Dunbars Close Gardens, directly off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, a large formal garden offering refuge from the crowds of tourists. When we looked around, there was no-one else there at all.
At the start of the month, the many imperial fritillaries were the flowers showing best.
Heron which had just taken off from the shore, and was now flying across the water of Mugdock Loch to land on one of the trees on the small island.
These were, I thought, the strangest lichens at the Mugdock Nature Reserve. Abundant on the lower trunks and major boughs of some of the trees, making it look to me from a distanc like the surface of the trees themselves was peeling.
They are some type of pelt lichen, a group of lichens I don’t remember having ever come across previously.
Cormorant on the water at Mugdock Loch, fishing. Disappearing after prey in the last shot in the set.
More of the lichens, and a few of the mosses, on the trees at the Mugdock Nature Reserve
Buzzard on the branch of a tree on the edge of the woodland of the Mugdock Nature Reserve outside greater Glasgow, looking out to the rough pasture beyond.
The tree was yards from the main path from the reserve’s car park; busy with people and the dogs which had just been let off the lead or were having a last run around before being put back on the lead. The bird looked totally unpeturbed.