Linn Dean

 

16th June

Alistair invited me to go with him to Toxide Moss and Linn Dean. The weather wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped and we started with a fairly fruitless hunt about Toxide Moss for butterflies. It is near Gladhouse Reservoir but I hadn't been there before. It looked like it would be great in better conditions and we went past a couple of wee ponds where there were early odonata.

no sign of small pearls

teal

large red damselfly

scorpion fly (male)
that sting is not a sting

buzzard

four-spotted chaser

Then we jumped back in the car and headed across country to Linn Dean. It is actually just into the Scottish Borders being at the top of Sutra Hill. I had never been before - it is on the wrong side of town and requires a 36mile cycle. You park at a layby on the first summit leaving Edinburgh (just after Pathhead) and descend North into this marvelous gully with a pretty stream at the bottom. None of this is visible from the road. Alistair assured me it is teaming with wildlife on a good day. It was very scenic and there was some stuff about, but not much sign of the NBAs and DGFs we had come specifically to see. Lots of extra bonus creatures, especially chimney sweeper moths and scorpion flies.

chimney sweeper moth

Alistair takes an early fall but manages to avoid
either a dooking or damaging his camera equipment.

I have to say the ground was difficult. There are lots of steep slopes to navigate on thin sheep trods or with no path at all. Sort of stuff it is easier to go up and then wonder how do I get back down? And tricky-ish stream crossings. Next visit I wore my hill running shoes and found them about right for the slippy slopes. But a really superb landscape and you could tell it would be a wildlife haven on a good day. It wasn't a bad day and there were some treats.

small pearl-bordered fritillary

Alistair hadn't seen SPBFs on his (many) previous trips. Quite a lot of the ground around the stream is swampy enough to attract them. We saw several. Or the same one several times. Impossible to say for sure which. 

buzzard being mobbed by starlings or jackdaws

Alistair edging dangerously high up the slopes in search of NBA

scenic!

SPBF

lattice heath

SPBF

The constant contouring made this trip quite tiring. We travelled maybe half a mile upstream, sometimes down near the water, sometimes up at the lip of the gorge. There is little flat easy ground and you have to be aware of the drops making the process quite exhausting even though we didn't go far. I had a streaming nose all day which I put down to hay fever although I think it was that and additionally the covid setting in. I had almost certainly picked it up on the return journey from Tentsmuir 4 days previously and didn't think to take a test until the next day when I felt I had caught a cold. 

Luckily Alistair avoided catching it from me even though we spent an hour or 2 driving/chatting in the car. Just as well as he was going away with his wife the following week to celebrate their anniversary in Paris. Less lucky, he picked it up somewhere during his Paris trip, but I think Audrey would have killed me if he tested positive before they set off and had to cancel. Whew!

Obviously with everyone feeling Covid has now finished, and going everywhere without masks, is making for a widespread sharing of the virus. Happily it seems to be a less bad variant than the original deadly (if you were 80+ or vulnerable) outbreak. That said I hoped it would hardly touch me, and instead I found it to be quite debilitating and robbed me of va-va-voom and motivation for the best part of 2 weeks. It started like a medium bad cold and although I wasn't bothered by a cough, (Mary was, I inevitably passed it her way 😥) I was chewing paracetamols like sweets for the first few days. I still feel a bit wiped out if I have a long day out. 

chimney sweeper moth

scorpion fly

mother shipton moth

small copper

Big thanks to Alistair for inviting me along. I have a much greater tolerance for his wildlife banter than Audrey. That's unfair - I'm sure I go on at equal length about all the same stuff and compare notes about which sites have which species. And his knowledge of birds and river wildlife (from fishing) is way greater than mine. So we get along just fine out for a ramble in the countryside. Looking forward to the next one!

great place
(spoiler alert - 2nd trip there recently was FAB)