Bourblaige Insects

We spent most of yesterday in Fort William, on one of the occasional necessary visits to civilisation, so we jumped at the chance of the fine day forecast for today to walk in one of our favourite areas, between Ben Hiant and Camas nan Geall, a place where we're almost guaranteed to see no humans. The red deer, with this year's additions, are almost becoming used to us.

It was raining when we left the car on the road above a mile short of Camas nan Geall and made our way down to the beach. The coastline here is a series of shingly bays, split by low, rocky promontories. This view, looking east towards Camas nan Geall, shows the weather that was leaving us, while....

....the view westwards, towards Maclean's Nose, was much more promising.

Mrs Diary, who likes to beachcomb, found this little plant at the top of the beach, just below the high-water mark of winter storms.  To give a sense of scale, the flower head at right is about 15mm long. We've tried to find it in the reference books and about the closest we can get is redshank, Persicaria maculosa, but this is a plant of fresh water. However, our plant has the right leaf shape and also the dark mark in the middle of the leaf.

With the sun came the butterflies. Probably the most numerous were the common blues - this is a male - but....

....there were also plenty of these beauties, which may be a dark green fritillary, though....

....when I did finally manage to get a shot of the underside of the wing, the green was hardly 'dark'.

We walked up from the beach through the abandoned settlement of Bourblaige, cleared in 1828 to make way for a sheep farm.  There were no sheep in residence - they're all being gathered in for their annual clipping - but a final pleasure for the walk....

....was found clinging to a thistle flower.  This is a six spotted burnet moth, a species which we've only found in one place before, which happens to be on the croft land at the back of our house.