The bottle in the wall

I’m looking for nests in my garden. I’ve found two occupied ones and an abandoned one with an egg still in it, together with several from earlier in the season and dishevelled ones from previous years.

In one deep hole in the enclosing walls I spot the dull shape of a glass bottle. It’s small and without its screw cap.

Locals used to put small bottles of whisky buried deep in walls ‘to keep them dry’. There’s no cap on this one and no whisky.

I wonder when it was put there? Trees have grown up in front of the hole where it was buried so it must have been quite a few years ago. Trees don’t grow that quickly in Orkney.