We wandered along the Ormsaigbeg coast to the west of our house this morning, not for any great purpose but simply because it was such a beautiful day again and we hadn't wandered the shore for a couple of weeks.
There are plenty of peacocks around at the moment but this is the season's first tortoiseshell. He looked good after a warm but wet winter, as do most of the peacocks.
A fortnight ago the thrift was showing the first buds and we expected some of it to be in flower, but this specimen was about as advanced as they came. It's an amazing plant, with its ability to live on seemingly bare rock right against the high-tide line - and then, in these unpromising circumstances, produce a mass of the most beautiful flowers.
Perhaps it was to this that a wasp was paying homage as he knelt, his face buried in a clump of thrift, taking no heed of the world.
Thrift holds the record for surviving closest to the waves, but this plant is a close second, growing in a narrow crack in the limestone.
We're old enough now to be childish in our enjoyment of poking around in the many rock pools. There are some we visit regularly, like one which always has sea urchins in it - but doesn't at the moment, and one wonders why not.
We wandered for an hour or so, then climbed the hill to sit on a rock on the common grazings and look across the huddle of houses at the west end of Ormsaigbeg, and across Kilchoan Bay, to Ben Hiant.
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