This past week of walking stretches of the Moray Coastal Trail we have enjoyed quite spectacular scenery lit up by blue sky sunshine. A quick list of small birds heard, seen and occasionally, when they permit, photographed: chaffinch, goldfinch, yellowhammer, wren, dunnock, swallow, sand martin, wheatear, siskin, skylark and song thrush (mavis).
Much of this coastline and clifftops are covered with gorse which this year has been like walking beside golden walls or through gold coated canyons. We have seen a young deer grazing peacefully until it sensed us watching, I watched a shag and a great black backed gull having a standoff at the shoreline, and we've been watched from offshore by seals off Portessie.
In Cullen there's a great used bookshop which I took time to have good rake through. And I bought two books, by the same author. I collect good quality editions of the poems of George Herbert.
The Chandos Classics edition was mass produced to cater for a late Victorian market; it was cheap and in godd condition.
However the main find was an 1857 leather bound Dale and Baldy edition in very good condition, and at a fair price.
What brings these two observations together is a week of enjoying and celebrating the beauty and diversity of Scotland's wildlife, and the acquisition of two attractive volumes of poems by the poet priest who wrote these words:
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly,
The earth is not too low, His praises there may grow.
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
The church with psalms must shout, no door can keep them out;
But, above all, the heart must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King!
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