I've just come back from a trip to the Outer Hebrides. I usually go up either in early May or Late August which seem to be better times of the year for birds but it does mean I miss the magic of the machair. These poor sandy soils are the only bits of the islands that can easily be cultivated and have been for hundreds of years but on a strict rotation so soils have a chance to recover their fertility. Some bits are never ploughed but are used as rough grazing. The consequence of poor soil and rotational use means that they have a magnificent richness of wild flowers. I'd hoped to be able to photograph some of this richness on this trip (there was another reason for going and I might post some photos to do with that in another thread).
View down onto Borve Machair on Berneray
I think this area at the south end of Berneray is perhaps the richest of all the machair areas in the Outer Hebrides. This shows a section that has been ploughed and planted up with barley, though inevitably there will always be lots of oats in there as well. The yellow stripes in mid view are other areas of Barley with masses of Corn Marigolds in flower:
Towards the sea the slightly damper soils are often dominated by silverweed and at this time of year spectacular shows of red clover:
I didn't want to spend a lot of time taking individual plant portraits but wanted to show the richness of the Machair in it's totality.
When I did try some individual close ups there was the perennial problem of the wind. I didn't have a single still calm sunny day whilst I was up there. It was either gloriously sunny but very windy or still, damp and midgy - neither set of conditions are ideal for lying on the ground trying to take close ups of plants!
I did manage a nice (I think) close up of Corn Marigold:
and did even try to use the wind to catch some "movement" in some of the shots - this is probably about the best of them:
The machair even has it's own (well not quite it's own
) bumblebees, the Great Yellow Bumblebee
Bombus distinguendus which seems largely restricted to the Outer Hebrides and a few other Scottish Islands and odd bits of the West Coast of Scotland:
The other is the Large Carder-bee
Bombus muscorum - which seems to have declined over much of it's range but is still fairly common up on the machair:
Whatever the weather and the success or otherwise of the photographs it was another wonderful trip to an amazingly beautiful place.
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