Golspie Glen

The Golspie Burn was running whisky-red yesterday when we walked up the glen, finding, along its banks....

....a rather beautiful tableau of fungi which were immediately identified by an app as Galerina marginata, funeral bell, a name which well describes its reputation.

The only local occurrence of common spotted orchids - only a half dozen of them -  is in the glen, a little past its best now but good to find once again. We were also on the lookout for butterflies for the Big Butterfly Count but the only species we saw was....

....speckled wood, several of them, each fluttering round in the dappled shade of its private clearing, while....

....in a slightly larger clearing we found several emerald damselflies sunning themselves on wet blades of grass.

As can be seen from the pictures, yesterday was the sunniest day in a very long time, the temperatures high enough for us to sit in the garden for lunch, but today has reverted to leaden skies and a cool northerly breeze and, despite keeping a good lookout for them, not a single sighting of a butterfly.