As I set off up the track for my morning walk into the hills I was wished good morning by this cheerful yellowhammer, and by a couple of nearby butterflies, a small copper and a peacock. However, the main interest along the track was the wealth of wildflowers just coming into bloom, including....
....the flowers of blaeberry....
....heath milkwort....
....and tormentil, this last, very retiring flower being so emblematic of the highland's hills..
My walk was to the hut circle, about a mile-and-a-half from the house, where I sat on its low wall and enjoyed sunshine and the view. Soon, the circle will be invisible, shrouded by the bracken which is already shooting up; and it will remain so until almost a year hence.
I sat for some time, imagining the people who lived there two millennia or more ago, and concluding once again that they built their houses where they had a view - for the ground drops away steeply on the side the looks out over the landscape.
It is, of course, too much to imagine that it was they who sent a message via the best sighting of the day, one of the....
....fritillary family.
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