Leanne has been volunteering with us for a couple of days here at Loch Gruinart. Along with her many skills, Leanne holds a Bat License, which means she can check our bat boxes along our Woodland Trail. Bats are heavily protected, you cannot check a roost...

We've reached another of the major milestones of the farming year at the Oa as silage cutting started yesterday. And then stopped pretty quickly, as we've had nearly an inch of rain today.

...nearly 800 sheep in for various jags, sprays and inspection today at the Oa.

Here's a thrilling action shot of Geraint in mid spray, in what looks like some kind of post-apocalyptic ruin but is in fact one of our state-of-the-art livestock handling...

The fine weather of last week gave us a bumper night with our moth trap on Friday at the Oa - nearly 300 moths of over 40 different species. Although this pales in comparison with some of the catches routinely made in other parts of the country at this...

A grayling butterfly on scabious at the Oa reserve yesterday. The grayling is one of 4 butterflies on the UK BAP priority list that the reserve supports, the others being small and large heath and the marsh fritillary.

It has been an amazing week of weather, over 25 degrees. In such glorious sunshine most of the birds take cover in the shade. The insects, however, really come to life.

So, on Monday we took advantage of the good weather and went in search of Northern...

...to anyone hoping for another thrilling update from Mary's trail cam - you'll just have to make do with some pictures from the Oa today. Out of focus robins and blue tits will return soon, fear not.

A visitor I was speaking to recently described...

Great numbers of butterflies on the trails today, including this lovely Ringlet that obliged by showing both sides of its wings! There was this Small Tortoiseshell too which looked lovely with the sun lighting it up. Not to mention the Common...

Sometimes it pays to walk more slowly than you would normally and have a good look around, which is exactly what I was doing on the weekly butterfly transect the other day. I wonder how many times I walked past this group of ragwort plants before I saw...

I put our trail camera back out onto a well used branch in the woodland trail. It produced good pictures in the winter and this time was just as diverse - wren, robin, starling, blue tit, song thrush, blackbird, treecreeper and chaffinch all used the...

On Friday last week at Loch Gruinart I was lucky enough to see not only a Spotted Flycatcher but its fledgling too! My first sight of it was a flash of grey as the adult bird flew onto an exposed branch where the younger, more spotted bird was sitting...

Yesterday saw staff and volunteers welcoming visitors to our amazing reserve on the Oa, in glorious weather – yes really! The event was to see how many different species could be found in this spectacular place, with volunteers stationed around...

Above, some of the hairy Highland cows cool off in Loch Kinnabus.There's been a few hot days here on Islay and the local farms have been making the most of it by getting their silage cut.  On the reserves we cut our silage late, but we have been keeping...

We're lucky enough to have large expanses of blanket bog on our reserves, however there have been dramatic declines in this habitat type, with an estimated loss of 21% in Scotland between 1950 and 1980 alone, mainly thanks to change in land use,...

Some more pics from last week. The trip over to Colonsay was in beautiful flat calm conditions with stunning views back over to Jura.

After picking up the team from Oronsay we went round to the seabird cliffs on the north and west of Colonsay.

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We have been lucky enough to get out on the water a couple of times this week to do some boat based sea bird surveys of the cliffs round the Oa reserve and Colonsay. On tuesday, in less than ideal conditions, we counted the small scattered groups of auks...

...enjoying some sun at the Oa reserve on Friday, as I was out on a twite survey. The bird seemed less than interested as I told it all the many things we are trying to do to ensure its survival here in south-west Scotland.

Here's a dragonfly exuvia from the Oa today. I never get bored of seeing these. For the uninitiated, this is the empty casing left behind as the dragonfly nymph emerges into its adult form. I'm going to make the lazy assumption that it's from a four-spotted...

A typical June day here at the Oa, with plenty of rain overnight making it pretty wet under foot. The afternoon brightened up nicely, with several marsh fritillaries visible on today's hugely popular butterfly walk. This spotted flycatcher was in the...

This is one of several marsh fritillary butterflies out at the Oa reserve this afternoon. They should be on the wing until the end of June/early July.

Also out was this four spotted chaser dragonfly.

In a clearing in the woods we found this bare stone covered in broken snail shells. We set up the camera and here is the results from 24hrs. Just the highlights! I had to exclude the 15 minutes of photos we had of the song thrush sprawled across a particularly...

So Summer has been and gone and the balmy temperatures of last week have been replaced by the more traditional Oa weather of thick mist and rain.

Here's a Common footman (not that common out here) larva looking cheerful in the sun to remind us of what...

Heady days indeed here on the Oa, with the thermometer rocketing to nearly 16 degrees this afternoon.  Two distinctive white wing flashes seen coming from the cab of the tractor can only mean that Alasdair has removed his boiler suit for the first time this...

The recent spell of warm sunny weather has woken our butterflies at last. This photo was taken yesterday by James How of a newly emerged marsh fritillary; look to the right of the butterfly and you will see its pupa.

While the start of summer for many means picnics in the park, BBQ's on the beach or a cheeky gin in the garden, for the Islay RSPB team it heralds the start of night time corncrake surveys. These ellusive but loud characters migrate over from Africa at...