There's hardly a tree on the high, windswept moors of eastern Sutherland, a bleak-looking place which, for its brief summer, surprises by concealing a wealth of wildlife species, including....
....lapwings, two pairs nesting close to the shores of this loch, whence they look across the waters to the nests of three pairs of greylag geese.
In the protection of folds of the hills, where the burns have cut steep-sided glens, there is even more to find, particularly....
....dragonflies. This is Britain's largest, a golden-ringed dragonfly whose magnificence....
....is even better appreciated close up.
Common blues live up to their name in numbers, though the colours of the male are uncommonly rich.
The flowers come late in a place as hard as this, with only some of the millions of bell heather coming into bloom, while....
....less prolific flowers, like this green alkanet, can only be found in the sheltered glens.
Life is here but this year is being unkind: lack of rain means that many of the trees and bushes are burnt, even the sphagnum moss suffering, and....
....plants which, a year ago, were abundant are now scarce.
When I was a boy, my mother showed me forget-me-nots and compared them to another flower she called Bird's-eye, explaining that the latter had a white eye. As I grew up, I often wondered what the flower was that she called Bird's-eye. Then one day I came across the name by accident; it was the Green Alkanet. My mum was a country girl and I always think of her with wild flowers and especially Green Alkanet. Is the name Bird's-eye known by anyone else?
ReplyDelete