Farlary Insects

Our walk on Sunday was courtesy of the Farlary crofter who has gone to so much trouble to landscape and open up a good proportion of his land to the general public. He must have planted hundreds of trees while, at the same time, leaving clearings for the wildlife that prefers open space or woodland margins. He has also made a feature of the small quarry that was used to build the tracks and bases for the turbines of the nearby Kilbraur wind farm.

This is typical of the varied habitats he's created, a wood which, in the late months of the year, is full of fungi. However, at this time of year it's the insects which are enjoying the croft, including....

....this tiger beetle.

The dragonflies seem to prefer this sort of environment, often landing on lumps of aggregate so they can bask in the sunshine, like this....

....male common blue.

A walk is always made special by a new find. We'd seen golden-ringed dragonflies before, on Ardnamurchan, and knew that their range included Sutherland, but yesterday we finally found the first here, one which was also willing to stay around long enough to have its picture taken.

The female of this species is Britain's largest dragonfly but I think the one pictured is a male. Happily....

....he wasn't alone, and we ended up seeing at least four of the species.

Our Farlary walk finishes on this stone bench by a small burn, protected from the wind by the banks of the glen. Places like this tend to have associations with the wildlife we've seen in them: in this case a very fine orange-tip butterfly.

On our way home we stopped briefly by the banks of Loch Farlary in the hope of seeing an osprey there again. We were unlucky but a somewhat irritated lapwing did its best to make up for it.

The croft has a cottage to rent - link here.