24 11 07

By Castle Tioram the fat handfed black pheasants are strident in their protest at the mere sight of the hound & myself. The dithering birds chak-chak at the hound, who, since they’re behind a wire fence, affects not to notice them.

A red squirrel climbs the Scots pine anti-clockwise, finding tiny things of interest there; its incurved tail meagre & rufous. It cares as little for all of us as the hound for the pheasants, as I do for the man who pays the breeder of the birds, reared only to be killed; food a long way from consideration.

The hound makes a hiccupping sally towards a rabbit on the island the castle sits on.

A herring gull mourns overhead.