Christine's walking & birds blog

Spots and speckles today up the quarry road - with a family of spotted flycatchers remaining mostly well hidden in birches and alders.....


.....and several speckled wood butterflies nectaring on bramble flowers.


There have been many occasions when I've been walking here or up on the hill when I've heard what sounded like a red-throated diver - the goose-like "cuk-cuk-cuk" - seeming to come from the steep-sided, wooded river gorge. This of course would be impossible, so I assumed it was flying over; but it wasn't until today that I finally spotted one, in rapid flight towards the loch.


It would have flown over Ullapool. I do a lot of moaning about the cold summers here, but I suppose it's quite nice to live in a village with flyover divers and the odd flyover eagle.

I think I've sorted out the mystery of the painted ladies. The writer of the letter in the Guardian, who was of the opinion that there was no invasion of these butterflies, was probably right; but what there has been, it seems, is an emergence. I wondered why the individuals we saw in May/June were so tatty while those present in late July/early August were pristine; this is because the latter had not undergone a terrific migratory flight, but were hatched/metamorphosed here. I had thought that couldn't be possible because there wouldn't be time (the painted lady cannot, I've learnt, survive the winter here in any form), but apparently the life cycle of butterflies can take mere weeks. I'm still not certain, but anyway, their numbers have now dwindled - although it's anyone's guess as to whether they will die or attempt to migrate south. Opinion among experts on this matter seems to be divided.