Dawn Chorus: 2,400 pristine acres of The Highlands for sale, plus the ultimate boiled egg in a mere 32 minutes

A forest of one's own

Why buy a mere house when you could buy an entire forest? That's what's up for sale with the appearance on the open market of Sciberscross Forest, where £8.5 million buys you almost 2,400 acres of the Highlands.

This is no big estate, but very much a going concern that is 'one of the largest and most productive commercial conifer forests' in Scotland, according to the agents, Landfor.

This commercial conifer forest was established 25 years ago and consists mostly of Sitka spruce, though Lodgepole pine, Scots pine, Larch and mixed broadleaves are also in the mix. Sporting rights are also included, as is the potential for both peatland restoration and wind power generation, subject to the relevant permission. 'The timber crop is of excellent quality and offers the purchaser the potential for a swift return on their investment,' says agent Harry Graham. You can see more details here.

What do you mean, you 'missed yesterday's quiz'?

No judgement; here's the link, nip and catch up at your leisure.

Perfect boiled eggs in only... [checks notes]... 32 minutes??!?!

Twenty years ago, the doyenne of TV cooks Delia Smith caused a bit of a furore when kicking off her new series How to Cook by explaining how to boil an egg. 'How could the licence payer's money be used for such simple nonsense?' raged newspaper columnists across Britain, who moved on to the dumbing-down of the BBC and anything else they could think of.

The hubbub died down a little when the better-informed began to point out that there is in fact much disagreement about the optimum method; not just how long to cook for, but what temperature water to put the eggs in to start things off, and several other variables.

Delia's way — place the egg in cold water, bringing it to the boil, and cook for four minutes once the water is boiling — has always served me well, but now science has stepped in to declare that the Smith Method is sorely lacking. A group of Italian scientists produced a research paper — as reported via NPR — explaining that the key difficulty at play is that 'albumen and yolk require two cooking temperatures': 85 degrees for albumen and 65 degrees for the yolk.

The solution is probably not one to try at home: the eggs must be cooked alternately for two minutes in boiling water, then two minutes in 65 degree water, then back into the boiling water again until you've had eight lots of both, for 32 minutes in total.

Not only was texture, colour and consistency apparently perfect, but this 'periodic cooking' method retained more of the original egg's nutritional content. If you've the patience to try it out, then good luck to you. Let us know how it goes.

The Dawn of Impressionism

A new film is heading for cinemas in Britain on 18th March telling the story of the key year in the birth of the Impressionist movement: 1874. Director Ali Ray's film Dawn of Impressionism: Paris 1874 looks at works from artists including Money, Degas, Pissaro, Renoir and many more, and has apparently been made 'in close collaboration' with the Musée d’Orsay and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

We can only assume that our invitation must have been lost in the post

'Ever wanted to eat dinner on a boat with Wallace & Gromit, whilst being served a menu dedicated to gravy?'

If your thought on seeing the sentence above was, 'No, I really can't say that's ever been on my radar', then welcome, like-minded friend, and count yourself lucky that you didn't also receive this email the other day.

If you did, then no doubt you — just as I did — checked your calendar to see how far away April 1st is. It's a long way away. A long, long way away. And yet here we are: Bisto have launched a gravy-themed floating restaurant (called, naturally, The Gravy Boat) where you can pay £15 for a gravy cocktail (really) plus a gravy-soaked roast dinner and a 'delicious dessert with a sweet Bisto gravy sauce', all while rubbing shoulders with Wallace, Gromit and Feathers McGraw, of Wallace & Gromit fame. Who we've always associated more with cheese than with gravy, so frankly we're at a loss to see what the connection is.

Once again: it is not April 1st. Repeat: it is not April 1st.

That's it for today — Dawn Chorus is back on Friday.