Natural highs and lows

This blog tends to concentrate on parochial environmental topics, rarely touching on global political affairs. For example, the changing roll call of birds seen through the year as the seasonal mass movement of feathered creatures wing their way around the planet, outrageously ignoring any lines drawn on a map. Or, even closer to my heart, the androgyny of dragonflies and damselflies as they seek a bit of peace, away from testosterone-fuelled madness. And yet, morning after morning, the news is full of another act of war by an aggressor state. I kid you not, as I typed those words, there were actual rumbles of thunder. I had to double check, but a real time lightning app confirmed it. But I digress, back to wildlife in and around an Orkney garden. This week, there was wondrous news in the Comments section when AF identified the smaller beetles which have turned up at the pond. He wasn't sure of the exact species, but the genus is Helophorus . To arrive at the specific name, I will ...

Since my previous blogpost, a funny thing has occurred. In tiny increments, day by day, Summer has happened. Yes, really. The upshot of this unexpected development is that there has been lots of wildlife watching, either whilst working, waiting for ferries or on days off. So here's a whistle stop tour of the last fortnight. Training evening. Megan invited me along as another pair of eyes on one of her evening walks for clients. This had the added benefit of me being able to see what she does in her "office", which on this day was the clifftop path at Burwick in South Ronaldsay. It benefitted the clients too, as we found more wildlife to show them, whilst also allowing me to practise the role, should I ever need to cover for Megan. A Common Rustic moth on a Ragwort flower (Thanks to HA for the ID) Everyone wants to see Puffins (although they won't be here for much longer, as now the breeding season is over, they are heading back out to sea). Scottish Primrose outing: W...

When in need of some fresh air, I can breezily recommend a blustery trip to Yesnaby on the west coast of Orkney. At the weekend, there were plenty of wildflowers on display, but even at ground level the wind was making photography difficult. My Scottish Primrose pics were all blurry, same for the snaps of Sea Plantain Leaf Beetles, and I didn't even attempt a shot of the stunning pale phase Arctic Skua which gave us a close flyby. The afore-mentioned Primula scotica is having its interregnum between the Spring and Summer flowerings, so it was even more of a challenge than normal to find any of its diminutive blooms. Predictably, after ten minutes of fruitless searching which had only yielded either old seed heads or fresh leaf rosettes not yet in bud, I looked up to see Megan waving me over to a couple of flowers. Spring Squill, Tormentil and Bird's-foot Trefoil added their vibrant colours to the floral carpet, whilst the small patch of Oysterplant was just beginning to open it...

Currently, we're away on holiday, but before we left Orkney for a trip to the east of England, there was an outing to Yesnaby on the west coast of West Mainland to look for some strikingly marked red and black beetles. This is a bit of an annual pilgrimage in April, but well worth scrabbling around on hands and knees to see some glossy black shinyness with bold red stripes. No! Wrong type of Beetle Yesnaby Castle The foot of Yesnaby Castle Before we found what we were looking for, I noticed a well-camouflaged micro-moth. The photo below shows the tip of my index finger for scale. Those that know about these sorts of things, identified the moth as Philedonides lunana. Eventually, we began finding our target species, Chrysolina latecincta ssp intermedia , and Megan set about photographing them. Meanwhile, I had found a slightly larger beetle, which was carrying off a small slug or snail. This time those who know identified it as Carabus arvensis .   Pleasingly, during this trip, we a...

I'm way behind in my blogging, so may need to resort to drastic measures to catch up. However, before I go all 'random images from random days' in an effort to drag myself back to the topical and current time, here's a post which should've aired several weeks ago. The mission was a recce for a walk which my partner is guiding for the non-online, unvirtual part of the Orkney International Science Festival (OISF). The festival began last Thursday and runs until next Wednesday, with most of the events happening through the medium of the internet. However, there are daily walks in Orkney, courtesy of Wild Orkney Walks . So, the island of Flotta... currently the home of an oil terminal which probably explains all the photos of tankers, rigs, platforms and ocean-going tugs which appeared on... ahem... another blog.  Likely due to all of the fossil fuel paraphernalia (pipes, storage tanks, more pipes, flare etc), Flotta isn't the most visited island in the Orkney archi...

On Sunday I helped out with a recce of a walk near the Bay of Skaill. This area is famous as the location of Skara Brae, the 5000 year old Neolithic village, but we were more interested in the current flora and fauna along and around the clifftops. The coastline is cleft with many geos (pronounced with a hard 'G'), which offer nesting sites for all manner of birdlife, principally auks and Fulmars, but with the occasional corvid like this Hooded Crow. For instance, this is Yettna Geo, facing out towards the Atlantic Ocean, and brutal testimony to the erosive force of wave power. There are myriad circular structures in the Orcadian landscape, dating from many time periods, be their origins Neolithic, Bronze Age, Viking, Georgian or wartime 20th Century.  Whilst sat on a clifftop, I noticed a faint outline on a nearby headland, which didn't take too much imagination to be viewed as circular. Closer investigation revealed that it wasn't some previously-undiscovered Neolithi...