Polouriscaig revisited

Last Friday was the ranger walk to Polouriscaig, the abandoned post-clearance village in the hills behind Armadale. I went there last summer and hadn't been back since, so I awarded myself the afternoon off, taking just my short telephoto kit lens with me. (You can see what's coming, can't you...?)

It was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon for a walk:



The heather was in bloom, turning the hills purple, and mushrooms were sprouting up left, right and centre:



It had rained heavily in the past two days and frogs were making the most of the streams of water running down the track:



Polouriscaig itself is just four houses set in a valley, this being the most complete:



After a good look around the village, we sat on the hill behind to catch our breath and a merlin flew past, so engrossed in her pursuit of a meadow pippit that she flew within 15 feet of us and we were treated to a spectacular aerial display as the pippit tried to escape. The ranger said that it was incredibly rare for them to come that close to humans - and, of course, I didn't have my big lens! Still a privilege to see it. I don't know what happened to the pippit, they dropped out of sight.

On the far side of that hill and over a small moor there's another house which I didn't know about. It's not as well built as the others and it's almost gone, but the view from it was spectacular:



The mound you can see in the bottom right of that picture is a huge red granite rock which must look amazing at sunset. Next summer I may just take a tent up and photograph it at sunset (I'm not even going to attempt the trip back in the dark, it's a 2-hour walk and I'd be lost in about two seconds flat!)

It was at this point that the rain clouds caught up with us and we all got soaked. It blew over pretty fast and made for an amazing view towards Strathy Point lighthouse on the way back (that's Hoy, one of the Orkney Islands, in the background):



The ranger says that in October and November deer gather in the first valley over the hill - I shall go and have a look.

Up the Armadale Burn

I've found a cracking website called A Wild Land, which is all about the area I live in and has what look like some very good walks on it. Today I decided to stretch my legs on the first one: The Armadale Big Burn.

The website says that you can sometimes see buzzards riding the thermals and I could see one circling in the distance as I climbed up the track. A beetle caught my eye on the path and I stopped to try and photograph it, but as I did so I could hear 'Keeeeee keeeeee' coming closer all the time and ended up hurriedly switching the lens out of macro to take these:





That is as close as I think I'm going to get to a flying one with this lens - I shall keep an eye on the fence posts and see if I can get closer to a stationery bird.

As you can see from those two shots, the sky was a bit washed out, meaning it was a bad day for landscape photography, but a good day for macro. And luckily I came across absolutely the biggest dragonfly I've ever seen in my life:





Those two were taken with the lens at 300mm in normal mode, but this lens has a switch on the side of it that will change it into a macro lens between 200mm and 300mm. This was taken in macro:



I was looking out for a tributary coming down to the burn, because that meant I was getting near the broch mentioned in the walk guide. The ground started to get marshy and this little chap sprang out of the way of my boot:





I finally reached the broch and did the obligatory climb up to it:



The walk guide said to continue following the burn up to the loch at its source and, if you have the energy, to climb the mountain beside it. However, it had taken me an hour to get this far and looking at my map I could see I was maybe two thirds of the way there at best. That's the problem with taking me walking with a camera - I'll happily spend quarter of an hour following a dragonfly around.

I could see a farm track from the broch that I knew crossed the burn a little way on, so I walked down that to the water and then decided to turn back. There's a small copse of trees down there and in their shade, foxgloves grow:



I tried to get arty with the cotton grass:



And as I got back towards the road, I was rewarded with another buzzard: