It is very rare to see the Great Spotted Woodpecker at our bird feeder and he normally makes a fairly short visit. I had to just grab the camera and couldn’t take time to change to the big lens.

In the evening on which this is published, I’ll be in Northern Italy (at least I hope I will). I’ll have my netbook with me and if I can get hold of an Italian PAYG mobile dongle, you’ll get some further posts. Otherwise they will have to wait till I return.

Most of the time photographs of Alloway Village concentrate on the cottage where Robert Burns was born. However the village itself is attractive.

The first photograph is taken from opposite the cottage, but looking slightly north and includes the old smiddy building.

This photograph is of the building directly opposite the cottage and is of the village hall (formerly the village school built in 1849) and the old schoolhouse.

This area was once stabling just off the Sandgate in Ayr. These buildings were probably constructed around 1850 (I know some were, but I don’t know for all of them!).

The first photograph is looking from the Sandgate. The doorway on the right leads to the stairs up to the very good dentist we go to.

If you go down the passageway beyond the doorway, then you come to the inner courtyard and leading off from it there is the Stables Coffee House. It does very good lunches as well as having excellent home-baking to go with the tea and coffee.

Just across Paisley Road West from yesterday’s photograph, on the corner of Stanley Street, finds this crest on the tenement building. I’ve not been able to find out anything about it.

I’m invading Jackie’s territory again. I was helping my son move flat yesterday to just off Paisley Road West, south of the River Clyde in Glasgow.

In the evening, we went for an excellent meal in La Fiorentina which occupies the bottom of the Angel building at the gushet between Paisley Road West and Govan Road.

The following two photographs are a front and back view of the angel which tops the building.

In fact the building was constructed in 1889 as an Ogg Brothers Drapery Warehouse, the architect was James Alexander Ewing (1843 – 1900) – and the angel is actually a statue called Commerce and Industry!

These photographs were taken last Monday at the Rozelle Ponds. The first two, of the Carolina or Wood Duck, is I think the one I photographed last year and seems to have been in this area for the last 3 or 4 years.

It is unusual to see a Mallard Duck with only one duckling, but this, at the moment, is the only one on Rozelle Ponds. I’m wondering if the duck started breeding too early and the rest of the eggs didn’t hatch out.

The final two photographs are of the Hollybush House itself. These were obviously taken at a distance from the house since the intention is to disturb the patients as little as possible.

Today there are pictures of the River Doon, the inspiration for Robert Burns with ‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon’.

Today the pictures are of the wildflowers to be found in the estate.

Yesterday was the wide open views at Hollybush. Today we are in the woods.