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Walking Group One 25th April 2024
Five hardy souls collected today at Happy Valley for the first Hill Walk of the year .The temperature was cool with a North Easterly wind blowing and a hint of rain on arrival.
Off we set heading towards Russadale Quarry, spotting a Buzzard on the way.Turning into the footpath we remained sheltered from the wind all the way to the top of the hill.
The sun was out at the Quarry and a Greenshank was feeding at the edge of the Lochan. Then it was up the Peat road to the summit with spectacular views across Stenness and Harray Lochs, plus a view of the Closed Road beyond the Watch Stone. On the other side we looked over the Flow and down towards the Oil Platform and South Ronaldsay
Then it was back down after a stop for a snack and finally a walk around Happy Valley itself. The Daffodils planted by James and others were looking lovely and the Bluebells are days away from opening. Then it was on to a well deserved lunch at the Pier Cafe, having walked 4 miles and gone up 800 feet (and down again )
The next walk will be on Friday 24th May and hopefully more hills and views.
Keep moving.
U3A Moth Group - 10th September 2021
by Peter Slater - 17:29 on 12 September 2021
Six of us met at Vagaland on 10th September to go through the moths caught the previous night in Peter’s trap. It had been a pretty wet night and there was a good deal of water in the trap, making many of the egg boxes rather soggy, but the catch was a large one, though not very varied. The great majority, probably over 90%, were Large yellow underwings, with only a small number of each other species, the commonest being Rosey rustic. Angle shades, new to the group., and Autumnal rustic, were easily identified. Two other species we were not sure about, but turned out to have got right, were an Ear moth (labelled “agg” as they cannot be certainly pinned down to species from visual inspection) and Square spot rustic. Photos of these, taken by Jenny and shown below, were sent to Sydney, who confirmed our identification.
The following is our full, if rather short, list of species: Angle shades; Large yellow underwing Lesser broad-bordered yellow underwing; Autumnal rustic; Rosey rustic; Ingrailed clay; Square-spot rustic; Ear moth agg.
Square-spot rustic
Ear agg
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