Natural highs and lows

A day trip to Hoy is always a treat, and last Saturday was no exception. With no long walks planned between ferry sailings, just visiting sites around the island by car, I felt able to drag along my DSLR for a change. What a good job I did. The blustery conditions, and the subject (or photographer) constantly moving, meant that my little compact camera was not the preferred device of choice. We didn't find any big dragons but, oh my word, there was still plenty else to see. Red-throated Diver, snapped from the car whilst parked in a layby A male Common Blue Damselfly with prey A female Common Blue butterfly nectaring on Bell Heather A White-tailed Eagle which flew overhead... necessitating an emergency stop and a race for optics! Great Skuas (Bonxies) were congregating at Sandy Loch, with regular flybys over the dam head Bonxie Hoy hills panorama Another female Common Blue butterfly The wildflowers were stunning too, but difficult to photograph, so please excuse their absence. Sund...

The Orcadian weather continues to exhibit bi-polar qualities, or at least on some days it is very North Polar. Which just means one has to look harder for some wildlife. For instance, here's a micro moth on a potato leaf in the veg bed. I am reliably informed that this is A ncylis badiana (thanks, NC). At the weekend it was rather windy. Exhibit A is my neighbour's dressing gown. Exhibits B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V and W are all the clothes pegs he used to keep it on the washing line. Another moth, of whose ID I can't be sure, possibly one of the numerous species of Arches. It was roosting on a door frame, where I didn't notice it until I opened the door and it fluttered on to a wall. It is a very characterful door, and proving to be quite the insect magnet, possibly due to a combination of being in a sheltered location, facing the sunrise, and handy for a nectar hit. This next moth is a Common Marbled Carpet. An early evening walk in ...

These opening paragraphs are going to have to ramble on for a while, as the first photograph is of a spider, and I wouldn't want to make you jump without at least giving you a bit of a warning. If it helps at all, it is a super close-up, taken with me kneeling on a boardwalk and reaching across and down to the water's surface, so that my fingers were only a few centimetres from the spider. Just in case we don't all know, I am not good with spiders, so if I can put on my brave pants to stare down an arachnid and  take a photo , you can probably manage to view it from the safety of your device screen. Just ignore that tickly sensation which has suddenly begun behind one of your ears. Happily, the remaining nineteen photographs on this blogpost are a lot less scary, some are just plain cute, and the whole shebang encompasses the last four days of our Nethy Bridge holiday and a broad swathe of wildlife. But back to the first image, the beast in question is a Raft Spider, sat on...

OK, I have to admit, I needed a lot of help decoding what this chart was showing, as it was well outside my area of expertise. For a start, what's the flashing yellow LED sign mean? And is 19 degrees the angle at which to best view the LED? Or is it the declination to the celestial equator? I am not even sure that this sort of info should be in the public domain, it could cause widespread panic and disorder. Meanwhile, outside GraemeWorld, the rest of the populace were having a fabulous time, thank you very much. The heat was certainly favouring us watching insects, especially as this shrub in the garden of our accommodation was teeming with them: bumblebees, butterflies, hoverflies, moths and a squillion other tiny flies. Green Hairstreak butterfly This was a hoverfly that was new to me. The folk at UK Hoverflies identified it as one of the Genus Didea (to get to species level I would need to check the colour of the halteres) Continuing with the insect-y theme, the next day saw a ...