Dunvegan Head

The weather for the last few weeks has been just fantastic. There's been the occasional misty day, but we've had no worthwhile rain for weeks. It's really pretty warm right now, too.

Yesterday I took a walk to Dunvegan Head at the northern tip of the Duirinish peninsula. It's only a couple of miles to the Head from the nearest road, and there's brilliant cliff top scenery all the way...

....and deserted beaches....

....and the first Yellow Iris I've seen this year.

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I can see for miles and miles, and miles and miles...

 .... there's amazing coastal features too....

 ...and finally -  Dunvegan Head - with North Uist on the distant horizon.

Sparrows

Reading back through this blog, I've just come across  a post from August 2008 when I mentioned that we had just seen house sparrows in the garden for the first time.

Well, since then, they have become permanent residents, and are currently nesting in the roof for the second year. They can get through two fat balls a day, though are being helped in that task by the robins, blackbirds, tits, starlings, greenfinches and goldfinches. The chaffinches, dunnocks and thrushes haven't developed the technique of hanging on to the feeders, and wait on the ground for little bits that drop from above.

There's plenty of birds here now!

Cuckoo

Two springs ago, there were so many cuckoos about that at least one of them was in danger of extermination for shouting it's 'song' for ages at first light every morning (that's about 4.00 am at this time of year...)

Last spring, we were really worried, as there seemed to be virtually no cuckoos calling at all.

So this year, I am happy to report that everywhere you go on the island, cuckoos may again be heard, and I don't really mind being woken up by them...

Wild places

The tip of the Waternish peninsula, north from Trumpan, is uninhabited. It has a north west aspect and views over the Little Minch to the Outer Hebrides. It is not mountainous, but has a rounded hilly backbone. The hills are heather clad, and boggy on the tops. The peninsula is almost totally surrounded by sheer cliffs. Even on a calm sunny day you can almost 'feel' how remote and wild the countryside is.

And yet, in the 18th century, there was a farming township right at the exposed tip of the peninsula. Their township was called Bail an Tailleir, which translates as Tailor's Town. Today, the ruins have the name Unish.

There were 47 buildings and 15 enclosures in the township, and at least fifteen farmsteads. All around are extensive areas of lazy-beds.

Unish is first documented when it was leased in life rent to Donald Macleod for 306 merks in 1708. In 1788 a report to the British Fisheries Society found 10 married couples, 17 children, 30 unmarried adults, and two widowed adults in a total population of 69. The clearance of the township was certainly effected by the time of the first edition of the Ordnance Survey  map of 1880, when only a single house was in occupation.