Late morning’s pale blue sky is painted with sweeps of bright white cloud.  Or as Vermeer said, white is never really white if you look hard enough.  There are faint signs of yellow, magenta, blue, and violet that come through.

It’s a clear day.  A silent day.

Or is it so silent?

A caravan drives along on the top road.  I can see and hear it in the stillness of the autumn air, the sound traveling across the open landscape.  An airplane joins in the passing noise as it flies overhead.

The long rust-coloured grasses and rushes are hardly moving - such a difference to their constant sway in the winds the other day!

From the grassy field, heard but not seen, a pheasant makes its garbled sound, undoubtedly full of concern as it rushes across to another patch of long reeds, out of sight.  Pheasants don’t seem have the easiest lives.  They are rather clumsy birds.  And how do they end up on the road so often?  Saying that, they are beautiful, their colours blending into the auburn landscape in such a complementary way.

Ducks are chattering in the 'unofficial pool' that has been developing beyond the garden.  There are quite a few ducks here which surprises me when I think about it.  When I was younger I used to have to visit a farm to see the ducks, or go to the shores of Lake Ontario.

There are some beautiful varieties of duck here in the north.

Now they chuckle and quack as though responding to a joke.  When I step out two of them flutter and fly away with a start.

I marvel at the so-called silence which, in reality, is full of layers of tones and rhythms.

It is an autumn orchestra.

A crow calls from the tree overhead.

And a wren lets out its winding song, competing with another airplane flying above.

It’s lovely to go for a wander and spend time with the sights and sounds around me in this small northeast corner of Scotland.

Some birds emit small staccato chirps in a row - the accent comes closer…. What is it I wonder?

The crow caws again loudly from the top of a telephone pole.

Then I notice two small roe deer nearby.  I stop, motionless.  They are quietly grazing.  I move.  They stop.  Their ears up, alert.

When I try to step forward as slowly and carefully as possible, they immediately bound away, their white tails bouncing up and down over the fields.  I follow their graceful leaps with my eyes until I can’t see them anymore and they blend in with the copper and gold field-scape.

I look up from that point where I last observe the deer and see a kestrel hovering in the distance.  It suddenly swoops down, spotting its next prey.   Quickly proving unsuccessful in its hunt, it flies on over the moorland to a new place in the sky, hovering again as though hanging from an invisible fishing line fixed in the heavens, its wings flapping steadily...

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