Northamptonshire border) it's more likely to be the people who run the pheasant shoots who'll kill birds of prey. D'you remember when I told you about the poisoned cats? I think it's probably the same sort of people. They lay down poison and traps for anything that might kill the pheasants or compete with them for food or habitat. That includes foxes, birds of prey, cats, squirrels - the lot.

You're right. It doesn't make sense for people to kill animals because they compete with us for food resources. I get really angry when I hear about seals or otters being killed because they eat fish. There are factory fishing vessels using sonar technology to find fish shoals and employing incredibly big nets of tiny gauge to more or less sterilize the sea of fish and then they blame seals and dolphins for eating all the fish. Breath-taking arrogance! I could start to rant just thinking about it.

Did the man who took you to Mingulay say why the owner wanted to get the islanders to leave? Wasn't sheep again, was it? Did you hear how those islands made a living? It would be lovely to visit but life must have been very hard for the people who lived there up until a few decades ago. At least they were able to move to nearby islands - unlike the victims of the highland clearances.

I've been meaning to tell you all, but kept forgetting about this item on the news the other evening. Some bunch of conservationists have started collecting old boots - sturdy but no longer up to the job of being footwear. They're placing the boots carefully in hedgerows and voles are taking up residence in them (voles are one of the endangered species). They've found it works brilliantly. Voles are doing better as a result and so are some of the species that prey on them - hawks of various sorts. I hope they air those boots first.

Gooday Wazungu and StM,

Who is this Bran the Explorer, that presumes upon my name without so much as a by your leave? I suspect an impostor. The REAL Bran could not have written eight lines without some reference to Celtic, Sub-Roman or Anglo-Saxon history. And if the REAL Bran did in fact live "not ten minutes drive" from me HE WOULD BE OVER THIS WEEKEND WITH A BOTTLE OF HOCK and a corkscrew.

Wazungu, Ben the Vandal's kennel is made of quite sturdy wood with some metal edging. Anti-nailbiting lotion? He loves it. Tabasco, chillis, red peppers, English mustard, any number of supposed dog-resistant proprietary mixtures, none of them deter him. No, Ben is intent upon reversing the usual order - his kennel is going to disappear into him. He has an absolutely lovely nature though, and as everyone says, 'he is just a pup, he'll grow out of it.' Mmm.

Do kites and buzzards take lambs? Our wedge-tailed eagles are sometimes shot because they are alleged to take lambs, but careful research has not yielded one single instance of an eagle taking a live lamb. And in a State that has several million sheep and only a few hundred thousand people, even if the eagles did take the occasional lamb we could probably stand the loss. Lambs are in much greater danger from uncontrolled and feral dogs than they are from birds of prey. And how anyone would want to kill a heron, even to save some goldfish, is completely beyond me.

I don't want this to become a rant or something, but I also find the 'reputation' of Peregrine Falcons is intriguing. I have kept both Peregrines and racing pigeons (yes, I'm weird, but everyone says I am getting better with age). In my village youth our neighbour, who had some of the best racing pigeons in the district, used to complain that it was always his best i.e. fastest birds that didn't return to the loft. It seemed strange to me then, and now, that a Peregrine would take out the swiftest birds rather than doing it easy and taking on the slow, tiring birds, which is what just about every other bird of prey does. Every time there was a big pigeon race in the area, our small loft would acquire a couple of stragglers, either birds that were exhausted or just curious and easily distracted. And the complaint would go up 'bloody falcons'. We used to return them, or notify their owners, and after a few days most birds had returned to base, but the Peregines' bad reputation persisted. A lot more racing pigeons died (and probably still do die) from shotgun pellets, colliding with wires, trees and motor vehicles, and being taken by cats, than ever came to grief from Peregrines.

I hope y'all have a lovely weekend. You too Bran. Take care,

Walter.

PS

Yes, StM, Wazungu's restraint is an example to us. It sounds like about two glasses of hock per day on Barra. Whoops.

Walter.

PPS

StM, you post came on as I was writing mine. Sorry for hogging the page, but just wanted to say how delightful your snippet on old boots and voles was. Definitely raised an already good day several more notches up the bar.

Walter

Good Morning Folks

A glorious day on our side of the planet. I can see out to the mouth of the Derwent River from our house, past the Ironpot lighthouse to open sea. It is a wonderful deep blue today. Apparently a top of 15 celcius expected – and I suspect that there is still snow on the mountain though haven’t ventured out today to confirm.

Walter, you can run but you can’t hide! If I was the real Bran indeed ... did you not spot the Celtic influence in the interest in Barra and clan chiefs? Wazungu ... thanks for the info about the sale of Kisimul. As far as I remember, it had been sold in the 18th (19th) century by a bankrupt chief and only bought back by another in the early 20th. A million pounds, eh? AND the bottle of whisky. I wonder what brand it was ... that would make the deal slightly better or slightly worse.

Interesting about the sea debris that end up on the beaches, though if I remember correctly wasn’t the book “Whisky Galore” about that sort of thing (with a more interesting type of flotsam? Was it on Barra or South Uist … not sure. Anyway, I was thinking of a tale from a friend who last year went on a waste collection trip to the very south-west of Tasmania. The south-west, for those who don’t know, is in the heart of World Heritage listed wilderness. Not a town for hundreds of miles, just forests, mountains, and unspoilt coastline. Or so I thought. Apparently, she told me, they collected several tons of litter that had washed up on several of the beaches! That blew me away. This place really is in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE ... yet the rubbish of the modern world had found its way there. And not stuff that is vaguely “romantic” like the nets you mention Wazungu, but crap like plastic bottles and other indestructables. I wonder how many merchant ships just toss stuff over the side rather than leave it till port?

Best get to work folks. Walter, we shall catch up soon.
Cheers to all.
Bran.

P.S. For some reason the punctuation on my post, that I typed up in Word, has come out looking like comic book swearing. Please ignore this if you can, though it probably does liven up the message.

Bran,

It must be you. All your stuff comes out like comic book swearing. No, sorry, that was uncalled for, I retract unreservedly.

Walter

I'm just off to work but I thought I'd quickly mention to Bran, if you have a look on my home page at my first and second journals, the first is full of the same "swearing" and my second, entitled the "em-dash blues" may help him to avoid future bad language. Also, if you use MS Outlook Express, it's easier to do your editing in a "New Mail" window and then copy it to an h2g2 forum.

Speak to ya later all. Sal

Good evening everyone,

Hey Bran, where did the million come from? It was £1.,according to the gossip anyway. The castle needs a lot of upkeep. Its not exactly easily accessible, being in the middle of the bay, which must dampen the price .
The Whisky Galore is on Eriskay, or was. Maybe some still is! But the film was made on Barra.

StM/Sal it might well have been sheep. The islanders made a living, or survived on fishing and a few crops. But the crop growing must have been very limited. They paid their rent for the island in seabirds which they collected from the cliffs.
BTW I will be hunting through the wardrobe for old boots but will the neighbours understand?
BTW2 Do you remember telling me not to buy a kettle lead because everyone has a spare in a cupboard somewhere? Yesterday I ignored you and bought one. This morning my kettle lept off where Iput it and now has no spout. Thats what comes of ignoring you. Does anyone need a spare kettle lead? And would the voles like a kettle with a hole in it do you think?

Its interesting to get a pigeon fancier's views on Peregrines! I have it on good authority, from someone actively protecting a Peregrine nesting site that he's seen the birds target a flock of homing pigeons. Although fast maybe their survival instincts are weaker.
Did you fly, (is there a more technical term?), your Peregrines Walter?

Dear All

Wazungu, clearly my sub conscious could not accept the fact that a castle could be sold for one pound, and I read it as one million! Lordy goodness. That does place a higher value on the quality of the scotch.

I took out my trusty British Atlas and had a look at where Mingulay is ... south of Barra after several more islands with great sounding names: Muldoanich, Sandray, Rosinish, etc. When did you say that it was vacated? I imagine that this has occurred (semi)recently on a number of the Hebrides? What would life be like living on them I wonder. I understand that some of the islands have been bought by rich Continentals.

Thanks for the tip StM. I'll try that in future. Great info about the Voles.

Cheers and have a great weekend.
Bran

Good Morning Everyone

Wazungu, I'm not the sort of person to say I told you so. On the bright side, you now have a spare lead. In five years time you'll probably have 3 spares. I'm not sure how many I have - 3, 4 or 5 I think (hard to say without counting them - I give them away to needy computer users from time to time). I use a whistling kettle on my gas cooker now because the electric ones only seem to last a couple of years. The voles might well take to your dead kettle. I bet boots are cosier though.

What did the island owner want with sea birds? I understand seagulls taste horrible - fishy and tough. I would have thought any bird that lives on fish would also taste fishy.

Walter, when my girls were young and naughty the dog training lady said I should never let them get into bad habits, like tearing things up because they tend not to grow out of bad habits - they grow into them. They used to be little imps but they're as good as gold now. Only one of them was a wrecker and I never left her alone with things she could wreck so now she's forgotten how much fun it was to destroy things.

I agree with you about this scape-goating of birds of prey. The idea of a falcon knocking itself out trying to catch the fastest pigeon and ignoring the slow, worn out, tired, knackered pigeons that are struggling to keep up, just doesn't make sense - it would be unnatural. That's not how natural selection works. Speaking of scape-goats, about 4 years ago I was walking my dogs down the lane where we live and I saw 5 foxes (2 adults, 3 cubs) strolling across a field full of sheep and lambs. The sheep and lambs didn't even move. They just ignored the foxes. A couple of weeks later all those foxes were dead - poisoned by the pheasant peasants I told you about. They didn't even poison them on their own land - they went to where the foxes were living in the quarry opposite and laid the poison by their earth. The quarry's full of rabbits that cause the local farmers a problem, eating their crops and that's what the foxes were living on mainly. They were also being fed by the quarry men, who were very upset when they found their friends had been killed.

Bran, the view from your house sounds spectacular. I bet you don't have to go very far afield to explore.

Evening all,
Bran, in answer to your question:
Sandray, Pabbay and Vatersay (now linked to Barra by a causeway) where inhabited to my knowledge, I don't know about the others.

Vatersay was "cleared" under pressure from the owner. One of the others, Sandray I think, lost all its men it a storm. They were caught while fishing. The remaining islanders couldn't survive and were taken to Barra mainly, but also Mingulay. I can't put dates on this but this is pre 1900. Mingulay also lost its population back then, to a plague.

The story is that no rent (The seabirds I mentioned earlier, which were a source of a prized oil, can't remember exactly what it was needed for.) arrived one year and a boat was sent out to find out why. There was no sign of life on the island, no chimney smoke and a young man, a MacPhee was landed to investigate. He found no one alive, signalled this to the boat and found when he went to return to it that it had left without him for fear of plague.
MacPhee's father noticed he was missing and started asking questions.
MacPhee senior and his then baby son were the sole survivors of another island community, on Egg, who were killed by fire in a cave, having taken refuge there during a Macleod raid.
The implication in the story is that it was because of this that MacPhee senior was told what had happened to his son and given a boat to go and rescue him.
Amazingly Mingulay was reinhabited after this plague but the Sandray storm brought a realisation of how exposed they were and life got too difficult there. I think the added people from Sandray were a factor plus the refusal of Government to help in any way. They had asked for help to build a slipway so that they didn't have to drag the fishing boats up onto the beach every day.
The last families left around 1910 I think. Although many went to Barra some managed to repopulate Vatersay, despite the owners attempts to stop this. Vatersay was still inhabited before the causeway was built within the last ten years. With the causeway it should do as well as Barra.

According to the Mingulay boatman it was people from Sandray that settled on Iona. But they called it Sandray out of homesickness. A visiting Bishop said the island was far to pretty to be called Sandray and renamed it Iona. If this is so, and I'm only passing on a story, it must have been earlier then all the rest of what I've written above. It suggests, going back in time, a lot of coming and going and raiding....etc among the islands.

I don't know who owns these islands now but the crofters and communities there have rights now which they didn't have before. I think the owners are a mixture of wealthy Scots, English, pop stars ......A co-operative on Barra now grazes sheep on Mingulay.