Natural highs and lows

After eleven winters at 59 degrees North, I decided that it was high time that I made the effort to see one of Orkney's seasonal highlights, Mountain Hares in their white coats. Every year, around February or March, depending upon the weather, the Orkney Field Club organises a trip to the island of Hoy to see these spectacular creatures. I have no excuses. I have been a member of the Field Club almost since arriving on these shores. I have been a committee member of the club for the best part of a decade. I have been the Club Chair and the Club Secretary. Yet I have never been on the Hoy Hare trip. Talk about inept. Yesterday was the day when that particular wrong was righted. "Oh?!" you all say, " is this a post about hares, then?" Could be! The theory goes that once the snow has melted from the hills of Hoy, the Mountain Hares in their white coats will stick out amongst all the brown heather like sore thumbs. To a certain extent, this is true. But the hares ar...

Whilst it has not seen such high temperatures as places further south, the recent warm spell in Orkney has been plenty hot enough for me. Outside work was carried out prudently with only short stints of exposure to the sun, although sitting out in the garden for every meal of the day was pretty special. Lack of rainfall is now the main concern, and from a personal perspective it is worrying how many dragonfly pools are very low or have already disappeared.  But let's appreciate a week's lovely weather before we become too gloomy at the prospect of climate change. A relaxing day spent in and around the garden was notable for the number of insects gathering on a Cotoneaster bush: honey bees; bumblebees (White-tailed, Common Carder, Gypsy Cuckoo); hoverflies ( Rhingia campestris, Leucozona lucorum, Helophilus pendulus, Sericomyia silentis , several Eristalis spp); at least one species of social wasp (Red wasp); and a couple of mason wasps ( Ancistrocerus oviventris and A. scotic...

A recent work trip to Shetland was almost more noteworthy for what I didn't see than what I did. During the course of a week, travelling around the archipelago from Unst in the north, to Bigton in the south, across to Bressay in the east and Walls in the west, I saw precisely no Great Skuas. Not one. That is a sobering statistic, highlighting the devastating effect of avian flu on this particular species in its breeding stronghold. A Bonxie, as the Great Skua is known in the north, is not a glamorous bird, it's a hulking great thug and a fearsome predator. However, its global  population size is about the same as that of the Polar Bear and is therefore extremely vulnerable to some catastrophic event decimating its numbers even further. Thankfully, there were a few wonderful moments to lighten my mood: a pair of Swifts which hammered eastward in Northmavine; a dread of Arctic Terns which drew my attention to an Otter hunting near the pier in Bressay; and whilst I was on a video ...