June flowers on the Wastart

By early June, the Rosehearty Wastart, that most familiar of wild places,  comes alive with wild flowers and there is huge satisfaction in finding each particular species growing in its favoured location.

Craig Ogston Gwyte

The sea really was this blue so that the lemon necks and snow white wings of the gannets making regular eastwards fly-pasts parallel to the shore gleamed against the water. There were also small flights of eiders, cormorants, a couple of fulmars and landward  constant larksong. There were  rafts of gulls well out to sea so we spent some time looking for the dolphins which often appear seeking the same shoal of fish as the gulls. None appeared but  later there were several off Phingask

Rufus sunbathing in a starry patch of tormentil

Cuckoo Flower or Lady's Smock grows in the damper places in the old lazy beds under Pitheughie which is Where we also found the first orchids of the year

Looking out for bunnies

Thrift grows in the most inhospitable places

Under better conditions such as here above the' Pots and Pans' it forms a tussocky mauve quilt

Always in early June one of the delights of the Wastart is coming upon  the colonies of Spring Squill growing in the drier places, often, as here, alongside tormentil.

The blue stars of Spring Squill, described as locally common, one of my favourite wild flowers.

 The rock above the squill patch was littered with crab body parts