Around Scurrival

The north part of Barra is my favourite part of the island, with large sandy beaches behind which sit large tracts of machair full of flowers and interesting insects.

Our campsite at Scurrival with spectacular views and an area left wild in the middle with singing corncrake, at times so close it felt like I should be able to touch them yet apparently impossible to see. Despite visiting three islands during this holiday with a combined total of over half the breeding corncrake in the UK, I failed to see a single bird.

A couple of Hebridean specialities grow on the machair, Hebridean spotted orchid which is probably just a race of common spotted, and also Hebridean marsh orchid.

Pyramidal orchids are quite common on the machair.

I wasn't really expecting this though, mountain everlasting growing on the headland at the extreme north tip of Barra.

Ringed plover are quite common breeding birds on the beaches and there are small numbers of other species lingering rather than breeding such as sanderling and bar-tailed godwit. Also dunlin, redshank and curlew. 

There's a little tern colony at Scurrival which also contains a few pairs of Arctic terns.

The UK's rarest bumblebee occurs on the machair, the great yellow bumblebee, this one photographed at Scrabster in August last year,

Moss carder bee also occurs commonly on the machair and is easily confusable. This one was at the nearby garden centre at Northbay.

Seaside pansies are a machair species, but this was the only clump I found during our two week trip, these were growing on Vatersay.