Hut Circle: A Last Visit

With the weather a little more cheerful I set off this morning to make a last visit to the hut circle before the bracken buries it until spring of next year. I was kept company while I sat on a convenient rock by....

....a cheery pipit - and it was while I was watching it that the first swift of the summer made a fleeting appearance, its scythe-like wings cutting the blue of the sky.

I couldn't find any of the orchids which were in bloom when last I walked the hut circle track ten days ago but I did find one new heath spotted, as well as some....

.....bugle and....

....this very pretty, delicate flower which, beyond considering it may be a veronica, I have failed to identify.

I also found plenty of is marsh thistle, notable for its deep colours and the symmetry of its leaves.

As I approached home this bird met me with an explosion of song, which enabled the Merlin app to identify it as a male blackcap - which, in its excitement, was hopping around too much for a good picture.

Another Rabbit

When we woke yesterday morning we found a new rabbit in the garden feeding, as Tsuro did, very contentedly on the grass and clover that covers our paths. For a few moments we thought it might be Tsuro, back from some far-away adventure, but this rabbit is much bigger, has a very different coat pattern, and lacks....

....some of Tsuro's distinctive features, like a small white blaze high on his forehead.

Before Tsuro's sad death I had seen two rabbits of about the right proportions feeding on the grass at the front of the houses in our road. This was late in the evening, around 10pm, when it's still very light here. So I'd like to think that this is Tsuro's friend.

We thought this might be a one-off visit as he was disturbed by the builders working next door, but he was back this morning so, maybe, we have a new resident rabbit. The next thing we'll need is a name for him.

Encounters

During the hour or so we spent in the garden yesterday afternoon with the sun out we saw only one butterfly, a white, which moved through so quickly I couldn't identify it - until....

....I stumbled across this little gem feeding on a clover flower. It's a small copper with a wing span of about 25mm when fully extended.

The lack of butterflies is upsetting as we've spent the last two years planting this garden so it would attract insects. At the moment we have a variety of flowers available including pansy, aquilegia, kale, clover, lupin, raspberry, blackcurrant, buttercup, gorse, bugle, strawberry, a beautiful pink-flowered hawthorn.... I could go on and on.

Yet, so far, this has been a dismal year for butterflies. We are now into the official British 'summer' so, with this in mind, I took a walk this morning with Mrs MW to see if our local 'hardiest' butterfly, the speckled wood, was on the wing in Speckled Wood....

....which it wasn't, probably because the air temperature sat at a miserable 15C, the grass and leaves were damp, and the sun was obscured by blanket of low cloud which spasmodically delivered a thin drizzle.

Thankfully, the walk did produce a few moments of real pleasure as....

....just past Speckled Wood the path skirts a large field beyond which lie the railway line and the village - and in the middle of the field, despite the human noise, which included the heavy traffic on the A9, a....

....roe deer hind was enjoying breakfasting on the farmer's lush pasture.

The deer knew I was there. She knew, I suppose, that if I had a dog with me the dog couldn't get to where she was. And perhaps the deer has been photographed before because she didn't seem in the slightest worried by my antics in trying to digitally capture her.

Then, in just one place in a clearing in the dark Scots pine plantation, I stumbled across a mass of white flowers of the....

....delicate wood sorrel. Beautiful!

A New Visitor

We walked along the coast path to the northeast of Golspie this morning looking for bird life along the shore - to be very much disappointed, seeing some gulls, one oystercatcher, just three cormorants instead of the usual couple of dozen, and....

....a pair of rather wary merganser. We assume that the rest are off on nesting duties.

With the weather so dull we didn't expect to see much insect life beyond a few bumblebees, flies and hover flies but were surprised to spot, and fail to photograph, a painted lady. Why an incomer painted lady should be so much more resilient to the weather than the locals is a bit of a mystery to me.

So, disappointed, we walked back to the car through the Dunrobin Castle woods rather than along the shore, to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of the greens of the deciduous trees and the chorus of bird song - blackbird, song thrush, robin, wren, chaffinch, willow warbler, chiffchaff and, for a change, a spotted flycatcher.

We returned to a rabbit-less garden which, yesterday evening, had a new and very welcome visitor....

....a great spotted woodpecker attracted to the peanuts.

This is a visitor whom we'd love to see frequently.

Loch Treig

On our recent visit to beautiful, if rather damp Lochaber we walked along the western shore of Loch Treig. We've seen this loch many times before as the West Highland Railway, which we have often used as it connects Fort William to Glasgow and Euston, runs along the length of its eastern shore - the line can be seen in this photo cutting through the trees on the far side of its waters.

In 1929, as part of the Lochaber hydro-electric scheme, the loch was deepened by building a dam at its northern end, its water then used to supply the power for Fort William and its aluminium smelting works.

There was a price to pay: the rising waters submerged the hamlets of Kinlochtreig and Creaguaineach at the loch's southern end, the West Highland Line had to be diverted, and an ancient drovers' road was lost. The scheme had a long-term effect as water was also taken from many local streams so they now run with much lower volumes; the Spean has suffered from this.

It was a beautiful walk through much softer countryside than the previous day's hike along the River Roy, and for the occasional moment the sun even appeared; and we found far more wildflowers in bloom. While along the Roy we found only lousewort, along the banks of Loch Treig we also found....

....eggs-and-bacon, milkwort and butterwort (above).

Only on our last morning in Lochaber did the weather finally relent, reminding us of the pellucid sunlight that is so typical of Scotland's west coast. This view of the Grey Corries was taken from our hotel's car park just before we set off home.

Purple & Yellow

Despite this morning's dismal weather, we took a walk along the sands at Littleferry, with the tide coming in and very little to be seen along the shoreline - some gulls, a single oystercatcher, a few moon jellyfish, and, the one bird in any quantity....

....two dozen sanderlings so busy feeding that they allowed us very close before....

....flying out to sea and then coming round to land a little way further in front of us.

We returned to the car across the links, where the main object. of our visit was to see if any orchids were in bloom. Littleferry is a wonderful place for northern marsh orchids, and they should have been out in quantity by now, but all we could find was....

....this fine specimen and one other.

This was disappointing but the other wildflowers made up for it, in particular....

....the brilliant purples of the wild thyme which, along with the bright yellows of the eggs-and-bacon plants, seemed to be enjoying a good year.

Tsuro

We were pleased - and somewhat relieved - to find Tsuro mowing the lawn when we arrived back from Lochaber, particularly as the man who maintains it with his very noisy strimmer had visited while we were on holiday, an event which we had rather feared might drive Tsuro away.

Imagine then our distress when, on Tuesday afternoon, we found....

....a small body laid out on our garden terrace.

We're not 100% certain that it was Tsuro, nor could we work out how the rabbit died, as there was no sign of wounds or of disease. We have had myxomatosis in the area before but rabbits which die from that horrible disease tend to have weepy eyes, and this little corpse look remarkably healthy.

We gave him a decent burial in a place where his nutrients will, in due course, benefit the garden which he so much enjoyed; and, while we're hoping that this wasn't Tsuro and that he'll suddenly reappear, we're also on the lookout for a small rabbit to take his place.