Natural highs and lows

We've been home from our holiday for over a fortnight and I'm seriously behind on my blogging. Well, as serious as it gets around here, which isn't very. Unless it's some ecological nightmare. Which it often is, as there's not so much good environmental news these days. When I say 'these days', I mean since the Industrial Revolution at least. Whoa! That paragraph took on a depressing life of its own. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yes, our holiday. The last evening in the cottage was the usual mix of eating perishables from the fridge and frantically trying to remember in what order I packed the car a week and a half ago. A casual look out of the window brought all that to a juddering halt, as there was some small gingery creature tearing around the garden at a rate of knots, weaving in and out of the bushes and sending startled Pheasants in all directions. I called Megan to the window but, predictably, as soon as she arrived, all was calm, without a scamper to be

The first full day of a holiday always feels like it doesn't need a car, and after two days of driving, this strategy was a no-brainer. The cottage we had chosen was within easy walking reach of a nature reserve. A nature reserve that had a cafe. I'm not quite as stupid as folk think! Furthermore, although I didn't know in advance ( I am as stupid as folk think!) , the cafe had an alcohol licence, so even more reason to walk there.  After a leisurely start to the day, we ambled a short distance down the farm track and followed a footpath alongside a mature hedge, hoping to hear the Yellowhammer we'd heard the previous evening. When this path reached a farm, we turned onto a rougher farm track which soon delivered us, by way of a pair of Kestrels, to Kingfisher's Bridge Nature Reserve . We'd effectively walked around three sides of the arable field behind the cottage, that's how close the reserve was. Following a browse of the visitors' centre, with its i

It's the middle of the night, the wee small hours, and I am awake. For some reason, sleep eludes me, so I have got up and gone through to the lounge to try and do something remotely useful to pass the time until slumber returns. I fire up my computer and try to add photos and videos to a proto-post about the last few weeks since I last blogged. Blogger itself has other ideas and manages to load the photos in reverse order, a skill it intermittently exhibits which baffles and maddens me in equal measure. The bare bones of it is that there has been a trip south. Megan and I stayed in a hotel in the Inverness area for a few days before I headed even further south to visit family whilst she caught up with friends and much more wildlife than I was ever going to see. We reunited for another weekend in Inverness, took in a show at the Eden Court Theatre and then returned to Orkney. Whilst I did improve the running total of my year list, I am no nearer to catching up with Megan and may eve

(This post was mostly written during a not so brief stopover at a regional transport hub) The pause in bloggage has been due to a trip south to visit family. How does that prevent post output I hear you ponder? Well, it was too hot, hot enough at least for a denizen of the Northern Isles experiencing mid May in central England. And when it wasn’t hot, there was so much more wildlife to see and hear. This is a known ecological phenomenon, (not the whinging about the heat, although that could be argued, eh?), the fact that larger islands have more biodiversity than smaller ones. And despite Bedfordshire seemingly being somewhere very near the Equator, there was quite a lot of biodiversity. It did take me while to find a House Sparrow, mind, as well as any Swallows, and of Swifts there was nary a sniff. But my bird list for the year went stratospheric, up by 16 in three days, and I managed 9 species of butterfly in the same timeframe. There were wildflowers aplenty and, glory be, a fe