Christine's walking & birds blog

It was warm enough to convert my walking trousers into shorts, and having stuffed the "legs" into my backpack, I set off up the hill path. When I reached the turnoff to Maol Chalaisgeig (that's a blooming long name to type for a very small hill - 301m!) I decided to go up. It got more and more windy as I climbed, and at the top it was really quite cold. I was glad to put my fleece on, but didn't bother with the trouser legs as they're much harder to zip on than off! 

A gorgeously yellow bumblebee nectaring on now-fading bell heather made me wonder if I'd found my first heath bumblebee. The yellow hair on the face apparently means it's a male.

I'm not 100% sure though; it could be a white-tailed bumblebee, although I've seen several of those in the garden this year and this one looked different. More research to be done, as usual. There was also a Sericomyia silentis - sometimes known as the bog hoverfly, although it's not the only species of hoverfly to be called that.

 
Further down the slope, a nice tawny/chestnut moth fluttered into the sparse undergrowth, but I got enough of it in the picture to identify it back at home - although it took some time. It's a chevron moth (Eulithis testata).

I was pleased to find that I coped okay with the walk, and Greger (having had another, shorter, bout of his cold) decided he would do it today - in fact, we agreed to do it together. However, we woke up to grey drizzly weather that didn't invite walking anywhere, so I sat down to write this blog instead. The question is, will we get up a sizeable hill this summer? I would love to do a hill-walk for its own sake, but there is also the possibility that this will be the first time since we came to live here that ptarmigan doesn't make it onto my year list. And that would be tragic. :o(