Natural highs and lows

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Blogtober Twenty Two

It's rather a blustery day, with driving rain, not ideal for working outside with power tools. I rescheduled the day's visits, returned home and settled down to some admin tasks. The Winter thrushes are still moving through, still mainly Redwings, and one eventually deigned to hop about our garden. After lunch, Megan counted at least 150 in the field across the track, with more flocks arriving all the time. As Storm Boelo is bringing 70+mph winds on Sunday, we took the opportunity, during a break in the showers, to move our garden furniture into the garage. Hopefully the garage will be ok! Other storms are available for folk farther south. So the weekend will likely be spent indoors, keeping cosy and warm, probably with my nose in a book and fortified by a conveyor belt of tea mugs. The to-be-read pile is simmering nicely. Unsurprisingly, it's heavy on natural history. The George Monbiot book is my unfinished holiday reading, having sat in the pile for years. I don't kn...

Blogtober Twenty One

For a couple of weeks now, thrushes have been arriving in the UK from their Scandinavian breeding grounds, hoping for better weather here during the Winter. Birders in Orkney have been studiously counting flock sizes, which have occasionally been in the thousands, but this mainly happens on the east side of the archipelago rather than on the west where we live. However, today we noticed the first few Redwings of the Autumn in the field over the track, and a couple of different Blackbirds in the garden. Apples were immediately deployed, halved and deposited in plain sight, just a short glide from our neighbour's trees. By lunchtime, it was only the Blackbirds which were confident (or hungry) enough to hop about the front garden. My understanding is that the all-dark individuals are from Scandinavia The resident Blackbird The flocks continued to arrive though, now with a few Fieldfares among them, but no sign of any Song Thrushes yet, or the Holy Grail of Thrushdom, a Ring Ouzel. Re...

Blogtober Twenty

Today is International Sloth Day, and as I'm feeling a bit under the weather, I think I can appreciate the sentiment. Funnily enough, one of the recent cards I received did feature this somewhat less than energetic creature. I can't think why. One evening at the end of September, I completely forgot about a Zoom meeting for the staff and area coordinators of the British Dragonfly Society Scotland. I was mortified, despite not having many species of dragon and not much to add at such meetings. I mention this because one of the actions to come out of the evening was to look at 10km (hectad) squares with few or no records to understand why this should be. I must point out that the world of biological recording relies heavily on squares of varying sizes to understand the distributions of plants and animals, which then informs conservation actions. For instance, before I moved to Orkney, I helped the Buckinghamshire Dragonfly recorder (aka Alan) with 10km square data for the BDS Atl...

Blogtober Nineteen

Sunday was a peach of a day, worthy of sitting outside with a morning cuppa. A few hardy bumblebees, wasps and honey bees busied about the flowers which remained in bloom. There weren't many leaves left on the trees when I took a wander around the garden. I popped down the hill to post a card and it seemed as though the whole population of Stromness was mowing or weeding or generally tidying up, making the most of the lovely weather. We still have quite a lot of cobbles left from our pond project. Megan's dad has been helping to reduce the pile as he reclaims one end of his pond from encroaching vegetation and creates a pebble beach. After lunch, I dropped off another load for him. This morning, as I went to and fro between the utility room and kitchen with Mocha's meds and then breakfast, I couldn't help but notice the dawn. So here are some more gratuitous sky photos. The early start was because Openreach were due shortly after 8am to connect us to full fibre, a jo...

Blogtober Eighteen

Before our holiday in Rutland, I had browsed through the iRecord website and a couple of ID guides to see which species of dragonfly and damselfly might still be on the wing in mid-October. There were four possibilities, the most likely of which was Common Darter. We saw these small dragonflies at most sites we visited, including Rutland Water, Stanwick Lakes, Fineshade Wood and the RSPB's The Lodge. A female on the wall of a hide at Rutland Water Another late season dragon is Migrant Hawker, and we were very fortunate to find a male and a female roosting together near a pond at Rutland Water. He is showier in his blue finery, whilst she is camouflaged in brown and yellow, more to avoid unwanted attention than anything else. Clearly, in this instance, she was tolerating the male's presence. A couple of males even put in an appearance outside the log cabin on my birthday. Damselflies are scarcer towards the back end of the flight season, but we did manage to find a few Willow Em...

Blogtober Seventeen

Today we're starting with a gratuitous fluffy mammal image from a few days ago, mainly so that the banner isn't a shock to the unwary. You'll thank me later. Grey Squirrel seen from our log cabin After arriving home late evening yesterday, this morning was all about unpacking and putting everything back where it should be. Megan nipped out for a bit of shopping and I cracked on with chores. Despite a forecast for showers all day, we risked putting out two loads of washing to dry, and they are now successfully squirrelled away in the airing cupboard. The list of missed phone calls and emails has been dredged for names and details, because as always happens when you go on holiday, the work floods in. Monday morning will be busy with scheduling of appointments whilst I wait for Openreach to install fibre to the property (or so they assure me). This afternoon I have spent a good while going through Blogger, catching up on what folk have been up to and answering the comments wh...