Natural highs and lows

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...

Amongst the many new or different experiences we anticipated upon moving home, there are also some randomly-scattered instances of pleasant surprise. For instance, back at Houton, corvid activity mainly involved Hooded Crows and Ravens, their calls of caws and cronks echoing around the hills and rooftops. Here in Stromness, the majority of corvids are Rooks and Jackdaws, who roost in the town but commute daily out to far-flung pastures to forage.  These journeys are generally northwards in the morning and southwards in the evening, so at some point not long after dawn, I am awoken by the sounds of their various raaks and chacks as small flocks of both species pass overhead. Because I am invariably snuggled under a duvet at this time of day (at least until later in the year when dawn is at a more civilised time), there isn't a photographic record of these sojourns. You could say that I am avoiding catching corvid. In the evening, towards dusk, the birds return from their day in ...