Benvironment

Just the most beautiful wee brown hare hanging out in the garden at the moment 🙂

Fife garden is empty, despite a beautiful bloom of red campion, oxeye daisy, yellow rattle, white clover and forget-me-not. One bee, a few flies, and no butterflies, no hoverflies, no click beetles. Nothing at all. Meanwhile, in Braemar.......insect explosion! Butterflies, hoverflies, damselflies, ichneumon wasps. The air is alive with insects. 🤔

Spring 2023 (Mar Apr May) had an overall average temp of 7.4C. That's 0.5C above my long term average. Days were 0.2C warmer than average, nights were 0.5C warmer than average. Low was -5.1C, high was 20.5C.

Despite being warmer than average, Spring was frostier than average too. 13 air frosts, which is above the 9.5 average.

So far as falling snow goes, it was snowier than average. But in terms of snow lying at 9am, it was below average.

I don't have accurate long term rainfall amounts, although I do have accurate record of days when it rained. There were 47 wet days, which is below the average of 51.

The weather stats for May 2023 in the Lomond Hills are in....and surprise surprise, yet another warmer than average month. The mean average temperature of 10.9C was 1.2C above my long term average. Both the night time lows and the day time highs were also 1.2C above average.

The monthly maximum was 20.5C, and the minimum was 4.5C. The high is 0.8C below average, whereas the low is seriously warm at 3.6C above average. As I keep saying every month in all these updates, the long term warming trend in the Lomond Hills is mostly being pushed up from below, with nights warming much faster than days.

Here's also the updated visual representation of my dataset. This shows the last 149 calendar months in the Lomond Hills vs my long-term average (December 2010 on the far left, May 2023 on the far right).

Another evening up the glens on fire patrol.....and they've certainly been long patrols the last few days as the estate has been so busy. Happily, no fires to report this evening, just lovely people camping and cooking with their gas stoves 🙂

Fine views this evening of the birch explosion underway in the Quoich just now. It looks stunning whatever the weather, but all that fresh growth looks its absolute best in the evening light.

It's been a stunner of a day! Lovely walking weather for a round of the Glen Sherup horseshoe.....but today was also the first 20C day of the year in the Lomonds. We had a high of 20.5C, which compares as follows with previous years: 2023: 25th May 2022: 15th June 2021: 1st June 2020: 20th May 2019: 21st April 2018: 6th May 2017: 24th May 2016: 4th June 2015: 10th June 2014: 17th June 2013: 21st May 2012: 26th March 2011: 2nd June

Yesterday was another day off with another good forecast......but where to go? 

These days I'm drawn to pockets of beautiful native woodland as easily as I am to the hills, perhaps more so! So I nipped into Kinross-shire, where the Water of May provided me with my native woodland fix 🙂

Such an uplifting place. Butterflies, moths, deer, loads of hoverflies....oh and yes, cuckoos 😀 I did however lose my cherished Scotland cap somewhere along the river. But I'll be honest, by the time I realised it was gone, the ground I'd just covered was so horrendously ticky I really wasn't going to backtrack across in search of it! Content to let it go 😱

Lovely afternoon out though 🙂

A wee leveret sat outside, late last night 🙂 Still so small!

A grainy zoom of one of two cuckoos, who have been hanging about in front of the house this week 🙂 This one had lowered its wings and was wagging its tail from side to side….erm….which I think means it’s a male? To be honest I’ve never spent much time studying cuckoos cos they’re so damned flighty!

I s*** you not. Above Morrone this morning 😆

So yeah, early this morning.....on my way back from a bird survey in Glen Geldie....this happened 🙂🌈

I set the alarm for 03:45 this morning so I could get out to a ridiculously remote location on the Feshie march to do a Breeding Bird Survey (BBS). Had to abort and turn around as visibility wasn't conducive to surveying 💤🙁🥱

The second pic shows what the 1km square I'm surveying looks like on a good day 😉

BBS involves two early-morning spring visits to an allocated 1km square on the OS map, to count all the birds you see or hear while walking two 1km lines across the square. The survey, undertaken by around 3000 volunteers across the UK, monitors the population changes of 118 breeding bird species.

Yesterday turned out much sunnier than forecast. With that cool wind it was a beautiful day for walking 🙂 And because it was my first day off in ages and I needed to just wander aimlessly to let my brain come down from a manic week, obviously I spent it 'quoiching' 🙂 On a BIG estate with BIG views, the upper Quoich is in a class of its own. I just love the sense of BIG space up there.

I'd noticed the snake skin as I was heading out for a walk, and made a note to stop by and take a closer look at it on my way back. When I did......this beauty was just inches away from it. Possibly the former owner? 

A lovely bird to sit and watch in the uplands. A ring ouzel yesterday, hopping in and out of the boulders.

April weather stats for the Lomond Hills are in......and surprise surprise, yet another warmer than average month. It might not have felt that way, but with the exception of April 2021, most recent Aprils have been notably warm, so I dare say we've forgotten what a more 'average' April is like.

The mean average of 6.9C made it the 6th coolest April in my dataset, but it was still 0.2C above my long term average, so yet another warmer than average month. High of 10.6C, low of -0.8C.

Like last year there was only one air frost, which is well below average.

There was just one day with snowfall, and no days with snow lying at 9am. Both are well below the long term average.

And you can see a visual representation of my dataset. It shows the last 148 calendar months in the Lomond Hills vs my long-term average (December 2010 on the far left, April 2023 on the far right). Blue = colder than average. Green = average. Red = warmer than average

A grand day on the hill with John Muir Trust volunteers, planting 500 aspen 🙂

FINALLY!! My first adder of the year  I've been on the hunt for weeks. Took a while, and clearly all that was needed was to actually stop looking for them  Mind you, I didn't actually spot this one, rather it was one of our volunteers who had the honour.

Been rushing about all over the place today to get things sorted for our Open Day tomorrow. Just about there. Now all we need is for people….and the weather…..to show up 😱 Do come along, all are welcome, 10 till 3 🙂 We’ve cobbled a pretty cool activity trail together for the kids 😉

I was only there for 80 mins, but I saw enough of the Cleveland Hills to know I'd love to come back 🙂