Long Tailed Tit Family

Feeding time at Fairburn Ings nature reserve in West Yorkshire. A long-tailed tit feeds her chicks

Panalba - The Magazine for Scottish Patrons at Home and Abroad

Panalba - The Magazine for Scottish Patrons at Home and Abroad

Scotland builds Pioneers and Leaders - Panalba

For wherever Scots have settled globally, they have emerged as pioneers and leaders, hard working and consistent in the contributions they have made towards their adopted lands.

A lot of this has to do with an inbred sense of commitment and honesty, coupled with a thirst for adventure. In company with the mass-migration of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Scottish regiments formed the backbone of the British Army whilst others served as mercenaries in the armies of Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France. Scots also emerged as missionaries in Africa and Asia: it was David Livingston from Blantyre who sourced the River Nile; it was Mungo Park from Selkirk who discovered the Niger. My distant relative, John Witherspoon (both of us claim kinship with the reformer John Knox) signed the United States Declaration of Independence.

Two Scots traders, Dr William Jardine from Dumfries and James Matheson from Sutherland, pioneered the Far Eastern trading hub of Hong Kong. In the Arctic, the magnetic north pole was identified by Sir John Ross from Stranraer. Sir Alexander Mackenzie from Lewis first charted the interior of Canada, and it was another Lewis-man, Lachlan Macquarrie, who, as Governor of New South Wales, launched Australia.

Red Hot Chilli Pipers with Skerryvore

Celtic Music group 'Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers' perform 'Peat-Fire Flame' set in Hawick Scotland

Celtic Music group 'Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers' perform 'Peat-Fire Flame' set in Hawick Scotland

Ospreys at NASA

Ready for Liftoff

Although we love and care for the ospreys in Scotland, it's not because they are rare birds in a global context.

They are simply rare in Scotland and we would like to encourage them to re-establish themselves widely, throughout the Highlands.

This picture is very dear to me because it covers two of my main interests, the beauty and grace of birdlife and the adventure and wonder of space travel.

A family of Osprey are seen outside the NASA Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Thursday, May 13, 2010.


The Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge overlaps Kennedy and provides a habitat for 330 species of birds, including the osprey.


A variety of other wildlife--117 kinds of fish, 65 types of amphibians and reptiles, 31 different mammals, and 1,045 species of plants--also inhabit the refuge.

The countdown is on for today's scheduled launch of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission. At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians at Launch Pad 39A continue preparations for the liftoff at 2:20 p.m. EDT.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

A Scottish Piper to the End

Click on the Picture to play the Music

Another haunting tune Going Home

The theme from the film Local Hero

Views of Ben Ledi - The beautiful voice of Jean Redpath

Click on the Picture to play the video

Stop! in the name of Love

This thrush has found a very safe but public place to raise it's young. On the STOP light of a set of traffic lights in Stirling.

Let's hope their READY for a new generation of young thrushes and all will GO well for them, in the future.

The Great Northern Diver: The Loon