It was a dry mild start to the month, and these first few days were spent getting the last of our Daffodil bulbs planted out around the Willowgate fishery.
These bulbs were put in at various locations; from the roadsides up at the main entrance, one landscaped area at the end of the pond and also peppered around some of the pathways and seating areas.
There was a dramatic change in the weather overnight on the 4th/5th when storms wreaked havoc across the country; there were trees down everywhere, roads were blocked, bridges closed and the trains were out of action for the best part of a day. On top of that over 130,000 homes were left without power.
This was followed up in the afternoon with a tidal surge on top of the biggest tide of the year causing flooding all along the coastline and inland up through the estuaries. What should have been a 4.6 metre tide up at Perth Harbour peaked at just over 5.41 metres!
The aftermath of all this was a fair bit of time being spent cutting up and clearing various sizes of trees/branches that had come down in our area blocking a lot of our pathways and roads, also a bit of minor repair work to some fencing was required.
Then there was the old net green which the westerly winds had left covered with a lot of big pieces of driftwood, the chainsaw came in handy as the bulk of it was all cut up before being loaded up into the dumper and cleared up.
The weather continued to get milder with the temperature being recorded at 11⁰C late into the evening of the 12th! This was soon to change in the next few days as heavy rain and strong winds moved in again causing the river level to rise quickly as it came out in spate. In the early hours of the 19th they had to open up the dam at Faskally to release water; and at one stage there was an extra twelve feet of water on the gauge at our Cargill rod beat, so it was back to bailing out our boats on a regular basis for a while.
We had a few of our bird boxes that had come down in the gales, but these got a quick patch up and coat of cuprinol before being put back up in the trees again.
The swans and ducks have been enjoying the grain put out for them, and we have been keeping the fat blocks, seed and grain going for the birds at our feed stations up in the wood.
We have also put our feed into the bee hives to keep them going over the winter months. There has not been a lot of movement of birds about the place this month, Redshank numbers are only up to twelve, Goldeneye numbers are poor and the teal have got scarce again! We had seen the Kingfisher about and the Dipper has put in an appearance.
We had a lot more wind and rain as the month drew to a close, with the odd cold clear day thrown into the mix.
There was a fair bit of spate coming down the system as 2013 came to an end.