This weekend saw the second of two trips this Summer by the Orkney Field Club to the island of Hoy in search of dragonflies and hairy caterpillars. The weather was much kinder to us than a month ago, with plenty of sunshine and a pleasant breeze, which kept the midges at bay. Speaking of bays, here's where we began the walk after a boat journey from Stromness and the community bus from Moaness to Rackwick. Rackwick Bay, Hoy From the car park, we walked along the back of the dunes, finding Fox Moth caterpillars, my first ever (although they're common enough) Shaded Broad-bar moth and a new site for Six-spotted Burnet moths (indeed only the second site for the county). Shaded Broad-bar moth A Red Ant on a Grass of Parnassus flower Six-spotted Burnet moth Fox Moth caterpillar After second breakfast (or first lunch), our intrepid group wandered into the dunes where we found dozens of mining plasterer bees and three Black Darter dragonflies. Mining Plasterer Bee (later edit: BR h...
This will probably strike you as a bit of a stretch for a nature blog, a brief nod to the music of Ozzy Osbourne, the wildest of heavy rock front men, who sadly passed away yesterday. Let's get the lows over with first: there was a bat, there were doves, they may or may not have been dead at the time their heads entered Ozzy's mouth... Moving swiftly on, here are some thoughts on the few occasions where the Prince of Darkness came to the notice of this blogger. When Black Sabbath formed in 1968, a very young NaHaL was still in primary school, so I probably didn't hear the 1970's single Paranoid before encountering everyone else's tastes on the record player in the sixth form common room in 1978. That machine was guilty for so, so much. When Ozzy was chucked out of Black Sabbath for redefining the word 'excess', he went solo and recorded the Blizzard of Ozz album which, at some point, was a fixture in my music collection. I also recall a juke box of a pub...