Sunday, August 30, 2026
Beinn Liath Mhor a' Ghiubhais Li
I set off on this rather gloomy morning unsure whether I would make it to the top. Most of the hills around - including mine - had their heads in cloud; and the Met Office had indicated a fairly high risk of rain. I crossed the stream easily and walked up the stony, 2-kilometre track through the plantation. There was no sign of any bird life. As I took to the saturated, muddy hillside, I was suddenly beset by midges - badly enough to take my rucksack off and fish out the netted hat. Oh dear. Either my head has shrunk, or I'd grabbed Greger's hat; either way, it immediately slipped down over my eyes and was completely useless. In the end I took it off and used it to flap at the midges while holding both walking poles awkwardly in one hand.
Eventually I left the midges behind, and even the seemingly interminable steep, wet area of long grass and heather came to an end. Next stage - the peat hags. Well, at least the ground here is almost level. This gives you a breather for the next stage, which is again grass and heather, with patches of squelchy sphagnum moss. Meadow pipits were the only birds to be seen until half a dozen red grouse erupted from the ground ahead and glided off to the left and out of sight.
Two species of clubmoss were seen; the first is probably fir clubmoss, the second I'm confident is Alpine clubmoss.
The sight of crowberry beginning to fruit reminded me of ptarmigan, and I scanned the hillside with my bins - but there was nothing.
At last I reached the summit - to find the views blotted out by cloud.
Nice to be here, though - for the 12th time. I ate my sandwiches in solitary splendour, and considered walking on a bit further. But there was a keen wind up here and I was growing cold, so I scanned the plateau and then set off down.
Two meadow pipits were engaged in an aerial battle until one flew off and the other landed just below me.
Arctic bearberry, its leaves turning a deep red, sprawled characteristically across a lichened boulder.
I think this is hard fern (Blechnum spicant) - not quite sure.
When I looked up from the ground, I was startled by the moody aspect towards Beinn Dearg; fortunately, those dark clouds weren't heading my way, but the sight of the peat hags below reminded me I still had a long way to go.
Peat hags negotiated once more, I tackled the lower wet slopes carefully; I didn't want a repeat of my silly fall at Rhue. Just before I reached the start of the plantation track, a bumblebee buzzing round the heather some way off caught my eye, and I snapped a couple of photos just in case.
For obvious reasons, I wondered if it could be a broken-belted bumblebee (which I hadn't heard of before my investigations online this evening); but it doesn't seem quite right for that species, and in any case white-tailed bumblebees can become a bit worn towards the end of the summer. Also, this does have a bright white tail. An adult black darter dragonfly and a colourful frog were also spotted here. As I stepped thankfully onto hard ground at the start of the track, I was besieged by black flies - not midges, larger. I scrambled to get the useless hat out of the rucksack again, but by the time I had succeeded in getting it on and pulling the drawstring tight at the bottom of the netting, it was only to find that some of the flies were in there with me. Eek! Again, I took off the hat and used it to keep flapping the flies away as I made my escape. After a while, they stopped following, and all I had to worry about was the bunion on my left foot becoming a little sore and the fact that it had begun to rain - a light shower that soon passed over. I'd been lucky with the weather - unlucky with ptarmies.
As I drove home, just outside the village, a bird went running (scuttling) across the road. I loaded up the footage from my dash cam but it doesn't throw any light on the ID and the quality's too poor to crop the still that I took of it. A car was coming the other way and we both got quite close, but it didn't attempt to fly - it disappeared into the grassy verge and left me wondering "What the blooming heck was that?"
Greger was pleased that I'd got to the top (he's got a painful hip at the moment so couldn't join me, but he'd followed my progress on the finder app) and had cooked my favourite bacon, onion, and tomato sauce (made even tastier with a little smoked paprika) and spaghetti, with a tray of roasted cauliflower and broccoli and a huge heap of grated cheese. Who could ask for more?
Friday, August 28, 2026
Two days ago I walked up the quarry road in bright sunshine, spotting a bright male common darter in the usual place....
Beyond the bridge, I sat on rocks above the river to lunch on crisps and water - and a grey wagtail flew downstream to land just beyond the deep pool. As I raised my camera to snap it, something rose from the pool and vanished again with a splash; when I looked again, the wagtail had gone. Don't blame it - that was some big fish!
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(
Saturday, August 22, 2026
The first birds we saw on our walk, between the dunes and the farm, were swooping house martins and swallows, and a young wheatear on the remains of a wall.
The brief call of a curlew drifted up from the machair, and as we made our way down Greger spotted three waders flying past. Two black-tailed godwits and a curlew were keeping company - although a bit later we would see a flock of nine curlews - possibly all juveniles.
We scanned the salt marsh, spotting several more wheatears, and turned onto the soft deep sand along the edge of the river.
The only small waders had been a couple of ringed plovers until, in an area of dried seaweed and holdfasts, a slight movement betrayed the presence of seven foraging sanderling.
We had been aware for some time of small bees flying past us across the beach, and although I couldn't manage to snap one, I caught three of them by chance here, at the top of the frame.
I've seen bees on the beach once before, and they had turned out to be Colletes bees (probably Colletes succinctus); so I knew I should look for their nests up on the cliffs on the far side of the beach. In fact, these bees were heading in that direction. Sure enough, there was a great deal of activity already, with males waiting outside the excavated nesting holes in the sand to mate with emerging females. This was a fairly substantial aggregation, but apparently they can be much bigger! I retreated carefully, fearful of treading on either the bees or the striped snails which speckle the ground here like tiny white flowers.
Across the headland, a lovely melancholy call from the choppy water alerted me to the presence of three black-throated divers - two adults and a juvenile.
Good to see proof of successful breeding!
Thursday, August 20, 2026
Quite a lot of skua activity was seen from the ferry on Monday. Flocks of kittiwakes were attracting the attentions of Arctic skuas, but two of the skuas were engaged in some quarrel of their own. Eventually they both settled on the water, and one seemed to give up and fly off; but seconds later it returned - presumably to have another go!
The ferry sped onwards as ferries do, and we lost them. (I'm assuming they were both Arctics. I've now seen my first glorious pomarine skua - but I was lucky in that it had its "spoon". Without that aid to ID I might well be flummoxed!)
A solitary Manx shearwater was glimpsed and a lone sooty was snapped sitting on the water with auks and kittiwakes - unnoticed until I uploaded the picture. We also had several very brief glimpses of Minke whales.
Yesterday, two common(?) terns, and a bonxie paying a fleeting visit to the fish farm, were at Ardmair.
Today, the terns were still there, mostly on the far side of Loch Kanaird; and ten redshanks were dozing on a rock at the very end of the spit. At least five rock pipits were zipping about foraging in the seaweed - and then a furious row from the gulls made me look up - to see a white-tailed eagle being attacked by a great black-backed gull.
A second eagle then sailed into view, and as I watched them interact (with the second one clearly looking up at the first) I was surprised to see that this was an immature bird.
Back at home I got a second helping! I was standing in the garden enjoying a spell of sunshine when the herring gulls sounded the alarm. An eagle flew lazily over towards the loch followed by a second individual, both of them circling for a while before flying on, when I lost them behind the bungalow.
I failed to get a photo of the first eagle, or even see it well - but as far as the one above is concerned, I can't match it with either of the eagles I saw at Ardmair. I think it has a ring on the right leg.
Wednesday, August 12, 2026
A painted lady in the garden today had the pristine appearance of an individual bred here this summer, compared with the raggedy appearance of the one I snapped back in May which was almost certainly a migrant.
Yesterday, we went on the ferry. We had two tantalising glimpses of Minke whale while sheer spectacle was provided by large rafts of auks and kittiwakes. We saw several bonxies and a handful of sooty shearwaters, but though I snapped dolphins whenever I could it wasn't until I uploaded the photos that I realised these particular individuals weren't commons.....
.....the tall sickle fins and pale colouring suggesting Risso's.
Monday, August 10, 2026
A pleasant walk down sun-bleached fields and then along the banks of the River Lim took us from our holiday home on Dragon's Hill into the heart of Lyme Regis - although I was often distracted by various sightings on the way.
As well as the old favourite hummingbird hawkmoth, the walk also gave me three new insects: a Jersey tiger hawkmoth (Euplagia quadripunctaria) and a figwort sawfly (Tenthredo scrophulariae).....
.....and the beautiful demoiselle (Calopteryx virgo) - although I would get slightly better pics of these later, when we visited Athelhampton House, near Dorchester.
We don't often visit stately homes, but Greger was interested in this one because the owner has worked hard on making it carbon neutral. However, the interior of the house proved very interesting, with parts of it dating from the 15th century. Some stained-glass windows caught my eye as they featured choughs (in another, but rather duller window, a single bird has a more lifelike bill).
We then wandered round the attractive gardens and found the damselflies on the stream flowing along the northern edge of the grounds - which I think is the River Piddle.
Back at the house we chose the small cream tea rather than the large one (just one scone) in the cafe - and they were, unusually in our experience, fairly generous with the cream and jam. I didn't want to waste any so I loaded my scone with so much of both that it kept crumbling away, and I ended up in a right mess with sticky fingers, face, and even hair. You can't take me anywhere. After tea and a clean-up in the loo, we drove to Maiden Castle Iron Age hill fort, and during a very windy walk on the chalk ramparts, spotted two clouded yellow butterflies (Colias croceus) sparring in mid-air. They eventually landed for a few seconds on the path, but I failed to get them with their wings open. Still - another insect first!
It was nice to see corn buntings near the car park, and a brown hare out on the parched fields among the corvids.
From Lyme, the Isle of Portland can be seen on the horizon (well, provided it's not swathed in one of its famous mists!) and a visit there was a must.
It was probably the warmest day of the week, so we didn't didn't set off on one of our long walks; we just ambled past the beach huts and horse paddocks to the first quarry, and then returned to the Bill. Despite the lovely sunshine and a few free seats outside the Lobster Pot, we went indoors to eat some very nice fish and chips. We laughed at this, because last time we were here (in cool, grey weather) we chose to sit outside - and halfway through our lunch it started to rain.
An ancient red telephone box looks as though it could do with some TLC!
We called in at Ferry Bridge on the way home and spotted dunlin, sanderling, Med gulls, and a solitary swift.
Golden Cap is the highest point along the cliffs between Lyme and Weymouth - and Greger wanted to revisit it for old times' sake. Many years ago, during our running days, we were camping at its foot; and one morning we donned trainers and ran up to the top. This time, he suggested a more gentle approach, and we drove round to Langdon Woods and walked under a canopy of mostly beech and pine, across open fields with hedgerows (a family of common whitethroats and a single yellowhammer seen here), and then to heathland sloping more steeply up to the trig point.
The view westwards to Charmouth and Lyme.
The gardens at our holiday let produced willow warbler, magpie, wren, buzzard, and this juvenile green woodpecker - a species I haven't seen since we moved to the Highlands twelve years ago.
A female tawny owl was once heard calling, and on another night we saw a badger run across the lawn. A dried-up pond in the centre of the lawn was surrounded by a tangle of vegetation, which included purple loosestrife and water mint - both new plants for me. I'm running out of steam, so I won't bother with the scientific names.
After a walk along the front to see Mary Anning's statue, Greger bought himself an ice cream. We lingered by the sea wall, and at one point I walked away from him to count the herring gulls on the rocks below; I was stepping back up to him when something rushed between us and Greger just managed an outraged "Oh!" It was a herring gull. He'd been mugged! His hand was still in the air with the fingers curled round the cone - but the cone was gone! Greger said afterwards that he was actually quite pleased it had happened - a sort of feather in his cap - although he agreed when I suggested that he might have minded more if it had been not just the bottom of the cone but the whole ice cream!
By the end of the week, when we packed up and left, it was decidedly cooler - and I was mortified to see that hotter weather was due a couple of days later. Once again, we managed to miss the high temperatures - we got sandwiched between two heatwaves, with temperatures that were pleasant, but no more than you'd expect during an ordinary English summer. However, I noticed that Greger suffered even from this heat, so it's really just as well that we were going home.
I took this battered and much-read paperback on holiday, intending to walk out on the Cobb and read the scene of Louisa Musgrove's fall aloud to Greger; but on both our walks on the Cobb I realised I'd left the book back at the cottage....
.....and he didn't seem to mind!
