Stone Country – Landscapes and Lifescapes

A Crow Dictionary Feannag –  black asterisk of the sky,   fitheach  – a quartz-glinting raven’s eye, starrag  – the hoodie prowling the shore, cathag  – the sea-eyed jackdaw,   cnàmhach  – blood-billed chough of the machair, pioghaid  – chuckling, piebald joker, ròcas  – the belfry’s raucous rook, garagg  – what the carrion bird took, sgreuchan-coille  – my own oak-guide jay, we look to each to show us the way.   In their very names the Scottish hills call out the dwelling place of birds. A toponymical survey of most Scottish mountain ranges or lochs reveals the legacy of Scotland’s familiar montane birds. Around Loch Lomond and its parent hill we have: Meall an t-Seabhaig (mound of the peregrine), Creag na h Iolaire (rock of the eagle), the high stony Ptarmigan Ridge on Ben Lomond, or Coire na Baintighearna (corrie of the mountain linnets). By far the most common toponym is for crags and hills named after the ubiquitous mo...

The Moray Firth’s sand-bitten southern coast, between Findhorn and Nairn, is home to Scotland’s most cautionary tract of land. Now a wilderness of maritime forest, dunes, salt marsh and spits of sand, its human history has been dated to the Bronze Age, around 1300 BC, but it is a territory that since glacial times would have been mobile and mutable. The Laich of Moray is the fertile strip of plain squeezed between the foothills of the Cairngorms and the Moray Firth’s south coast. In Gaelic it is called Machair Mhoireibh (the machair of Moray), a perfect habitat for golf courses and rich arable farmland, threaded by the glacially-rivered straths of Nairn, Findhorn and Spey. Culbin is an old parish which is now buried under 28 square kilometres of duneland and recent forestry. Sweeping east of Narin and curving in to rise up to its greatest heights above the estuary of the River Findhorn, it is now managed by Forestry Commission Scotland, but it is notable that this is a humanl...

‘Rathlin: Nature and Folklore’  is on sale now for £9.99 at bookshops, on  Amazon  or direct from the publisher at  www.stonecountry.co.uk     Open publication  - Free  publishing  -  More history IRISH AUTHOR CHARTS 50 YEAR LOVE AFFAIR WITH ISLAND A FIFTY year love affair may feature in many tales, but a well known Northern Irish ecologist and writer is putting the island of Rathlin at the heart of his affections in a newly published book charting five decades of visits to its shores. Philip Watson is a naturalist who has worked on several continents, but it is the lure of life on Rathlin island, just off the north Antrim shoreline, that has called him to explore the island’s mythical history, sealife, birds and wondrous natural terrain in ‘Rathlin: Nature and Folklore’. Since his first glimpse in 1960 of her white chalk cliffs and dark basalts glinting in the sun, the 16 year old birdwatcher studying golden eagles on the main...

The Sky Handbook has just been published and it's everything to do about the sky above, not Skye the island as some have thought! It's a book from my other life as an author and writer, and if you think you might want to buy one as a gift or for yourself, follow the link below and thankyou in advance!! THE SKY HANDBOOK This book is ideal for a gift...and anyone interested in the cosmos, the stars and our planet's future. It's perfect for the intelligent child (is that not every child?!) and for any adults who are confused about the stars and climate change etc (that would be most adults)...this book will clear things up!! It introduces the mysteries of the universe to us, covering: the origins of our universe; the stars, constellations and solar system; astronomers; our atmosphere and weather, phenomena from the Aurora Borealis to tornadoes; flight and space exploration; pollution; climate change and more! John Watson is an author, publisher, ...