Linda Brown
It’s a grand day. The sun shines and the temperature is pleasantly mild. Birdsong, uplifting and joyous, resonates in the still morning air.
I’m wandering through the woods at Brown’s Road on the south side of the River Irvine at Newmilns. These woods are home territory for me; I’ve been exploring them ever since I could toddle (and that wasn’t yesterday).
Meandering among the trees, I spy a welcome sign of spring peeking above the lush greenery sprouting from the woodland floor – the delicate, white, star-shaped flowers of Allium ursinum, a bulbous perennial more commonly known as ramsons or wild garlic. The plant I’ve spotted is an early bloomer; the surrounding ramsons are still waking from their long winter slumber and have yet to produce flowers.
Every spring, wild garlic flourishes in abundance here. So, it won’t be long now until the ground is covered by a white floral carpet, and a pungent oniony scent wafts through the woods drawing me in like a Bisto Kid to marvel at its beauty and, of course, practise my photography skills.
A harassed wren darts, a blur of speckled brown feathers, among the undergrowth and fallen branches. His strident tic-tic-tic call seems to emphasise his crabbitness. Emerging from under a bush, he bursts into flight and lands on the moss-covered trunk of a nearby tree.
His sharp beak digs into the velvety green blanket covering the bark, and he teases out some fine threads. With mossy treasure clamped in his beak, he hops onto a sturdy twig, checks out his getaway route, then takes off, vanishing back under the foliage on the woodland floor.
This is nesting season, of course, and the wren has just acquired some lovely soft material to line one of the many nests he will construct in tree crevices or hollow stumps in an effort to impress potential mates – a bit of a lad, he will most likely woo more than one female.
At home, my garden nesting box has attracted a pair of blue tits. Currently, the female zooming back and forth like a little feathered missile tanked up on Red Bull, is carrying all sorts of leaves, grasses and feathers to pad out their nursery. The male tit follows close behind her acting as her bodyguard and preventing unwanted attention from rival males. I’m excited to watch their progress via a small camera fixed inside to a corner of the box. There is bound to be lots of nail-biting drama, like a birdy version of Big Brother.
I make my way to the riverbank and stand to watch a noisy pair of white throated dippers. Whistling and trilling, they bob along the stony water’s edge, then zip up and down the river collecting twigs for their own nest, secreted somewhere in amongst rocks alongside the Irvine. My presence spooks a mother duck drifting leisurely downstream followed by a flotilla of tiny ducklings. She makes an abrupt about-turn and begins to paddle upstream. Her startled babies birl around then fall back into formation in her wake. She has a big brood to look after – I try to count them – one, two, three… Eleven? I focus my camera on them to capture a family shot, but they glide through the waters so fast and I can’t fit them all into the frame. As the duck and her entourage disappear from view, I wonder if all eleven ducklings will survive the next few weeks. Predators including rats and weasels, and even fellow birds like herons and crows, find baby ducks easy and tasty prey.
Time to make tracks and move on. Cutting through the trees, I retrace my steps to the tarmac road along dirt paths well-trodden over decades by legions of local children. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still conjure up an image of my eight-year-old self, bounding through these woods, pretending I was one of The Famous Five. Always George, never Anne.
Brown’s Road, running parallel to the river, stretches for over a mile to Darvel. Closed to through traffic since a landslip many years ago, the old road these days is only used by vehicles to access the adjoining Lanfine Estate and adjacent fields. It is well-walked by ramblers, dog-walkers and families.
Stomping uphill (the only wee hill along what is a flat easy-walking road) I’m conscious of the still visible evidence of January’s Storm Eowyn. Gaping gaps along the tree-lined route and the debris of the clear-up – raw stumps, broken branches, slivers of wood andbark – indicate where tall trees once stood until they became casualties of the storm’s ferocious winds.
On the other side of the hill, I drop down to what was Newmilns Dam. Sadly, in 2012, after over a century of holding back the upper river, erosion caused the dam (or weir) to partially collapse into the water, resulting in the swift demolition and removal of the crumbling remains for safety reasons. Nowadays, you would hardly know the dam had ever existed. All that’s left is a low wall along the riverbank and memories. When I was little my parents used to bring me here to watch for salmon loupin the dam, battling to make the jump in fast frothy water, determined to reach their spawning grounds upriver. Salmon and brown trout are still in the river, so I’m told by local fishermen, but not in the quantities they once were.
As I approach the area of the old dam, I’m astonished to spot a cormorant standing guard on a boulder mid-river, his beady eyes fixed on the water. Given the cormorant’s voracious appetite for fish, I can only guess the Valley’s fishermen will not welcome this visitor. Fingers crossed, ducklings are not part of his diet.
I whip out my camera to take a few shots of him, and right on the click of my shutter, the cormorant expels with force his… er… how do I say this politely? … bodily waste into the river. What a picture!
While I stand and take some more photographs of the rude bird, I’m aware of an annoying twinge in my back. A recent back strain has severely curtailed my walking activity (aye, auld age disnae come itself), so with regret I decide to turn and head for home.
Taking it easy, sauntering back along Brown’s Road, I’m overtaken by a group of mums, enjoying a blether in the spring sunshine, pushing bairns in prams; their older children wobbling beside them on balance bikes and scooters. We all stop to admire the small herd of Highland cattle grazing in the field known as Downiesburn Park. One of the biggest coos, obviously curious, stops her munching, raises her horned head and stares at us through her shaggy ginger fringe.
“That big yin has the same hairdresser as Donald Trump,” one of the young mums muses. Her pals laugh at her interesting observation and the coo objects with a baleful snort.
She is not a-moos-ed.
