Up into Empty Forestry

We walked up into the higher forestry below Beinn Bhraggie summit today, into dark, silent pinewoods almost devoid of life even though....

....the ling is in full flower for the insects and....

....there's a feast of blueberries for the birds and for any human that....

....cares to spend a few minutes picking them.

The only butterfly we saw was a lone spotted wood, the one species which seems to have done fairly well this year.

Perhaps the lack of insect life is because the weather has turned cooler but I don't think so. It does just seem to have been a bad year for them even though, in the last few days, we've seen reasonable amounts of pleasant sunshine. For example, our dark purple buddleia, which would usually be covered in butterflies, hover flies and bees, has almost finished flowering with very little showing any interest.

Only the fungi seem to be doing well, colonising every available spot and, in the absence of everything else, giving us plenty of pleasure.