Emperor moth

Small tortoiseshell



Early purple orchid (?)



Sleepy slow worm



Female orange-tip butterfly



Sea slater



Border collies trying to join the party



And one rather bigger thing to recall - I seem to end all my trips musing over wolves so I will say little this time, except that ten years of travelling around North America have, obviously, granted me many opportunities to see the ecological impact of the wolf's absence. The worst of problems in the Rockies are arguably exceeded by those in the Cairngorms. Here, it is not elk but red deer which are literally eating everything smaller than themselves out of house and home. The red deer population is far higher than the carrying capacity of the land, and deer fences, everywhere, try to keep them off the roads.



In Yellowstone, aspen saplings disappeared altogether during the 70 years of the wolf's extinction because elk no longer had a natural predator to deter them from grazing in river valleys. The knock-on effect of the habitat damage has harmed everything from beavers to migratory birds. Deciduous trees in the Cairngorms are exhibiting similar problems. I am deeply skeptical of the idea of reintroducing wolves to Scotland because we do not have sufficient publicly-owned land where they could roam safely, but there is no doubt that killing them off was one of the worst ecological mistakes that we've ever made. Maybe one day, things will change...

And maybe then the mountains will seem even richer than they do today.