Late Summer

Late Summer and the hills around my island home are alive with the chitter-chatter of rambunctious oyster catchers. Descending in boisterous flocks they strut on bright legs, their bold bills jack hammering the ground for bugs & beetles. Curlews nesting on the surrounding moorland and hills sound out their plaintive cry as they soar overhead, their curved bills cutting a crescent in the sky.

Blankets of heather in magenta, mauve & pink swathes the hills as the heather blooms in abandon. Tired after their long spring and summer of nurturing their offspring, tired ewes still lovingly shepherd their now fat lambs from morning to dusk.

Brodick Bay, Lamlash Bay and Loch Ranza are peppered with the bobbing white hills of visiting yachts, moored overnight like washed up flotsam.

The distinctive red, white & black livery of the island ferries shuttle to and fro to the mainland, regularly disgorging their cargo of visitors onto Arran shores. The wee Co op strives like Sisyphus in its never ending task of keeping its shelves stocked, picked clean as they are by the swell of seasonal visitors.

All things pass though and as the heather loses its heady hue and the bracken fades to brown, so the influx of tourists slows to a trickle. The nesting birds see their young fledge and leave to make their own way and the hills around our home resound with the cries of ewes missing their lambs. The long, light evenings reluctantly start to draw in, ceding their daylight hours to the oncoming Autumn, knocking at the door ready with a beauty and a wildness all of its own.