Natural highs and lows

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...

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...

Since our holiday in early June, there's not been much opportunity to string together several days of wildlife watching, but with the commencement of July that all changed. Even better, Alan, a friend from my days in Milton Keynes was currently on holiday in Orkney, so we met up on Friday morning for a drookit wander around Orphir Bay and the Gyre Wood, catching up on things and generally setting the world to rights. Swallow fledglings contemplating the weather After lunch, we were joined by Megan and the three of us set off to try and see some of the things that Alan hadn’t yet spotted on his holiday. First, we parked at the top of the Scorradale Road, and ambled about the low hills, taking in the views and the flora and fauna. A sawfly preying upon a Red-thighed St Mark's Fly Then we drove across to Yesnaby on the west coast, which is just a wildflower heaven at the moment. We pottered about the coastal heath habitat, marvelling at the abundant and colourful display. Prim...