Category Archives: Scotland

Art, Scotland, Travel

Glasgow Street Art

We’ve been taking a closer look at Glasgow street art, from subtle graffiti, that pops up the more you look, like Venemouse’s pussies on junction boxes and shelters.

To the fluid free expression on the free wall by the embankment of the River Clyde which changes day by day, hour by hour. Artists adding their work with great respect for the skill and the importance of the message — the work, peer-reviewed to be best, being left the longest before being overpainted.

Like this, above, by Gordie Livingston.

Below is Grace, our guide to the city showing us the World’s Most Economical Taxi by Rogue One containing the artist’s self portrait as the driver and commissioned by the owner of the wall, a tribute to her husband, a cabby.

Larger works in the city are sponsored by business, local government or arts organisations, representing aspects of the city.

Glaswegians are very proud of Billy Connolly.

Here he is in youth on the left, after a painting by Jack Vettriano, in a massive mural by Rogue One and Artpistol. On the right, he is seen in later life.

Murals project the image of the university

And the community

This is the Keeper of the Light by Smug a huge photo-realistic representation of the diversity of 2025 Glasgow which reminded me of something we had seen the day before in the Burrell Art Gallery, Glasgow.

A statue of Guanyin (1100-1200), a Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy with androgenous face and body, looking neither male nor female, celebrated as a Trans icon.

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adventure, Birds, Ecology, Scotland

Isle of May

The Isle of May is in the North Sea, 5 miles from the mainland of Scotland, off the East coast in the mouth of the Firth of Forth, we visit it in May and the ocean is like a mill pond.

Looking back towards the mainland and Anstruther.
Our boat lands in the natural inlet amidst a colony of artic tern.
Arctic Tern with attitude
The grey seals in the inlet can’t be bothered to move. This is where they come to breed but most have gone now.

As we head off up the footpath to the side of the island favoured by the seabirds, because of the high cliffs, a cloud of kittiwake announce themselves — lots of birds say their name but none as clearly or as often as the kittiwake! There are two species of Kittiwake in the world — the black-legged and the red-legged. They are thus easily spotted and identified and are enchanting little gulls.

The British Kittiwakes are Black Legged

There were more than 3000 breeding pairs on the Island at a recent count but they do not restrict themselves to off-shore Islands — we saw them on cliffs in Dunbar.

There are about 200,000 seabirds on May which is less than a mile long and 1/3 mile wide, and we have come to see some of the ones that we do not see on the mainland, up close, and to appreciate the scale of the seabird colony.

Puffins

The puffins, there are about 40,000 pairs, nest on the grassy tops and that is where the rabbits come in. They dig the holes that the puffins populate.

Puffins looking out to sea, waiting for their mates to return from sea with their bills loaded with sand eels.

They are very alert — their young pufflings are very vulnerable until they can fly and swim. Airborne predators can reach the island like this Greater Black Backed Gull.

Opportunist Predator

The next layer down in this colony are the auks — the Razorbills (about 3000 breeding pairs) near the tops of the rocky cliffs and the Guillemots (23,000 breeding pairs), lower down nearer the sea.

Razorbills with the heavy duty bill.
Guillemots nearer the water — the one on the left is a Bridled Guillemot
Guillemots

On the sea, bobbing along in twos and threes are Eider drakes like these fine fellows, we stepped over a number of their mates incubating eggs in rocky crevices along the foot path.

Eider duck
Near the harbour inlet some Shag are nesting.

As we leave, the boat circumnavigates this magic isle so that we can see the dramatic sea cliffs from below and we can really appreciate the safety they afford to the hundreds of thousands of nesting birds. Nobody climbs them to collect eggs any more. But, no longer manned, the lighthouse and the foghorns still protects shipping in the Forth as they has since 1635!

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adventure, Birds, Scotland

Mull

Mull is one of the nearer Inner Hebrides islands off the west coast of Scotland and must have had a long, lonely winter with travel restricted and it’s normal waves of challenging weather piling in from the North Atlantic. As we had travelled northward, although already mid-May, there was snow on the tops of the hills from the Lake District onwards.

To reach its weather scoured hillsides we took the ferry — sadly confined to our vehicles — we could only look up at the sky but the skies in Mull say everything!

View back towards the mainland.
Greeted by the harbour hoodie!
We pass the photogenic hulks and the Sun comes out for a moment!
Generally it is chilly — but the restless climate is never the same for more than 20 minutes!
This red dear stag is waiting for his antlers to grow and is the reason the fences are all six feet high!
There is an icy blast — here’s Linda, dressed appropriately and keeping moving…
Looking brighter?

So we attempted a long held ambition of mine to visit Iona, a smaller island off the southern most tip of Mull, famed for its spiritual intensity (and corn crakes –double whammy!)

Waiting for the ferry — actually they are pretending not to be interested in Robson Green in his new fishing togs (over Bill’s left shoulder) about to be tossed in the elements to make a film about lobsters.

The area on Iona covered by iris beds where the crakes used to hide and make the tourists jump with their strange calls seemed, to our birders, much reduced from their previous visits — there seemed to be very many sheep and the sward everywhere we looked had been grazed to within an millimetre of its life during the long winter. Doubly disappointed we did not stay long.

Bill, having given up on the corn crake, looks for something more transcendental!
Back on Mull — every cloud… the kiosk on the quay — note the 1/2 lobster and chips — we had scallops and chips (to share) — very good!
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