A Fine Weather Walk

This morning's walk, in very welcome fine weather, provided a new 'first' of the year, the first time I've seen deer in the rabbits' field above the house. They were well aware of my presence but seemed unconcerned, allowing....

....me to approach close enough to see that the one on the left was a buck while....

....the doe was accompanied by what might have been last year's young.

The second 'first' of the year followed shortly afterwards, a first dragonfly which passed me too quickly to identify it beyond saying that was a hawker. However, a few minutes later....
 

....as I passed the small pond formed by a seep which runs even when the weather has been dry, I saw the first damselfly of the year....

....a large red. More followed, some of them....

....paired up.

Today's butterflies disappointed - but then, it's been a very disappointing year for them. I saw what was probably a painted lady, one white, and three small coppers (above).

The bell heather is just coming into flower, as is the cross-leaved heath, joining....

....the northern marsh orchids in a fine display of shades of purple.

A Walk to the Village

Much of the early part of our usual walk through the woods to the village is through mature Scots pine plantation, the forest floor now almost totally invaded by bracken. Despite this, on this morning's walk we found....

....a patch of chanterelle fungi. Normally, one would notice them and pass on but at the moment there is hardly a fungus growing in the area due to an almost total lack of serious rainfall over the last few weeks, so he plantation floor is very dry.

Just beyond the fungi, and still in the plantation, we almost trod on....

....what I think was a wood mouse - also called a field mouse. Since it was in the middle of a mountain bike track we persuaded it to move away into the undergrowth.

From the pines our path enters Speckled Wood, so called because, in normal times, it is an ideal home for a large population of speckled wood butterflies - but times are not normal, and we hadn't seen a butterfly here from some weeks.

Happily, that changed....

....for we found a good dozen of these very understated butterflies on the wing, mostly chasing each other - I assume to catch up on what must be a very late breeding season.

Low Tide at Littleferry

A low tide and a low temperature and the forecast for a dull day didn't put us off a gentle walk at Littleferry where we found much more to interest us than of late, starting with,,,,

.... plenty of moon jellyfish and, above, a few blues all stranded along last night's high-tide line.

If the number and variety of birds we saw was a bit disappointing, the exceptions were....

....a few dozen eider, mostly juveniles, and two....

....fluffy wader chicks whose plaintive peepings brought....

....mum hurrying over to try to attract us away - at which point we retreated and continued our walk.

Wandering back over the links, enjoying seeing the ground covered with wildflowers, we finally managed to persuade a six-spotted burnet moth to sit still enough to have its picture taken.

As if this were not enough, we spotted....

....the white bell heather plant which we found two or three years ago and then 'lost' until today.

White heather is supposed to be lucky. In this portrait my grandfather, George Wilson, has a spray of white heather in his buttonhole, the picture presumably taken on one of his Highland walking holidays when he was 'home' on leave from Burma.

Rabbit News

We haven't seen Sonny in over a week but we're not too worried - there are plenty of rabbits hopping around both....

....in the two big rabbit fields just up the track from us, some of which are the ones with white patches around their shoulders, and in the verge of our road, where they're most active late in the evening, any one of which might well be Sonny. In any case, Sonny recently found himself with  more food than he could possibly cope with when the house next door, which is nearing completion, had....

....the whole of its back garden laid to turf, so there is enough grass there to feed Sonny and a hundred of other rabbits.

Then, this morning....

....we found a new rabbit in our back garden, a very small rabbit which spent some time hopping round the place as if he was considering moving in. He's welcome, as long as his relatives don't all move in at the same time.

Grey Skies

The early afternoon temperature yesterday did rise to a heady 18C and today's made 19C but the sun has made little progress in breaking through the grey clouds, though the air was warm enough to....

....bring out a lone butterfly, probably a small white; and Mrs MW did spot what was probably a single speckled wood on her way down to the village. We're also not seeing as many 'firsts' amongst the wildflowers though....

....this cross-leaved heath was an exception.

This is yet another northern marsh orchid but it's significantly different from all the others in that it's growing in our garden. It's one of three we rescued from a neighbouring croft where the butler sink they were growing in was needed as a herb planter. 

And, yes, the number of small birds coming into the garden to feast on the sunflower seeds does seem to have increased considerably since we lost our sparrowhawk.

Disaster!

Our beautiful male sparrowhawk is dead, killed because we didn't act when we should have done.

Close readers of this blog will know that this sparrowhawk nearly died back in February when he collided with one of the glass panels which surround our balcony - see post here. Following that, we put decals on the glass and this seemed to have the desired effect - certainly the number of small birds braining themselves on the glass fell to almost zero.

Unfortunately, we didn't have quite enough decals to put on all the glass. We should have bought some more to put on the two remaining ones but the panels involved were furthest from where the small birds had their feeding station, so we left it.

This is the result.

Not everyone is in mourning but I feel deeply responsible for what has happened.

Wildlife News

Each time we walk down to the village through Speckled Wood we hope to see a butterfly - but we haven'r seen one there in some time. It's just too cold. We tend to go that way at about ten in the morning and at that time, with the sky cloudy and an easterly breeze, the temperature struggles to climb above 14C.  In the garden we've seen the very occasional butterfly, mostly a lone white or an isolated peacock, and then only for a minute or two - hence no picture. In fact, our largest population of resident butterflies are the two whites which have taken up residence indoors in our house and show no signs of leaving.

So we have to obtain our pleasures from the birds that come to visit us. The great spotted woodpecker which first visited us a fortnight ago is now coming to feed on both the peanuts and the fat cakes. We're also seeing....

....plenty of siskins (above), goldfinches and greenfinches, all of them brilliantly dressed. However, our pleasure with the birds is being marred by....

....individuals like this greenfinch, which show signs of trichomonosis, the disease which has brought about a 60% decline in greenfinch populations since 2005 and which is now also beginning to affect our local chaffinches. We do our best to stop its spread: the water bowls are cleaned out and refilled daily, we've reduced the number of feeders and those we do use are regularly dipped in a Jeyes fluid bath - but the disease persists.