Autumn Gentians

One of the plants which is coming in to flower in discrete colonies on the grassland of the Littleferry links is the....

....autumn gentian. It's a plant which, ever since we first found it in 2020, seems to be having a hard time. In some years hardly any of them actually flowered but this year they seem to be having a little more success.

The local gentians come in two colours. The above picture shows the white variety which seems to be prevalent at Littleferry, while the purple variety is less common. The fact that the white variety has....

....purplish outer petals has led me to think that this is the purple variety: it isn't.

While the bell heather - the darker one in this picture - is already beginning to die back the lighter-coloured ling is coming in to its own.

With so many flowers in bloom and some bright sunshine while we were there this morning, there were - for. welcome change - a good number of butterflies on the wing, including this small copper, plenty of common blues, and perhaps even more small heaths, but what we noticed was that there was, for whatever reason, a total absence of larger butterflies.

The Rock

Yes, I know, it's only a boring rock sitting beside the track and minding its own business but to people like me it has great importance.

You see, when one gets a bit old, a rock like the one on the left in this picture is precious: it's somewhere to sit and rest and do what older people should be good at: nothing.

The trouble is that, for reasons which are probably to do with the ice age, there are precious few well-placed, comfortable rocks beside Golspie's tracks. This one happens to be ideally located, just under a mile from home and on a track which is frequented by few people.

So, today, I walked to the rock and sat down for a well-earned rest. The hills are very quiet now, with little bird song, but a pair of buzzards began calling high above me and, being very aware that creatures often call when they aren't very happy about something they're seeing, I searched the skies and found....

....what was agitating them - an eagle, I think, probably a golden eagle, at the extreme range of my camera.

We see buzzards, red kites and sparrowhawks fairly frequently but an eagle is a bit special, so I sat for some time to watch it wheel across they sky with the agitated buzzards in close pursuit.

I set off home as soon as the buzzards fell silent, and had just realised that I hadn't seen a single butterfly when....

....this beautiful common blue took flight right in front of me, landing shortly thereafter on a convenient leaf.

By the time I reached home I had been out for about an hour and seen just two butterflies; and this is the beginning of August.