Natural highs and lows

We've been on holiday, experienced some rather pleasant weather, caught up with family and friends and returned home just before Storm Whoever hit Orkney. Now, here I am writing a blogpost whilst rain lashes the windows and all thoughts of colourful leaves have disappeared downwind at a rate of knots.  In our absence, Cookie and Mocha were well looked after in the comfort of their own home by Auntie Kat who, despite an allergy, is not anti-cat. It all started very early one morning, bleary-eyed and barely awake, stumbling out of bed at 5am to catch the morning sailing from Stromness to Scrabster. This was followed by a chilly drive to Inverness as the climate control module doesn't work in my car and, although at any point during the Summer I could have arranged for it to be fixed, we're now into Baltic season and a second hand unit off Ebay is awaiting the services of a skilled mechanic. Once in Inverness, I dropped off some books at Leakey's Bookshop and we hit variou...

This is by far the most tenuous Nature Notes post yet, but bear with me. A much-anticipated trip south to Inverness finally came to fruition, despite a fraught few days immediately prior to the journey when the ferry broke down for 36 hours.  Fortunately, on the allotted day all was well, and we sailed serenely across the Pentland Firth, followed by a leisurely drive through Caithness and Sutherland. En route, we stopped off at Golspie for a bit of early Autumn colour, then Skelbo for a picnic lunch. At both sites we found the increasingly-misnamed Southern Hawker dragonfly, a woodland species which is expanding its range northwards, and one has to wonder if it will make it to Orkney before too long. The trip was occasioned by a fervent desire to see Elephant Sessions, a  band who seamlessly blend trad, funk and electronica. W e decided to make a long weekend of it and risk the company of 998 other music lovers at a sellout gig  at the Ironworks in Inverness. I could be w...