The Migrations Begin

We wandered the beach to the north of us this morning, happily finding no victims of avian flu along the tidelines, but today's news that the sea eagles on the west coast, particularly on Mull, have lost chicks to the disease is very upsetting.

We're coming to the time of year when....

....many birds are on the move, and this will no doubt help the spread of the disease. These are pink-footed geese, the first skein of the year seen today moving south. We had hundreds of them resident locally last winter, and enjoyed watching skein after skein flying north and south over us through the early winter months, and wonder, because the disease has affected them badly, what their numbers will be this year.

The sandwich terns, sitting on the rocks just off the beach, were in a vocal mood this morning, their excitement perhaps suggesting that they, too, will shortly be setting off south on their epic annual migration. I think there must have been about twenty of them: I do hope these beautiful, delicate birds manage to return to us next year.

In the garden the michaelmas daisies are, at last, in full bloom but they're not attracting the butterflies as they usually do. This was their only butterfly visitor yesterday, a  very handsome red admiral. Today we've only see two, a white and a common blue. People in other parts of Scotland are reporting good numbers of butterflies this year: what is happening here?