best part of the day: linn dean: leaned in

22nd June

Linn Dean always feels something like an expedition, an adventure. I have been there a few times and the location is neither easy to get to, nor explore once there. However it has a beauty that rewards the effort and a top selection of wildlife at this time of the year. I was aiming to get the overlap of small pearl-bordereds and dark green fritillaries; as well as the NBAs the river-gorge is famous for.

Soutra layby

You access the small winding stream by parking at the layby on the top of Soutra Hill, heading South on the A68. It is 18 miles from my home in Leith and having cycled it last time, I caught the bus this time. The A68 has a lot of pavement sections where you can keep apart from the nearly continual traffic of heavy lorries and buses and cars heading South at break-neck pace, but really it is such a truly unpleasant experience cycling in such proximity to your own death, that the bus is a far better bet. I looked at other bike routes on calmer roads but there is pretty much no other approach that makes sense without adding huge mileage. And I have a free bus pass.

loads of chimney sweeper moths
but few pose for a photo

I asked the bus driver about dropping me at the layby atop Soutra and I think a more relaxed one might go for it, but the one who drove me said he couldn't as the layby might be in use by lorries. (It wasn't.) However it is less than a mile from the Gilston Road end official bus stop to the layby at the top, and easy uphill walking on grassy roadside verges. Again the proximity of heavy traffic roaring past without much to stop it careering off the road and mashing you into the ground is a risk you'll have to take. None mashed me during the 20mins I was there. Then, with a lighter heart you scurry over a style past a fence and down into a rather beautiful gorge, carved by a small stream.

I remembered there being long grass and was VERY pleased I'd worn goretex trail shoes, a thing I wouldn't normally, because if you get them wet on the inside (standing in a stream deeper than the neck of the shoe) they won't dry out and keep your feet wet all day. However I'd bought a couple of pairs of black running shoes for my mum's funeral back in February and one pair happened to be black goretex trail shoes. They'll come in handy for something even if they aren't suitable for the funeral. And they very much did. I also wore Alpkit gaiters which are lightweight gaiters that stop bits of jaggy going in the ankle of your shoes and annoying your feet until it necessitates a stop-and-shoe-empty. I had to re-string them recently as the under-shoe cord had broken on one side. Both the shoes and gaiters were ideal here as the grass was soaking wet until long after midday and there was an infinite amount of tiny stones, sticks and grit trying to get into any unguarded crevices.

soaked on the outside within a hundred yards
dry and bruck-free on the insides!

Another couple of preventions I implement are hay fever tablets and insect repellent. I find Benadryl One-a-day are great for stopping itchy eyes and running nose. I'm hoping Tesco Allergy relief tabs (Cetrizine Hydrochloride) are a good replacement as they are <£3 and Benadryl are £10.99.

To deter ticks, I cover my legs (I wear shorts mostly) with Smidge from Tisos, which doesn't smell too repellent. I also try to apply it with kitchen roll - sprayed on and wiped about, without it touching my hands. See 3 photos down for the reason. I also sometimes apply it on my torso as it doesn't seem to stop all ticks climbing higher and finding purchase elsewhere! 😲😬

There were dozens of ringlets throughout the day. I took 2 ringlet photos and this one is the better of the 2. When they stop hiding in long grass I'll bother to take a photo, but really they can largely fuck off in their shy and boring brown drabness.

I was glad to find that a late-ish start for small pearl-bordereds this season, meant there were still a few nearly mint condition specimens about the place. I arrived before 10am and this one was sheltering and half asleep in the damp long grass. I lifted it out into the sunlight (with maximum care of course) where it began to look a bit more lively. Although they have very similar markings to dark green fritillaries you would not easily mistake the two, as the dark green is considerably larger and faster.

lots of these yellow shell moths about
they also have a bad habit of hiding in long grass

a few red admirals but not many

The lack of flat ground is noticeable. It makes the day quite tiring. There are few places you could spread a 6' sq picnic rug and have it flat. I spend the whole time climbing or descending, trying to keep my balance while I looked through the viewfinder. Crossing the stream back and forth, or contouring on a thin path along the gorge. The topography is what makes the place look and feel special, but it is not easy going and I'd always wear grippy shoes (or hill racing shoes) in anticipation of this. I was also aware I was on my own and if I twisted an ankle badly or broke a leg I could be in for a Joe Simpson type adventure.

My camera has developed a little bit of a glitch recently - switching on then going directly into shut-down mode before reluctantly coming back on. It does that about once every 20~30 start-ups and I fear it will do that more and more, and then one day fail to start up entirely. I have had it about 2 and a half years and would buy the same model again in a flash. Considering the bumps and knocks it gets going 30 mile runs and being shoogled as it climbs over fences, walls and ditches and jumps puddles, swamps and streams, I think it is doing excellently. However its aging behaviour cast a melancholy air about the day when it did that a couple of times. I felt a chill wind blow through the place as a reminder I was in a hostile venue just waiting for me to make a mistake and then it would pounce. Or maybe I just needed my lunch. I was about to get my sandwiches out when a figure appeared over the other side of the gully.

gvw

large skipper

SPBF

older SPBF

DGF

While down at the river photographing SPBFs I saw the DGF landing on the flowering thistles just the other side of the stream. I had seen it patrolling up and down and giving me a wide bearth. I thought it would be impossible to get near to but then it landed on a thistle quite close by and was so busy jamming its proboscis into the purple flowers it did not notice myself wading through the long grass and finding a couple of stepping stones across the burn, to then crawl through the long grass ninja style to get close enough for the photos!

I was under the impression there was only one DGF going back and forth but the photos of one suggested an older insect with frayed fringes while the other photos showed perfectly intact fringes round wings. So there may have been several behaving in a near identical manner. Later on I moved down from snapping NBAs to where the DGF was and again by moving slowly and deliberately got in close enough for photos. Richard didn't have the same luck getting close but I think gave up more readily as he was only really after the NBAs - not having them in his own stomping ground.

silver-ground carpet

large skipper

Alistair had suggested the NBAs were over the right
hand side of this photo - I only found them far left

Richard was from near Stirling I think he said. Since we were on opposite sides of the river, communications were limited to brief shouted sentences. What have you seen so far? and the like. We were both looking for Northern Brown Argus and oddly (for everything else seemed to be in place) none were in the areas Alistair had said he'd found them in large quantities in previous years. Mind you they weren't there, then, either. But we'd put that down to the weather (mid-June but overcast/drizzly). A couple of people have remarked that Linn Dean was excellent for NBAs and it does have that reputation. But I have never seen more than occasional examples of NBAs in small numbers there. This year seems to have been poor for NBAs in most of their Edinburgh locations around Holyrood. Hopefully they will bounce back.

I had my lunch near where I took that photo looking over to Richard. I don't think he came over the stream at any point. He found one or 2 NBAs near where he was on that sun facing slope and stayed there taking photos. I had my lunch on the other side of the valley then eventually joined him over by the NBAs.

There were also a few common blues near that spot. A couple behaved in an unusual manner having something of a showdown. CBs don't often gather in groups and can be territorial. I have seen 2 males sit close to each other without fighting, but more often they chase and bother one another. I have also seen them interact with their lycaenidae cousins, NBAs, in a jousting manner that seemed more playful than hostile.

However this couple seemed like they might be furious with each other. But not having teeth or claws they were having to express themselves with soft wings and hard staring! There was flapping, then there was the hard stare, eyeball to eyeball, then more flapping. No idea if anyone won or even if it was a contest but it didn't appear to be brotherly love.

the hard stare eyeball to eyeball
they held this position for a while before doing more flapping

look at that for putting on the right jacket
to merge with your surroundings!

NBA at last

I eventually photographed an NBA over the other side of the gully (where Richard had found them). At first it seemed there was only one but then there was another further up the slope, and maybe one or 2 more as well. I wondered if it took the ones on the other (East) side of the gully a while to emerge. It was pretty much ideal conditions for them and all the other butterflies were out from about 11am. I didn't bother to check as it is not the easiest ground to go back and forth over.

Also relatively nearby a DGF was regularly visiting the marsh thistles

and I managed to sneak up for a photo or 2.

a vintage faded SPBF

a great venue but quite hard work

last photo of a northern brown argus then I was off

There was a bus about 2.30 from the bottom of the road, however I got a lift to the bus stop from Richard. (We left at the same time.) So I arrived there with 25minutes to kill. Rather than stand at the layby next to the A68 I went for a walk up the road to the quarry on the opposite side of the hill from Linn Dean. Apart from a distant large skipper and some red admirals there wasn't much to point the camera at however it passed the time before I returned to the bus stop ten minutes before the bus was due. It arrived 9minutes early which could have caught me out, and raced back into Edinburgh as if the driver was running late. Being an old pensioner these days I fell asleep after such an early start - did I say I caught the 8.19am out of the bus station? - not very relaxed start to the day. But better to arrive and leave early than arrive late and miss anything.

large skipper

So recently the nearest thing to art I've been doing is painting in blurry areas of background to disappear foreground material. If I were an early adopter I'd be getting AI to do this. (I'm not - I'm old school and proud of it!) In this photo of a meadow brown on a thistle the weight of the foreground thistles on the left skew the composition. Using soft blurry edged brushes in photoshop I paint over them then use a blur tool to soften the result. It is the closest I get to doing art these days and I quite enjoy it although it takes far longer than AI would. I occasionally fix a hole or tear in a butterfly wing but not often. I also occasionally partially blur out some of the plant the butterfly is near or on, if it detracts or takes the eye away from the subject.