The Missing Months - Part 1

Aah. It appears that two months have passed since I last blogged. Oops, that was rather careless. 

So where was I, what was I doing, why the apparent loss of momentum? 

Well, I was busy for some of the time. I was sat hunched over the microscope for quite a bit of the time. I pinned/carded a lot of specimens, identifying some and passing over others. I finally put my storeboxes into a rough semblance of order, I now have two dedicated to Diptera! I managed to clear a good chunk of specimens from the backlog box (then filled it again to overflowing and had to start a second backlog box...) I nipped across to Speyside and then North Uist with PSL buddies, then spent an away day in the hills of Lochalsh searching for White-faced Darters. I drank far too much alcohol and demolished maybe half my body weight in Pringles. Now and then I did a bit of work, just to appease the bosses.

What I didn't do was blog, and for that I apologise. There's no way I can do justice to everything that has happened these past nine and a half weeks in a single blogpost, so I'll break it down into several instalments. Both you and I would quickly lose the will to live if I tried to fit it all into one lengthy post! I'll start with the nature walk I led.

But folks nowadays like images, not words. Attention span of a flea, apparently. Hmmm, I'm not very good at being brief. Here you go then, have some pics before you leap off elsewhere

Mouse without wings - cute! 

Mouse with wings - even more cute! 

My first Skye reptile - three years in the waiting!!!

29th May - Uig Wood SNG Walk

A big day for me, I was leading a Skye Nature Group walk through the local woods with a few fellow PSLers thrown in for good measure. Kev and Debs Rylands were up from Devon with a day to kill before catching the Uig to Lochmaddy ferry across to North Uist. Happily, they'd planned it perfectly to join the SNG walk! As if that wasn't exciting enough in itself, Mark, Jo and Bradley Telfer were in Scotland and, despite Mark suddenly becoming quite ill (pooting rare beetles from carcasses, I reckon), they managed to limp their way across from Speyside to Uig in time to join the tail end of my walk - how amazing is that!?!?  Piccies below courtesy of Debs xx

Me spouting sheer nonsense, judging by the look on Stephen's face

Mark Telfer becoming the first person from Bedfordshire to tick Mitella ovalis!

Bradley sees a wall and scampers off to investigate whilst the grown-ups play in puddles....

It was a good walk, Kev and Debs (and possibly Mark too?) all saw their first ever protist, the utterly enchanting Plasmopara nivea, a downy mildew on Cow Parsley leaves. Neil was casually papping pics of hoverflies on flowerheads including one which I didn't see. In fact, it's one I've never seen. Ever. And I still haven't. It's not the first time Neil's done this to me, the next time I see him pointing his camera at a flowerhead I'm just gonna throw a rock at it...

The plan was that we (me, the Rylands and the Telfers) would have a meal at the hotel that evening and meet up again in the morning. Mark had invited me to do an overnighter in Speyside where we would be beetling in the Caledonian forests. I was guaranteed at least 400 lifers, or so I told the bosses, and happily they were understanding enough to let me disappear and "look at insects with your friends" for a couple of days. Game on! The next instalment centres around Glenmore Forest and the Pass of Rohan, or whatever it was really called. 

I've been exploring some new music since I last blogged. See what you think of this, personally I think it is utterly sublime. Hope you like it!