A depth of  bright cloud billowed above the surrounding fells and a  dome of blue  rose over Scout Scar.  An inspirational cloudscape.
Approaching the ridge, I heard a shepherd shouting to his dogs; ' lie down, lie down,' now between a groan and a roar, 'lie down.' Black Hebridean sheep huddled close. Sheepdogs darted here and there but did not 'lie down.'  Across a network of pastures wooden gates had been set out as if for a training course for 'One Man and his Dog. '

 Sunday morning, delayed as the clocks have gone back an hour. The clean, cold north-west wind has dropped and wind comes from the north-east.  A sky of bright blue. Exposed to the wind, the ash trees on Scout Scar are stripped of leaves, laden with bunches of keys.  Winter light strikes bare trees and fragments of limestone pavement.
During the morning, dark clouds gather, plunge the escarpment into gloom as a flight of fieldfare passes calling overhead.  Trees on the horizon are backlit, spooky for the approach of Halloween.

 A calm sea and a comfortable voyage aboard Mannanan, sailing  Douglas to Liverpool.  On a bright October day the sand-dunes of Formby were distinct, seemed  close.  Then the dramatic sky-line of a great city.
We arrived the day the Giants were in town. Their third and last appearance and the city was thronged with families eager to see them.  Our objective was  The Terrracotta Army, an enterprise of antiquity on a far grander scale.
Next evening, Jodie Whittaker made her debut as Dr Who, set  in Sheffield.  How about Liverpool? Another time, Another Place.

'Eider beyond the lighthouse, directly off the Point.'  Returning, he shared what he had found.   Gannet flew by,  deceptively close as banks of shingle plunged into deep water. Sea-smoothed pebbles rose in   tiers  of shingle,  a natural amphitheatre where   we settled into a drama of sea-watch. Late September sun, a fine cloudscape  and the sea a spectrum of aquamarines.  Off the Point, white water showed where tidal races met.    Closer to the shore, rafts of eider bobbed up and down on the waves, heads  tucked into the plumage of their mantles.   

Late September and sunlight glosses seaweed and shingle  with an incoming tide.  From the yellow dunes, amidst sea-holly and marram grass, I spy a couple of waders outlined against the white foam of a breaking wave.  The birds are foraging, running to and fro against the rhythm of the waves and heading north along the strand.  Amongst the ringed plover there are dunlin, first winter birds with plumage of tortoiseshell and grey.  Breeding solitary in the uplands, dunlin come to the coast and spend autumn and winter here in flocks.

Scarlett Point is great for bird-watching. Hidden  in a car, we could observe the little egret's hunting tactics.  The wind ruffled his white plumage, his panache- a  wispy crest of feathers for this elegant white heron.  His feet stirred amongst seaweed, searching, his long black bill stabbing and his toes trailing ochre weed.
Cormorant in silhouette on rock, eider off-shore. Sunlight illuminated Castletown across the bay. 
Always the possibility of  wildlife drama.

 

Black against alto-stratus cloud and blue sky, a flight of chough.  They nest on cliff- ledges, on sea-stack and precipice here at The Chasms.  A flock of thirty birds, their voices high-pitched- the counter-tenors of the crow family.
Chough are a motif here amongst precipitous  cliff, rocky bluff and sand dunes.  Their call evokes the coastal solitudes I love.  Long black fingers as they soar. Wings folded in steep dive.

In late September and into October we heard stonechat on our  coastal walks, and saw flocks of linnet sweep over the shore and disappear into the stubble of autumn fields.  Then came a magical half hour above the cliffs at Pigeon Stream, on the Marine Drive beyond Douglas.  Our vehicle served as a hide and a family of stonechat flitted about gorse and on the stout fence about the cliff-top car park.  A flock of linnet were about and one settled on the fence.  Then came another visitor!