7th June
A walk today in the slightly cooler conditions. It was still hot but there was no scorchingly hot sun beating down on us. A couple with their dogs set off at the same time as us, but we hadn't gone very far before we met them coming back!
Talking to them for a few minutes we discovered one of their dogs was getting old and couldn't cope with a very long walk anymore. Chatting to the couple we found we had similar ideas about several things, mainly that a walk is not just a rush from A to B but an opportunity to "look" and see what is around you. We all felt many walkers miss so much on their walks.We always say that if a book tells you a walk will take a certain time, we double that knowing it will take us a lot longer to look and photograph anything we find - and we always find something! We both like wildlife of all types so anything we find is worth the walk.
We were walking along an old railway track that has a lovely stone viaduct looking out over a loch (Loch Struan) The first spot of the day was a lovely fresh Silver Ground Carpet moth just sitting obligingly on a leaf.
We soon saw damselflies, bees, soldier beetles and different wild flowers to the ones we saw yesterday and we hadn't gone very far at all. A butterfly and a moth stopped us in our tracks and caused problems as neither were wanting to sit down! We did eventually get a photo of the moth - a Latticed Heath - but the butterfly (we were thinking a Skipper) evaded us.
The verges of the track were humming with bees, flies and hoverflies.There was plenty of "Eggs and Bacon" (aka Birds Foot Trefoil) edging the path, but also golden yellow buttercups, bright green bracken, beautiful blue bugle, thousands of daisies holding their faces up to the sun and the rather tattered-looking ragged robin.
There were plenty of flowering Rowan trees along the track too - what a scent.
The edges of the track have shallow runs of water in them - they are hardly deep enough to call them ditches. However we frequently see frog and toad spawn laid in the water. The water at the moment is very shallow, due to lack of rain, but there were still hundreds of tadpoles in there!
Some of the seed heads on the flowers are really pretty - and in our opinion worthy of a photograph.
There were several white butterflies and a few day-flying moths fluttering about the track and bushes but many were just too fast to photograph. We did manage to get a few shots of damselflies...
... especially the one that came and sat on my hand when I held it out when the damselfly came towards me!
This red-necked Footman moth was a first for us.
A short, but really interesting walk. We moved on to the Otter Pool, which on a sunny weekend or holiday is full of people paddling in the water or cooking on the barbecues. However today it was really quiet. We had seen loads of bushes covered in what looked like webs, as we travelled along the road. Looking closer they were full of little wriggling caterpillars. weird but wonderful!
But the star find of the day was waiting for us among the rocks right by the water ...
... a beautiful adder!!
We thought that was all we were going to see, but then as we set off home overhead we saw a Red Kite. She (don't actually know whether it was male or female) was just hovering around in the sky showing off the colours of her feathers and the way her tail is used as she turned and twisted in the sky. Beautiful bird. Spellbinding to watch.
Our day out turned into a real "Wild Adventure" Fantastic.
No comments:
Post a Comment