Natural highs and lows

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...

Firing up Blogger, whenever I hit '+ NEW POST', the cursor on the new page is always stepped in by one space and I have never bothered to figure out if that's a setting in Blogger or a quirk of my computer. Therefore, as a ritual, before I start typing I hit 'backspace' on the keyboard. Then, because some habits are really hard to shake off, in a drop down menu I select Arial as my preferred font and type two capital T's at the beginning of the first line of the post (IYKYK). This is because my next step is to add the photographs I want in the post, and invariably, if I haven't set the font beforehand, once the pictures are uploaded, I will begin typing straight away and not look up until there's a whole sentence or a paragraph in Times . Perhaps it's a subconscious way of mentally switching from the now sadly all-too-mundane world of war, death and climate chaos, to instead allow me to reflect upon the wonders of the natural world? What, and further...

Here's a bit of a round-up of natural history snippets from the first half of July. For 2025, I have added another bumblebee survey to my volunteering for the Species on the Edge project. The target species is the Great Yellow Bumblebee, although this Beewalk has yet to deliver one of those. The area is known as Stromness Waterworks, and I plotted a 1.7km route beginning at a track junction below the dam head. From there, a stony track leads west uphill onto heathland, then I turn northwards onto a rougher track which separates the heath from agricultural land. These two tracks have verges with plenty of wildflowers and the occasional garden escapee where soil has been dumped, all of which are good foraging for insects. Where a moorland track diverts to the north east, I follow it along a ruined stane dyke to the point where I took this photograph, behind me there is plenty of Wild Thyme and Bell Heather. The final section tracks south back across the heath, where the wildflowers h...

One day last week, we went along on a trip to the island of Wyre organised by the Orkney Field Club. We caught the ferry from Tingwall in West Mainland to Rousay and then on to Wyre. This is a place that I had not previously visited, a small island with a population of less than ten, featuring some 12th Century ruins, farming on a less industrial scale than normal and, consequently, more wildlife. We spent the day pottering the length of the place and back, exploring road verges, field edges, abandoned gardens, an old cemetery wall at St Mary's Chapel and the remains of Cubbie Roo's castle. Photographing insects and wildflowers was a little tricky due to a stiff westerly breeze (or perhaps I just couldn't see what I was focussing on due to the bright sunlight), but I have managed to salvage some crisper shots from the day. The view across Wyre Sound to Rousay An ichneumon wasp from the Genus Ophion on a Hogweed umbel We found several species of Fumitory growing in the field...

It is a rare occasion when Nature and my work directly dovetail together. Usually, nature watching is what happens after the job is complete and I am waiting for a ferry home. Or maybe whilst driving to and fro, there'll be a raptor or a wader sat on a fence post at the edge of the road. Less frequently, thankfully, I might have to share a loft with spiders or, outdoors, a satellite dish might be located just above a huge clump of nettles.  However, during the last few years, I have noticed a definite trend in the month of June.  The phenological problem begins with a telephone call reporting a worsening fault with tv channels. Initially this has manifested itself with a few channels disappearing whilst others are unaffected, then a few more disappear, before finally, all signal is lost. Now, without delving too deep into technobabble, there could be many explanations for these symptoms, at any time of year. These include a dish becoming mis-aligned due to strong winds, a fail...