No 57. Summer Days.

A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.

As we sink through Autumn into Winter I think of that old song “Summer Days are here again”. How is it that so many people tell us how good the summers were when they were young? The sun always shone, the larks sang, the water was warm. And so it was, because our memories seem to blot out the storms and the cold days, well, almost.
Summer brought out the flies, birds nesting, rabbits doing what rabbits do best. Bluebottles buzzing around the stone dykes, a spider’s web catching one and a different buzzing, higher pitched, as if a bluebottle suffered from terror, which I am sure it did. As well it might with a hungry spider coming. We watched with childhood fascination the process of nature, this small spider fastening onto the big bluebottle that soon stopped his struggles, anaesthetized and spun into a web cocoon of silk to later become a spider’s dinner. In a few days we came back to the spider’s web to see the shriveled shell of our bluebottle, its substance sucked out. We did better than that. We caught a bluebottle against a windowpane in the house and took it to the spider, cruelly popping it onto the web and watching to see the tiny hidden spider appear in response to the fly’s struggles, a message telegraphed along the slender filaments to its hidden nest. This David and Goliath struggle interested us greatly, and just sometimes the Bluebottle managed to break free, but not often. Smaller flies of course were caught too, but the Bluebottle was our delight.
The Cabbage White Butterfly featured in our Biology. Cursed by all gardeners and by farmers trying to grow cabbages in the field in the vegetable rows, the Cabbage White was Stronsay’s all too prolific butterfly. We saw a Red Admiral now and again but were not too well placed for the multiplicity of butterflies found further south.
At home we would find a chrysalis hidden in an outside corner of a wooden window frame, well camouflaged in mottled grey-green, safely cocooned and attached by slender but strong threads of silk against all the buffetings of winter storms. Gently prise it from its attachment and put it in a jam jar with a lid on it. Then wait for Spring, vaguely seeing the slow metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly through the thin skin of the chrysalis, a frequent if not every day look to see how it was getting on.
This was done at School too, our teacher asking for anyone who found a chrysalis to take it with us. Not too many to reach the number she wanted, but several to put in jam jars and watch with care. As summer approached we watched with great attention to see the first sign of the chrysalis splitting along the back and the wet new butterfly emerge stage by stage. Wings at first hardly discernable, lying flat along the slim body, but slowly they stretched and filled and became the hallmark white wings of the Cabbage White. Then we let it fly away, no doubt to find a cabbage to start all over again. Presumably it had to find a mate, and often we saw a couple locked rather too close together, mighty suspicious.
Our lesson with the Butterfly was not yet over. Now and again a chrysalis did not produce a butterfly. Instead it produced a small tiny creature leaving the empty shell. The Ichneumon Fly had beaten us. This predatory fly, or wasp as it is sometimes called, lays its eggs in a suitable caterpillar before it turns into a chrysalis, carrying the seeds of its own destruction. So over the winter the fly grub slowly eats its way through its host, the original oven-ready meal. Such is nature.
Next on our list of home made Biology was to find a rabbit’s nest. Not the proverbial burrow but the short shallow burrow a female rabbit makes to have her young, solitary and away from the warren. Not easy to find, the entrance covered over and well hidden by the mother when she leaves the nest to eat. Inside at arms length by about three feet was her nest, lined with downy fur and soft as soft is. Nestled in that would be about six or seven warm little rabbits. If we found one soon enough their eyes would not even be open. The mother rabbit - doe if you wish - did not stay long with the young, just enough time to suckle them and them off again with the nest once more safely camouflaged. There was no need to stay to keep the little ones warm, the soft fur-lined nest took care of that. We seldom ever found a nest with the doe inside, indeed I cannot recall even one. Later as the young rabbits grew the nest burrow was no longer filled in and the little ones ventured outside their home, but quick as a flash to get back in at the approach of anything.
There was the joy of turning over a flat stone, to see the forkytails and the earwigs and the cockroaches hidden there. The forkytails would small-jump their way out of sight. I think the earwigs name and reputation made us fear they would get into our ears and burrow into our tiny brains. An old wives tale, but we believed it. Evil looking things.
Centipedes too. We never were able to verify the leg count. They too could move fast, an odd scurrying twisting gait. There were other little denizens but the above were the main ones. There were small clumps of whitish eggs, what they were I do not know. Occasionally we found an earthworm sheltered there. Had a competition to find the largest one.
Birds were in their majesty. Blackbirds singing, a thrush in wonderful song in a white rose bush which grew in the garden, music I can still in memory hear, the mavis of Robert Burns. ( and his wonderful song ):-

I have heard the mavis singing,
His love song to the morn,
I have seen the dew drop clinging,
To the rose just newly born.
But a sweeter song has cheer'd me,
At the ev'ning's gentle close,
And I've seen an eye still brighter,
Than the dew drop on the rose.
'Twas thy voice, my gentle Mary,
And thine artless winning smile,
That made this world an Eden,
Bonnie Mary of Argyll.
( Karen - if above lines included might stop here )

Tho' thy voice may lose its sweetness,
And thine eye its brightness too,
Tho' thy step may lack its fleetness,
And thy hair its sunny hue.
Still to me wilt thou be dearer,
Than all the world shall own,
I have loved thee for thy beauty,
But not for that alone.
I have watched thy heart, dear Mary,
And its goodness was the wile,
That has made thee mine for ever,
Bonnie Mary of Argyll.

So many of our birds today seem so greatly reduced in numbers. Except last summer. Sharon and I went to my native Stronsay and up to Rousam Head, farmed by ourselves from 1893 to 1913. On the heather covered moor there were three wind turbines, erected quite some years ago. The area had been reseeded years ago under a Government scheme so the heather was now cleared in places, replaced with grass clumps, circular patches of white clover in wonderful scented blossom, some bare earth. The day was warm, the sky was blue, no wind, just like old times. On the ground were many small coveys of young lapwings, tiny mottled scurrying chicks herded by their mother. Lapwings have not more than four each, but some had gathered together and several mothers had a clutch of chicks shared. So many in one place took us quite by surprise. And above us sang so many larks, a heavenly chorus. The acoustics were superb. It was an effort of will for us to leave that magic spot.

We went down to the old farmhouse of the Bu’ where our father had spent his youth and into the kitchen. Sat over coffee with Ian Stevenson at the old kitchen table where a long time ago our Uncle John, while still a medical student, in an emergency, successfully took out the appendix of his brother our Uncle Bill. We talked with Ian of the larks and the tee-icks up on Rousam Head. He told us they were so plentiful because all the predatory birds, blackbacks, hoodie crows, ravens, skuas, hawks, peregrine falcons, shy away from the slowly moving turbine blades and underneath them was a haven for these tiny birds who flourished in the safety. I have read of the same phenonomen elsewhere, and wondered.