Natural highs and lows

At the end of March, work finally began on creating a pond in the back garden at Burnbank. Over the course of the five years since I bought the pond liner, the idea in my head was that it would be a rectangular shape. Recently, I managed to find a scrap of paper from 2020 which intimated that the liner measurements were 8m by 6m. So let's crack on! In the interests of completing the project before climate change renders water even more of a luxury, a local gardening business was recommended to me, and so it was that VB duly arrived, full of enthusiasm and seemingly undeterred by my cautionary tales of tough ground to dig.  VB is very much on board with the whole wildlife gardening malarkey. Indeed, he is an interesting chap with whom to discuss environmental matters, not least because he has his own manifesto available on Amazon. And so it was that we broke ground, although not exactly in a classical rectangular shape.  By the end of the afternoon, VB was coming around to the ...

Pedantic? Me? Yeah, a bit, probably. When it comes to having photos in date order in a blogpost, it is less stressful when everything is photographed with the same device, so that the file names are sequential. At least approximately, depending upon how many I have deleted for not being in focus, those that do not actually have the subject in them or are of my feet. Mostly, this is so (the order thing, not the accidental photos of my feet) but if I've used various cameras and my phone to take the images, they will all have different file prefixes courtesy of Panasonic, Canon and Apple. In this situation, I would usually renumber everything with a digit in front of the prefix so that the photos appear in the order I would like. Yes, you're correct, I could sort the images by date and time, which would help, but I am not reliable or quite pedantic enough to have each device on the same time zone. Some automatically follow daylight saving time, others don't and could be set to...

In the middle of May, heralding the fact that Spring is getting into her stride, is the Orkney Nature Festival.  The Orkney Field Club traditionally put on an event for this festival, so Megan and I volunteered to lead a circular walk in Orphir, taking in a variety of habitats and wildlife. Setting off from The Bu , with its Norse and Medieval history, we headed down a grassy track to the shores of Orphir Bay, where waders were bathing and foraging at the water's edge. Heading east along the low clifftop, we looked at the many wildflowers by the path such as Bird's-Foot Trefoil, Spring Squill and Primrose, as well as the less obvious male and female blooms of Dwarf Willow. There were many insects on the wing, including Silver Y moths and a Painted Lady butterfly.   Spring Squill It was weeks later when I thought to try and identify this hoverfly, failed miserably and asked the lovely folk at UK Hoverflies Facebook group Identified as a female Parasyrphus nigritarsis, not that ...

The following day dawned... foggy... not ideal for a dragonfly walk. But, by the time we arrived at Lyness to meet the ferry and six folk keen to see dragons, the cloud had lifted sufficiently that we could at least discern the outline of the hillside for which we were headed. Phew. I explained to everyone that this year's walk was three weeks later than normal, so I couldn't really predict what we would find. And then there was the weather... no sun, no heat, but at least there was almost no breeze. A perfect combo for insects, as long as those insects were midges. Climbing up the gentle slope from Lyness onto the hill of Wee Fea, there was plenty of wildlife to see, which was most pleasing and a huge relief. Whilst the event was free, there's always a bit of performance anxiety!  Fly Agaric. "Just needs a wee door in the front" quipped one of our number A caterpillar of the Northern Eggar moth A male Black Darter It's not often that we see ants swarming, but...