Mr Blue Skye...

Went out for a spin today, the weather was utterly gorgeous and my innate wanderlust kicked in bigtime. I ended up driving through Portree, across the hilltops to Struan and up towards Dunvegan before cutting back across to Portree, finishing up back in Uig where I bumped into some interesting folk. Skye is full of stunning scenery, stretches of the Struan road were especially breathtaking

I really need to get back on a skateboard and scare the heck outta myself on roads like this!

I spent a wee while scanning/listening for Red Grouse up on the moorland, no joy this time. Masses of Meadow Pipits though, the Cuckoos must love it out here! 

I've spent a large portion of my life living in London, so I've seen an unhealthy number of smashed out phoneboxes in my time. But this is Skye, they do things differently up here

Mike Edwards (of ELO fame) used this phonebox in 2009....

I'm also used to having idiots walk out in front of me as if they own the road. But of course, this is Skye...

Ghetto side of Portree, you really don't wanna be stuck out here alone after dark...

Once back into the warm, safe security of NG3963, I decided to take myself on a wander through Uig Woods. The temperature reading on the dashboard was telling me it was 23C (obviously faulty. Skye NEVER hits 23C!) when I stepped out of the car and bumped straight into the ever so delightful Joy, wife of local birder Martin (I strongly suspect she's not a birder at all, although she does seem quite into her plants). Joy was here to meet up with Ross Watson (Site Manager of the Woodland Trust in Northern Scotland) and Peggy, a rather militant professional beach cleaner. Peggy was here in an advisory capacity regards the forthcoming Beach Clean Up event which is happening on May 12th (make a note in your diaries - post clean-up pies and beer are promised. Or sandwiches for we veggie types...) I'm not entirely sure why Ross was here, unless WT deem the beach as being part of their land?

Anyway, the exciting thing is that I had a good old chat with Ross. He seems very keen for me to provide WT (site owners) with my species list for Uig Wood, in return I'll have access to their existing species list (apparently all a bit fragmented and out of date) and hopefully a definitive boundary map so that I know which species to include in the site list spreadsheet I'm about to furnish them with. I'm really quite excited by it all. My old stomping ground was Epsom Common in Surrey, comprising some 400 acres worth of mixed habitats. I designed the exisiting Epsom Common Species Recording compartment map, broken into twenty two zones. Uig Wood is far smaller and could probably be broken down into just five or six compartments, I'll see what Ross suggests.

So yeah, more useful contacts made. No sign of yesterday's Glaucous Gull, but plenty of warmth and signs that spring has finally arrived at this northern outpost

Oh. And this bad boy too...

Perlodes mortoni excuviae. Nice, very nice!

For those of you who didn't understand the ELO and hay bale reference, I shall make this easy for you. Click here

For those of us old enough to remember ELO, I give you this mighty song - it certainly summed up the weather today. If you're too young to know what I'm talking about, do yourself a favour - grow your hair, grow an Afro, grow a beard (c'mon ladies, just concentrate!) and enjoy 

Hmmmm. I've just played this through and realised that they don't do the awesome guitar solo at the end. Lemme go see if I can find the proper version for you...

Sheesh. No, I can't. But this is close enough. Hope it sends chills down your spine! It's an utterly brilliant track and well worth listening to over and over and over again