After a productive few days delivering paintings to galleries in Scotland (the pic is of Lynn outside the RSA in Edinburgh, handing work in for the annual exhibition of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour, of which she is a member), we returned to the island in time to secure everything that moves and to fire up the wood burner, in preparation for the current waves of high winds sweeping the British Isles.








Ringhaddy Sound isn’t long or wide enough for a really big sea to develop, no matter what direction the wind, but as you can see it has been wild enough - at times too wild to row the dinghy – so planning our days has been a challenge lately.




As always in March, brent geese have been gathering to graze Eagle Hill, behind the cabin, and in a couple of weeks they will start working the shoreline in search of eel grass, their favourite food, as the first shoots appear on the intertidal mud. More than three quarters of the European population of pale bellied brent geese overwinters on Strangford Lough; enormous flocks can be seen feeding on the tidal mud flats at the northern end of the lough.