Midgie munchers.

Seven weeks ago I spent a day with the new Trainee Volunteer Rangers at Nevis Landscape Partnership when Glen Nevis was still brown. The silver birch leaves were only just opening up to the longer days but the grass was still brown with barely any new life after a cold winter. Today was somewhat different! Today was green on a grand sscale. Looking more closely at what lay under our feet we saw red, yellow, pink, purple and countless other colours. The sundews were particularly splendid with their red stems and eyelashes extending from theier green leaves like eyes. This is very good news because the delicate looking sundew is in fact a full on meat eater! Spiders and midges get stuck on the sticky enzymes on the eyelashes and get munched.

The new crop of volunteer rangers consist of a group of young guys very keen on a career in the outdoors, looking after the wild environment we have in our landscape. To do so sometimes involves operating in steep ground and in remote places. Today we did some scrambling up Scimitar Ridge, some abseiling and rock climbing, thinking about the rope skills required and simple ways to secuyre each other with a rope. We also did some core navigation training ready to be put into practice on our second day together later this week.

The barometric pressure is on the rise again which means settled weather is on the way. It might not be quite as dominant a high pressure as the last one but it will give some good days of weather at the end of the week and weekend. The flowers will be even more impressive then, with warm sunshine after the rain. Bog asphodel might be my favourite wild flower (below). What's yours?