30th July 2009

This morning, a quick check around the farm at West Murkle, in readiness for a visiting group of professional folk from the local Scottish Government agriculture department, the Scottish Agricultural College, and Scottish Natural Heritage.  An independent ecologist also was coming along, as well as the Caithness LBAP officer, Phyllida Sayles.  Would we see a Great Yellow Bumblebee..?  I had a chat with Andrew Campbell, the farmer here, and a good look round revealed all the right kinds of flowers, including the very attractive Devil’s-bit Scabious, and a number of bumblebee species.  Sadly, no Great Yellow Bumblebees deigned to appear today, which invites the question, why do we not have a reliable site for the species in Caithness, despite the broad scatter of records?  Finally, I popped into Seadrift at Dunnet Bay to see Highland Council Ranger, Mary Legg, and was pleasantly surprised to meet one of our Stirling University Environmental Science students, doing some summer work and busy preparing craft dragonflies for an event tomorrow!