Natural highs and lows

At this time of year, it is nigh on impossible to suppress the urge for dappled sunlight through Beech leaves. Add in a wide, shallow burn, sinuously flowing through the scene and the only option is to give in to temptation.  We found a woodland car park at the Den o' Alyth, set off on a circuitous path through the valley, with the plan to make the mid point of the walk a lunch stop in the town of Alyth itself. Dipper A female Mallard On a woodland bench, a Common Footman moth caterpillar, a teeny-tiny forager of algae and lichen Breathe... Let the tension gently subside As well as lovely views of Dipper, we had seen several Grey Wagtails, as they hunted for invertebrates along the burn. During one of our frequent pauses, letting the tranquillity seep into our souls, Megan suddenly exclaimed, "There's a Grey Wagtail up in that tree!" Stood a few feet away, I was unsighted by another tree trunk, so was initially sceptical, especially when a Great Tit flew out of the ap...

As may have been discerned from the comments at the end of the previous blogpost, we have been away on our "Summer" holiday, fortuitously discovering some balmy weather but sadly missing out on a serendipitous meet-up with Mark, the beinn bicycling bard of Blogger . Whilst he and Deb were pedalling by our home in Stromness, Megan and I were driving by their holiday accommodation near Melvich. For 2025, our holiday location was Blairgowrie, on the south west side of the River Ericht in Perth and Kinross. This was a little further south than our usual jaunts but, as the meteorology proved, was certainly near enough to the Equator for this scribe. The journey down through northern Scotland and the Cairngorms was done in several sections, with overnight stays in Dornoch and Aboyne, before finally arriving in leafy and blossomy Blairgowrie. Whenever the narrowness of the road or the speed limit dictated that we keep below 40mph, the car windows were opened and we listened intently...

We set aside a day for venturing to Loch Ruthven, south east of Loch Ness, in the hope of seeing Slavonian Grebes in breeding plumage. These birds are Winter visitors to Orkney, but do not breed here, and don't wear their Summer colours during the stay. Come the day, the weather was dreich, with a steady and unrelenting rain falling from a grey sky and dripping from the Scots Pines around the cottage. However, checking the forecast for Inverness, it appeared that it was a different day there. More in hope than expectation, we set off anyway, and as we crossed the Slochd summit, heading north, the sun was indeed shining. No sooner were we ensconced in the hide at the RSPB reserve of Loch Ruthven, when an Osprey drifted through. It being April, it was still chilly despite the drier weather, but we were eventually rewarded with a view of a pair of Slav Grebes. To warm up again, we decamped to a tea room and farm shop near Foyers for a well-earned bowl of soup and some cake. With no fi...

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...

(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...