I didn't get where I am today by not remembering a character from a 1970s sitcom

One of the beautiful things about Orkney is that the weather is borderline neurodivergent, which may go some way to explaining why it is difficult to get an accurate diagnosis forecast. Currently*, we're back to experiencing wildly different weather on consecutive days, such that the worryingly neurotypical consistent weather of late January and early February seems but a distant memory.

On Wednesday last, it was more dreich than a waterfall shower after all the hot water's gone, so I was pleasantly surprised, upon returning home for lunch, to learn that Megan had been watching a Buzzard all morning. Raptors do not usually hunt during heavy rain, but the bird in question had been sat on various fence posts in the valley below, staring intently at the ground for worms and, possibly, frogs. Before changing out of my wet weather gear, I wandered down the hill, a little closer to the bird, for a grainy photo. 

This particular buzzard was part of a local wing-tagging project, and we knew "CJ" from a previous sighting we had back in November 2024 whilst on a walk around the Stromness Loons. At that time, Megan contacted the project and discovered that CJ was one of a brood of four which fledged in June 2024. Interestingly, our initial report was the first sighting of CJ away from its natal area. Even more astonishingly, this current sighting is the first one since our previous one... where had the bird been for the whole of 2025?

Annual gratuitous photo of Yesnaby Castle

Last Saturday was a much nicer day altogether, so we headed to Yesnaby on the west coast for the first beetle survey of the year. In a change of approach from 2025, Species On The Edge has increased the transect area from a line of 5 x 1m squares to a single circle of 20m diameter. We opted to base our new circle over one of the old 5m lines to allow for some continuity of the data at the site.

Below is a photo looking northwards across our transect, with the weatherproof writer on the ground near the centre of the circle. Despite the exposed nature of the clifftop, the wetness of the ground and the lack of green vegetation, this is the sort of habitat where the Sea Plantain Leaf Beetle exists - I couldn't bring myself to type "thrives" as the insect has such a small and precarious distribution. Happily, we did find a few and, unsurprisingly, they were the only insects we saw.

One of six beetles we spotted

The beetles were much easier to see when they were wandering across dry pale-coloured rocks, than when they were traversing areas of mud or disappearing under low vegetation.

In the afternoon, we headed to Skaill Bay for a Thank You event for volunteers put on by the RSPB (on behalf of themselves, Species On The Edge and the Orkney Native Wildlife Project), featuring a walk around the habitats of Skara Brae, a talk by an environmental archaeologist, plus refreshments. We learned a lot about the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), ancient pollen and what Orkney might have looked like 10,000 years ago.

* "Currently" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, as it could easily be applied to any one of the 365-ish days of the year.