West Coast Islands Blogs
Blogs (web logs) provide an ideal opportunity to explore the traditions, culture and wildlife of Wild Lochaber. We have put together a collection of local blogs and provide the titles and text snippets to give a taste of each entry with direct links to the main blog entry on the host website. We hope you will find time to explore the full articles and further information on the host blog sites.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions for blogs you would like to see here.
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles
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This sort of weather is not very conducive to field work. However, some things are afoot. Through the Skye Naturalists’ Network on Facebook and with the help of Skye Gardening Society, I have had a number of people locating and inspecting Quercus ilex (Evergreen/Holm/Holly Oak) and...
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At Nigel’s suggestion I went and had a look at young leaves of Leucanthemum vulgare (Oxeye Daisy) and successfully completed my mission by finding the larva of the micro-moth Bucculatrix nigricomella, sometimes given the name Daisy Bent-wing. Bucculatrix nigricomella from Raasay...
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Someone has planted two groups of three Monkey-puzzle trees (Araucaria araucana) on the lower slopes of Temptation Hill on Raasay. (There could be more.) This seems slightly strange to me, but perhaps no stranger than the Forestry planting little patches of cypress all over the place in the same...
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A little over one hundred years ago a poor seam of iron ore on Raasay was mined for strategic purposes. A splendid book about the mine was published in 1990 and subsequently updated: There was both opencast and underground mining. A barrier across the entrance to No. 1 Mine was put in place...
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This little rove beetle was on the outside of the house. It is Tachinus subterraneus (thanks Bruce and Stephen M) and amazingly not recorded by Richard Moore during his years of beetle recording on Raasay. There are curiously few Scottish records on NBN, too. Tachinus subterraneus This moth-...
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We have had some of the lowest tides of the year in the past few days, exposing the kelp beds in the bay by the house. Monday was the perfect day for exploring this habitat – the lowest tide of this period, not a cloud in the sky and not even a breeze. And all well before the midge season...
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There is a lone curlew on the shore. I think there was just one this time last year – perhaps the same individual. Recently, there have been a flock of Purple Sandpipers, Turnstones and a pair of Goosanders to add to the usual Red-breasted Mergansers, Mallards, Eider, etc. I have recorded...
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The weather and lockdown have limited activity considerably, but I have managed a few things such as second records for Raasay for Cupressus lawsoniana (Lawson’s Cypress) and Olearia macrodonta (New Zealand Holly), the former planted, the latter looking self-sown. Yesterday the gorse near...
wondering wanderers
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In our first year back on the mainland we grew nothing other than some strawberries. We did bring some chickens over from Rum and got back to Rum five times to pick fruit, deal with the sheep on the croft and generally just settle in here and get back there as much as possible.Last year though a...
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If you know us in real life, or even have just been following us for a while you will know that Davies is the artist and Scarlett is the naturalist.If you read back to the start of this blog and then all of the various posts along the way you will discover how these passions have shaped...
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Back in the brief lift of lockdown in the summer we had our first visitors to the house. They came socially distanced in a car each, wearing masks, with all of us taking daily temperature readings and applying regular hand sanitiser. Way earlier in the year, before Coronavirus was even more than...
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On 9th March we marked two years of leaving Rum and arriving back on the mainland. It’s been a very strange second year as just as we marked a year here the Coronavirus pandemic altered everyone’s lives across the whole world. In many ways our experience of living a remote island...
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For various reasons I’ve been reading back on the very first year or so of keeping this blog when we were at the planning stages of our 2011 WWOOFing adventures. Ten years ago, right about now, we were working our notice in our jobs and gearing up to head off on our year of unknowns. Nine...
Treshnish Farm
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We woke this morning to British Summer Time. Wind and rain. Not a great start to 'summer time' weather wise.Lambing is 2 weeks away so Farmer got a shock at feeding time this morning when he found an abandoned newborn lamb in the field of ewes all expecting twins. He looked...
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Farmhouse garden SnowdropsOur winter has been relatively calm, not too many storms. Rainy days bringing interesting light along Loch na Keal. Aurora Borealis, from the farmhouse window. When it does rain, it rains heavily and cuts out gouges in the sand. The Moon is setting on...
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This last week or so has been very cold. No snow to speak of, but bright dry cold days. These 2 pictures are of Loch Cuin from the air. It is always particularly beautiful with a thin layer of ice rising and falling with the tides. Snowy mountains on the Isle of Rum. The...
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Over the last 18 months Farmer has been picking up marine plastic/rubbish along the coast below Crackaig back to the Whisky Cave. He started during lambing in 2019, whilst waiting for a ewe to lamb, and decided to keep doing it. By the end of last summer he had filled two tonne dumpy...
Volunteer on Eigg
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21st of March is the International Day of Forests! The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 21st March the International Day of Forests (IDF) in 2012. The Day celebrates and raises awareness of the importance of all types of forests. On each International Day of Forests, countries are...
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2020 also went by in a whirl of trees! I have managed to grow and provide 17,500 trees in the tree nursery in the last two years for our Woodland Creation Project (WCP). 4,000 were provided and planted in March 2020 and the further 13,500 trees have just gone out over the last 6wks. The first...
Marc Calhoun
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I have been a bit delinquent at blogging. I recently had shoulder surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff tendon. I was on a hike last year where we had to hold on to ropes for safety while descending some steep hillsides. I slipped and the rope saved me. But with the added weight of the pack the...
