Very large - very tiny.

Yesterday I found some excuses to go to Kirkwall and thus Scapa. There's been a pod of Orca hanging about, so after doing a couple of jobs I made a small diversion. As I arrived folk were coming away after an unsuccessful attempt. Anyway, I parked on the pier not especially hopeful. And saw Orcas within about a minute. Distant Orcas (c10 - 12km away) but huge great dorsal fins poking out of the sea nonetheless. Scope out and slowly but surely they made their way towards me until they were within 2 or 3 klicks. Nice views were had, and it was pleasing to get a few folk on to them. No pix as they were a bit of a distance. (A bull Orca is about 8m long and probably weighs around 4,500kg.)

Later, I went down to the pony and as usual checked his drinking water, to make sure he had enough, and to see what insects and thown themselves in there. There were a couple of tiny Micropterix moths and a soldier beetle.

A bedraggled Micropterix aruncella, a male, 4 mm long.

Rhagonycha nigriventris, also quite a small thing.

The day before I'd been to Waukmill Bay, slightly in the hope of bumping into the Orcas, I didn't. But I was mostly after a Carabid beetle, and a new one at that. Next to finding a new bird or moth a new Carabid is indicator of a good day. Waukmill has a smallish area of saltmarsh and the recent discovery of Dicheirotrichus gustavii on Westray by SA spurred me into looking for this specialist beast. After about an hour, bingo.

Dicheirotrichus gustavii, a saltmarsh specialist.

There were two previous Orkney records, prior to the Westray one. One at this site and one at the Brig O' Waithe, I might go and look there in the coming weeks.

Other interesting and tiny things were also found at Waukmill...

This Micropterix moth, which I don't think I've seen before:

Micropterix aureatella.

And also this micro moth, which I have seen before, but it is some smart beastie.

Eupoecilia angustana.

There were lots of shiny black ground bugs running about, as there had been at Loch of Bosquoy the previous day, but I chose to ignore them as I had decent images from the Bosquoy trip. Bit of an error that as the Bosquoy beasts were nymphs and not identifiable to species. I also suspect two different species were involved.

These are likely Saldidae of some sort, Loch of Bosquoy.

A return trip today to Loch of Bosquoy failed to find any bugs, there had been hundreds at the last visit.