A weekly picture from The Oa reserve on Islay:
Liz from the Lodge joined us this week to help out on the Islay reserves for the next few weeks. Thursday was her first day at The Oa and we gave her the customary welcome: lashings of rain, a shovel, a wheel barrow and several tonnes of gravel. Despite the rain and hard larbour, she left smiling, or possibly grimacing, and the path is looking loads better for her efforts. Thank you Liz.
Bonus Photos:
As our Highland coos can vouch, the biggest problem with this rain is it makes your hair go frizzy.
The rain has been causing issues for the farm team as well this week. It is at this time of year that we are looking to sow crops in our arable fields and, if necessary, give our silage a helping hand. Ewan's pics below shows the ideal conditions we had last year, but at the moment we are snatching at dry spells.
Working the fields in the last week of May 2016. Photos kindly provided by Ewan.
Moth Friday:
Sadly we haven't had a dry enough night to get the moth trap out this week, but while doing a cliff survey on Wednesday, I came across at least a dozen of these lovely Dew Moths.
When mentioning the sighting to the site manager, Dave pointed out that these are actually nationally scarce moths, confined to a handful of sites around the UK and only on the wing for a few weeks each year. The lesson here, is not to assume that something is common just because you see lots of them; you may very well just be in the right place at the right time.
If you have a picture or sighting from The Oa that you would like to share, please get in contact.