Natural highs and lows

It's the Saturday morning of Big Garden Birdwatch weekend, apples have been halved and strewn in the front garden, two scoops of bird seed have been liberally scattered in sheltered spots, I am stood at the kitchen window eagerly anticipating feathery fauna feeding, and I haven't even shaved yet. The RSPB's citizen science wildlife survey, reputedly the largest of its kind in the UK, is in full swing across the land whilst, here in Orkney, yet another gale is making things a bit challenging. Not for me, obvs, I'm sat indoors with a mug of tea, but the birds are a little reluctant to battle with the driving rain. Normally, by now, on any of the 363 days in the year which aren't part of the BGBW, there would have been a throng of hungry birds (from a single female Chaffinch to a horde of quarrelsome Rooks) busily feeding. Whatever. The. Weather. 🙄 Perhaps Sunday will be more to their liking. Most of the wildlife action of late has actually been on the opposite side o...

Last Friday was a warm and pleasant day in the county, but I wasn't well enough to make the most of it. In different circumstances, it would've been the perfect day for the first dragon hunt of the year. By Saturday, I was feeling better, and Megan dragged me out for some fresh air regardless. The day was cooler and cloudier, but nevertheless, we headed to Inganess and walked alongside Wideford Burn, taking in plenty of wildlife as we went. In fact, as soon as we left the car park, the good vibes began. A male Hen Harrier was quartering across a nearby hillside, a Brown Hare warily skirted the edge of a bed of flags, Sedge Warblers and Reed Buntings were singing from the the rough pasture beside the burn, whilst a conservatively-estimated bazillion insects were thronging in every sheltered spot. [Spoiler alert: there were no dragons or damsels.] A little inland, the burn runs through a small woodland, and this is where we concentrated our entomological efforts. Pink Purslane Br...

Whilst tourist season in Orkney never quite leaves us, as we reach May things are beginning to ramp up after the Winter nadir. Cruise ships are visiting again, the island's coaches are busy ferrying holiday-makers to the Neolithic sweet spots or 21st Century craft shops (gin, jewellery, textiles and whisky) and there are walks to be recce'd for my partner's wildlife guiding business. Of these latter things, one such was a trip to Flotta, an island at the southern end of Scapa Flow which, upon arrival, is dominated by the view of an oil terminal. I suspect that this puts off folk from visiting, locals and tourists alike, unless they have a flare for miles of overhead piping and large oil tanks. Behind all the fossil fuel infrastructure lies a peaceful, gentle landscape with less than 100 residents and lots of wildlife. It's a bit of a secret gem. The waters of Scapa Flow were flat calm for the short ferry crossing from Houton on the Orkney Mainland. We sailed by dozens o...

What. A. Weekend. I had hoped to complete my working day on Friday before the gale force winds arrived, but they showed up early. So, rather than run the risk of having the van doors ripped out of my hands and my equipment and stock distributed downwind in a rapid manner, I shut up shop (figuratively, I don't have a shop), apologised to customers and rebooked visits for this week. The afternoon was spent hunkering down as cosily as possible and trying to ignore the horizontal weather outside. Happily, there was a Zoom talk arranged for that evening, when one of the local amateur naturalists was giving a presentation about two Summers spent watching Common Carder bees in her garden. At the allotted time, we all logged on and were grandly entertained with photos and film footage of wee bees busily building nests, collecting pollen and making bee bread. It's not the same as having a live social event, but then again, with the storm, we would've had to cancel the whole thing an...

I'm way behind in my blogging, so may need to resort to drastic measures to catch up. However, before I go all 'random images from random days' in an effort to drag myself back to the topical and current time, here's a post which should've aired several weeks ago. The mission was a recce for a walk which my partner is guiding for the non-online, unvirtual part of the Orkney International Science Festival (OISF). The festival began last Thursday and runs until next Wednesday, with most of the events happening through the medium of the internet. However, there are daily walks in Orkney, courtesy of Wild Orkney Walks . So, the island of Flotta... currently the home of an oil terminal which probably explains all the photos of tankers, rigs, platforms and ocean-going tugs which appeared on... ahem... another blog.  Likely due to all of the fossil fuel paraphernalia (pipes, storage tanks, more pipes, flare etc), Flotta isn't the most visited island in the Orkney archi...

Bright and breezy, the westerly gusts possessed a cool razor's edge. Scapa Bay wasn't as sheltered as it would be from a southerly wind, but this didn't stop a huge flock of gulls from gathering far out in the middle. A few grebes and auks could be picked out from this throng, though they were difficult to identify to species at distance. Closer to or on the shore, were assorted Redshanks, Guillemots and Black-headed Gulls, the latter not actually sporting black feathers on its head, more a dull brown.  The scientific name for Black-headed Gull,  Chroicocephalus ridibundus , translates as 'coloured head laughing', so rather unhelpfully not a direct reference to which colour, and the laughing referring to its call. Oddly, and this is often the case with gull nomenclature, there is a species known as Laughing Gull, whose scientific name is Leucophaeus ( or Larus) atricilla , translating as 'white/brown blacktail', without any reference to laughing at all. It...