The Painted Lady

This beautiful butterfly was spotted on goat willow which is showing signs of the coming of autumn. It was the only butterfly on the wing, which is an achievement as the temperature at the time was 11C on a day when it struggled to reach 14C.

The butterfly is one of two painted ladies which have appeared in the back garden each time the sun has come out. One, this one, is rather bigger than the other, which is also rather moth-eaten.

Painter ladies are rather special as they are immigrants which, over several generations, have worked their way northwards from Africa and the Mediterranean. But, like ocean waves, they can only reach a little further north before they break against the hard shore of northern Scotland's short cool summers and long winters.

I have a special affection for these butterflies because they are, for me, fellow travellers,  emigrants from Africa that will never return.

Portraits

I have thousands of photos stored in 'the cloud', accumulated since 2008 when I purchased my first digital camera, yet few are of me. I'm very happy with this situation as I don't consider myself to be in any way photogenic, not can I imagine that there is anyone out there, not even my nearest and dearest, who would want a mass of pictures of me.

So such pictures of me as I have kept are very largely for my use in recalling particular moments in my life, in helping me to remember how I felt at the moment each was captured - and this picture, taken on the long desert coast of Namibia, is one such.

All night the onshore breeze has carried a dense, chilling mist in from the sea, a mist formed as the warm, damp South Atlantic airmass crossed the cold Benguela current - but the sun is almost hot enough to burn away the last of the mist leaving us to broil in its direct heat.

I remember that short walk on my own. I remember the immense heat, the burn of the sun on my skin, the rhythmic bump of the waves, the otherwise immense silence, for this beach backs on to the emptiness of hundreds of miles of desert. I would have been quite happy to spend the rest of the day in that lonely place, where air meets sand and sea, but we were on a tourist trip and had to return to the Land Rover so we could hurry on to see the flamingoes.

A Raptor and Eight Butterflies

Within moments of our leaving the house this morning for our usual gentle Sunday morning stroll, this bird passed over us. While it is evidently a raptor, its species is less clear. It might be a late-staying osprey or a hawk, but I think it's most likely be a harrier. From its silhouette, it could be a marsh harrier, but according to the RSPB's distribution map this species does not come this far north - so it's most likely to be a hen harrier.

It's very frustrating that the only pictures I could get were silhouettes from below as hen harriers aren't common here - in fact, I don't think we've seen one since leaving Suffolk..

I keep thinking that I'm seeing the last butterfly of the year in our garden, and then the weather, and the butterflies, prove me wrong. Yesterday we had some warm weather and bright sunny intervals, and the butterflies came out in even larger numbers than before - four peacocks, two red admirals, a painted lady and, for the first time in some weeks, a tortoiseshell.

Conditions towards the end of the afternoon must have been pretty marginal for any butterfly to be on the wing as I saw more and more finding the sunniest places to settle and extending their wings to catch the sun - except for....

....this red admiral which obviously thought that the dark undersides of its wings might absorb more heat. Wherever they chose to settle, I could then approach to within inches before they, very reluctantly, flew off, leaving me feeling bad for disturbing them.

Robbut, or Robbutina?

We were relaxing after a healthy breakfast this morning when we spotted something lurking behind the buddleia at the bottom of the garden. At first, we couldn't believe it, but we realised it was a rabbit about the same size as the missing Robbut, the same colouring, and - conclusive evidence - he was eating the growing tips off one of our precious heathers.

If....if it is Robbut, he's been away for a week - see previous post here. We always assumed it was because our eldest daughter, who came to stay with us, brought her two dogs, one a lurcher, which would have frightened any rabbit out of the garden.

Then we had a terrible thought. The length of time Robbut has been away is about the legal requirement of maternity leave in the rabbit world, so has Robbut.... or, as we might have to call her, Robbutina - been away on maternity leave? And, if so, the implications for our precious back garden are pretty grim

A Fork in the Road

After a much more cheerful day yesterday, with the sun out and a count, at one point, of no less than six butterflies in the garden, including this painted lady....

....today turned miserable, so I took a brisk walk in drizzly rain up to this fork in the road. I like this spot. Things happen here - like, three weeks ago, a red deer stag ran across the track close in front of me.

Today, the excitement was on a slightly lower scale - in fact, on a very small scale, because it was generated by this little bird. It's a chiffchaff which, to me, shouldn't be here. I've always thought of it. as migratory bird, one of the first warblers to arrive in spring, but this one is either rather late in departing or it's planning to spend the winter here.

A few minutes' research showed that chiffchaffs do overwinter just to the south of here, so perhaps it will stay with us - which in some ways would be rather good, in others less so as I won't have the pleasure of listening out for it in spring.

The song of the chiffchaff was laid across an almost constant calling of skeins of pink-footed geese, about a hundred geese altogether, which kept circling above the fields this side of the golf course, and....

....the very insistent chatter of this robin, reminding us that this fork in the road is HIS for the winter.

Autumn - Maybe

The astronomical equinox happened in the early hours of this morning so we're now officially in to autumn, but the fact is that, here on the ground, the temperatures over the last few days have sometimes suggested it's more like we've passed from autumn into winter. In addition, many of the summer flowers have gone, and even those that are still in bloom, like the bell heather, are showing their age; and there are no new wildflower species appearing to get excited about.

However, despite the fact that winter is my least favourite season, there are things to look forward to, like....

....the sun rising further and further south along the horizon, so we can climb out of bed in the morning and look out on a glorious skyscape of colours. 

Then there are some birds which spend their summer either in some distant destination or lost to sight in the pine forests - like the coal tits, which have begun to reappear only in the last few days.

The fungi are also something to look forward to, even if their appearances are mainly made in the early part of winter. Some of them are shooting up in almost indecent haste: three days ago these were still underground.

Sadly, the fungus' display has been marred this year by the slugs and snails, which get onto the caps almost before they have a chance to open.

The signs from the berry trees are that it's going to be a hard winter. I don't think that, since being in Golspie, we've seen the rowans branches so loaded - and I thought they were heavy last year.

A hard winter? I think I can do without that!

Confrontation

I recognise the grating sounds of anger of an annoyed robin but yesterday, as I was trying to relax in the back garden during a few moments' sunshine between the showers, I heard robin anger of unprecedented fury - to the extent that I took this photo of the source, what I thought was a lone robin but which turned our to be....

....the noisy robin apparently confronting a silent robin.

Was the one that was silent a female, and the noisy one an amorous male? This seemed unlikely at this time of year. Or was it....

....a very dominant male trying to frighten away a possible territorial rival? If this was the case, the rival seemed quite prepared to hold his ground in silent belligerence.

I didn't see the final outcome because I was distracted by....

....what I thought might be the last butterfly of the year, a red admiral.