Our walk at Farlary yesterday was much sunnier than this picture suggests, certainly sunny enough to bring out my favourite insects - the dragon- and damselflies - in impressive numbers. Around this small lochan, formed when the developers were digging out aggregate for the wind turbine bases, we found good numbers of....
....black darters. We didn't see any males of this species last time we visited but this time they outnumbered....
....the females, both sexes seeming to spend most of their time basking on the warmth of the rocky paths.
The emerald damselflies were all over the place, dancing over the surfaces of the lochans and relaxing on the tips of the ling.
This is the smaller of Farlary's two lochans but the more crowded with dragonflies. I was thrilled to....
....catch this fleeting shot of a large dragonfly but, after sitting watching it for some time, it finally came across and landed near us.
It's a male southern hawker, one of the most spectacularly-coloured of the hawkers and a species we've not seen at Farlary before. However, we have seen it in the Golspie area and what is so pleasing about the local males is that it they are all a relatively rare blue form of the species.
This little lochan was also home to a very contented frog which, judging by the brazen way it floated around, can't ever have heard of or seen a heron.
Mrs MW spotted this common lizard just as we returned to the car. I was thrilled as we used to see so many of these, in their browner or greener forms, in our days on Ardnamurchan yet this is the first we've seen here.
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