Rogart

We went to Rogart for a wee "get-away".

Louise found a cottage for us to stay in, it was a good spot. Common Pipistrelle in the garden, 48kHz. My sugar mix didn't work and I hadn't taken a moth trap but I still got a new moth, attracted to the window light, Green-brindled Crescent.

Green-brindled Crescent

Best wildlife moment though (two) was seeing Black Grouse not once but twice on our walk on the Thursday morning. First we flushed two cocks and then half an hour or so later flushed two cocks and a hen, I would think these were all different birds.

We went to Dornoch, a bit of a surprise, a busy place with a nice cafe (Coco Mountain) and some restaurents and pubs. Long sandy beach and interesting looking dunes. Loch Fleet national nature reserve nearby.

 Burn by the cottage.

Dornoch beach.

The statue of the the Duke of Sutherland, George Granville Leveson-Gower, the first Duke of Sutherland, and a landowner who was responsible for brutal Highland Clearances in the 19th century. Known locally as ‘the Mannie’, the sculpture was erected at the summit of Beinn a’ Bhragaigh above Golspie in 1837, following the Duke’s death in 1833. There are mixed views on the Mannie. There have been several attempts, legal and otherwise, to remove it, on one occasion there was an attempt to dynamite it and recently there has been physical damage as folk attempt to destabilise it (so it might not be wise to sit beneagth it). Personally, I take the view that the statue is a reminder of the brutality of Scotland's land owning class towards ordinary folk. The Clearances should not be forgotten.

  Loch Fleet, the Dornoch Firth and the beginnings of Tarbet Ness in the distance, from 

Beinn a’ Bhragaigh.

Quedius, either levicollis or curtipennis I think, although it has been suggested it might be
Ocypus aenocephalus - it didn't do the Ocypus curling thing though when I harrassed it and the pronotum looks too smooth and overall the beetle looked too narrow but I'm very much a learner with Staphys.

 Down in Golspie there were plenty of hovers and Common Wasp on Ivy flowers.

 Vespula vulgaris.

Plenty of Eristalis pertinax and a few Helophilus pendulus as well.