Ramsey and Langness

The last post - possibly.

Thursday 11th June, 2015.

I am in “Stop the world, I want to get off” mode.  Life has been rather too busy and stressful recently.  There is too much to do in the house and garden and the last straw was when some bees decided to set up home in our chimney.  So I have decided that this will be the last post on this blog - perhaps for a few months, perhaps forever.   The blog has passed its use by date anyway.  It started life as a record of our weekly hikes on the Island, before deteriorating into a garden blog with a just few short walks included.  Now I have recorded a whole year in the garden and the photos are becoming more or less a repeat of those that I posted last year, so it seems like a good time to stop.  But I may be tempted to start again - hence the possibly in the title.

PS I changed my mind and started a new garden blog before the end of June. It is called Reflections and can be found at http://caillagh.blogspot.com/

This week started with Mad Sunday.  It was only half as mad as usual.  The roads were closed in the afternoon because it was too windy to race on Saturday and the first races of 2015 were postponed.  

We drove into Ramsey before the madness started to buy the newspapers.  There was a crowd of visitors on the river - Canada geese.  We have never seen so many before.  I thought at first that they might have stopped for a rest during a migration.  

But when we got home I read in a bird book that Canada geese are flightless during their moult after the breeding season and usually seek out the safety of sheltered water.  I had noticed that a lot of the birds were preening so that is the most likely reason for the gathering of geese.

There were a few fans circulating around the course by the time we drove home.

The bee problem may have been solved but I am not counting chickens yet.  According to an expert on the internet there is a short window of opportunity, about five days, when you can persuade a swarm to move on from a chimney by lighting a smoky fire and keeping it burning for some time.  After that they are almost impossible to shift and it becomes dangerous to light a fire because there is the risk of the wax melting and catching alight.  We tried the smoky fire trick on Monday and hoped for the best.  I think they have gone but there were still a couple of bees near the chimney the next morning.

TT race week is always frustrating because we never know when the races will be delayed and the road closure schedule changed.  Most delays are caused by adverse weather but this year there was an added complication - an accident on the course just before the roads closed on Monday.  This meant that one of Monday’s races and some of the practice sessions had to be held on Tuesday.  Tuesday was the day that our son was flying back to London so I had to leave home before I got trapped inside the course and couldn’t return until the roads reopened.  

The Ramsey Sprints were taking place as well as the race.  Finding parking was quite a problem.  There were a few spaces in the car parks but they were all in two hour disk zones but we eventually found a space in a side road near the Queen’s Pier and then walked back down Waterloo Road.  I wanted to take a photo of the crowds in Parliament Square from the library window.  The scene wasn’t as busy as usual during TT week because the road was closed and all the bikes had been banished from the small parking area in front of the town hall.

Then our son suggested watching from Coronation Park so we crossed the footbridge and found a place in the shade to wait for the race to start. 

There were fans from all over the world including these members of the King’s Brigade Swaziland.

Eventually the first bikes arrived in Ramsey and I got a few photos of them nearly taking off as they accelerated up the road towards the footbridge - after slowing down for the the sharp turn from Lezayre Road into Parliament Square.

This biker was turning up the fast corner at May Hill.

After the race was over, we met back at the car and headed south - driving down the coast road through Laxey and Douglas.  It was too early to check in at the airport so we continued to Derbyhaven to see whether there were any interesting wading birds in the little shallow bay.

The only birds were a long way away but I was able to pick out a heron and zoomed in on it.

It was only when I got home and saw the photo on the computer that I noticed that the large white bird behind the heron looked like a goose - probably a domestic goose but according to this conversation on the Manx Birdlife Facebook page - possibly a snow goose.

Saturday, 9th May we had a report of a "white goose with black wing tips" (possibly a snow goose) in Langness Golf Course. If anyone have seen such bird could you please let us know. Thanks!

• 12 May at 21:08
• Liz Charter There's often a domestic goose on the breakwater!
• Manx BirdLife The observer seem to know his birds..

We drove on to St Michael’s Isle at the northern end of the Langness peninsula.  There was a smallish black bird and I took a number of photos of it before I realised that it wasn’t an unusual bird -  just a starling.  Unusual for me though - because we don’t get starlings in our garden.

Then we wandered around in the warm sunshine - chasing butterflies.  I only saw three varieties.  There were plenty of small heaths . . . .

. . . as well as three green veined whites which were apparently fighting or having an orgy.  It was hard to tell.  They were flapping around so frantically that my photos are just a blur.  And there was one small copper which settled on some thrift but flew away before I managed to get a photo.

We watched meadow pipits doing their skylark impression overhead, pied wagtails strutting along, and even saw a couple of oystercatchers sunbathing on the rocks.  

I would like to go back with binoculars because we couldn’t get close enough to identify all the birds.  There were some ducks and one had babies.  We assumed they were all mallard but couldn’t be absolutely sure.

Parts of the little island are like a natural rock garden, with patches of pink thrift, white sea campion, yellow bird’s foot trefoil and blue spring squill.  

It was a completely different world to the excitement of the TT experience.  A case of  “Far from the madding crowd”?  No, it would be unfair to compare the heroism of the TT riders to “ignoble strife”.