{"id":2549,"date":"2014-10-05T07:19:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T07:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2014-10-05T07:19:04","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T07:19:04","slug":"the-north-circular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=2549","title":{"rendered":"The North, Circular"},"content":{"rendered":"

Affairs of the stomach much on my mind these days, so it was with rising interest that I noted a factoid from the appendices to one of my favourite books, The Poetry of Birds*. \u00a0 The noble bird the gannet derives its name from the Scottish word gant or gaunt which means to yawn by opening the mouth.\u00a0\u00a0 “Eh?” I first thought, but then realised that some of us still say “I’m gantin’ on a cup o’ tea”.\u00a0\u00a0 If you’ve never seen a gannet dive for fish,\u00a0 it forms a W shape with its body and enters the water like a missile.\u00a0 The old Norse name for gannet is Sula, from which the name Solan Goose is obtained and that brings us full circle to the the Sula Mhor <\/em>which is, of course, you are ahead of me here, Calum McKenzie’s boat in Plockton<\/a>, and we now all know that means Big Gannet.\u00a0\u00a0 And lastly, Gannet was the nickname for Paul’s friend Richard who introduced him to the Edinburgh Players drama group….the rest is history.<\/p>\n

\"not
not taken by me, nicked it offy Google<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seabirds always prove to me that they are so closely related to fish, they’re all just doing the same things but in a different medium.\u00a0 Look at a cormorant and tell me that’s not a fish with feathers.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was to be all about clearing the loft, but a delay at the hairdresser meant it was time for lunch once I was released from that perfum’d hell,\u00a0 and after a frankly bizarre salad at Dobbie’s** (why bother to advertise food you do not sell???) the weather moved briskly from shocking to glorious, so we managed to invent a reason for tootling,\u00a0 dropped by a potential Astro dark site, in a beautiful Perthshire glen, then pointed the car at Vane Farm.\u00a0 The fields were covered with huge groups of geese and one huge group of curlew.\u00a0 Large flocks of mallard roosted in the field beside flocks of mute swans, wigeon and two cormorants.\u00a0 The last of these confused some viewers, as indeed they confused me the first time I saw them there, but they are fresh water as well as sea water birds, they’re not fussy, a fish is a fish.<\/p>\n

Not many birds on the wee garden feeders, the hedgerows are stuffed with free food just now and the birds disappear for a bit, but greenfinches were spotted. Incidentally, it is now waxwing time, if you see or hear of any flocks, please let me know, I’ll be there in my pyjamas, I don’t care.\u00a0 The day ended with thick golden sun light, and squally showers;\u00a0 we had a high-up view of the Fife and Perthshire skies, so we could see the thunderplumps as they roamed eastern Scotland.<\/p>\n

I was chatting with a similarly obsessed colleague who regularly sees flocks of up to 40 waxwings, but has never seen a flock of house sparrows.\u00a0 We are fortunate to have one in our front garden and also, if you happen to be in Dobbie’s Dunfermline, you may see a large flock of this bird outside in the hen house.\u00a0\u00a0 The chook-chooks happily share their food with these wee importunate rascals.\u00a0 After that you may view the aquarium section and ponder on the glories of evolution.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the beginning and gannets, and a poem by Norman MacCaig.<\/p>\n

Rhu Mor<\/p>\n

Gannets fall like the heads of tridents<\/p>\n

bombarding the green silk water<\/p>\n

off Rhu Mor.\u00a0 A salt seabeast of a timber<\/p>\n

pushes its long snout<\/p>\n

up on the sand, where a seal,<\/p>\n

struggling in the straightjacket of its own skin ,<\/p>\n

violently shuffles towards the frayed wave,<\/p>\n

the spinning sandgrains, the<\/p>\n

caves of green.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I sit in the dunes – the wind<\/p>\n

has moulded the sand in pastry frills<\/p>\n

and cornices:\u00a0 flights of grass<\/p>\n

are stuck in it – their smooth shafts shiver<\/p>\n

with trickling drops of light<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Space opens and from the heart of the matter<\/p>\n

sheds a descending grace that makes,<\/p>\n

for a moment, that naked thing, being,<\/p>\n

a thing to understand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I look out from it<\/p>\n

at the grave and simple elements<\/p>\n

gathered round a barrage of gannets<\/p>\n

whose detonations<\/p>\n

explode the green into white.<\/p>\n

* ed.\u00a0 Simon Armitage & Tim Dee, Penguin 2011.\u00a0 Strangely absent from my top nine books.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, there’s a moveable feast for you.<\/p>\n

** I only wanted a salad that I had picked by myself.\u00a0 It’s about all I can eat in public just now so I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request. Yes, I am a grumpy cow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Affairs of the stomach much on my mind these days, so it was with rising interest that I noted a factoid from the appendices to one of my favourite books, The Poetry of Birds*. \u00a0 The noble bird the gannet derives its name from the Scottish word gant or gaunt which means to yawn by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28,7,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-birds-wildlife","category-fife","category-kirsty","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}