The good weather was to continue well into the month and it was finally beginning to have a summery feel about it!
As the catchment for the river began to dry up, the level of it finally dropped back to summer level.
There is an abundance of colour along the banks of the river just now, but for all that there are a lot of the plants that are much later flowering than last year. The Marsh Orchid is one in particular, but they are showing up well in some areas now.
The Vipers Bugloss is another that is doing well this year along with the Burnet rose; and on a warm still day its scent can be detected a good distance from the plant. Ragged Robin, Monkey Flower and Blue Monks Hood are some of the others that are showing up well just now.
It is good to see so many butterflies about just now during the fine weather, and our new nucleus of bees that have arrived should do well once they are settled into their new hive.
A lot of the birds are now feeding their second brood of chicks and the seven Mute Swan cygnets up at the fishery are coming along just fine.
We had the Scone Scouts back on the riverside again at Tappie bothy; they were doing another overnight stay, and while they were there they spent a bit of time putting up some more bird and bat boxes that they had made as one of their previous projects. It is always good to see the younger ones getting involved in these things, and hopefully all their boxes will have some residents soon!
Grass cutting is high up on the agenda again this month as far as work goes, but at least we have our other tractor and cutter back in use again, now that the young Pied Wagtails have left the nest that was built under the tractor bonnet.
Our incubator has been busy this last few weeks bringing on some more chicks, these will help replace some of the older chickens that the fox got a hold of earlier on in the year. We have some at six weeks and a few more that hatched out on the 10th so it will be good to see them all running about outside again.
We are seeing quite a few different Fungi about the woods again at this time of the year; It is amazing how quickly some of them grow! Up at the Fishery things are picking up as word spreads that we are open for business again, the fishers are catching well some days and the weekends can be quite busy; and there is a good choice of homemade cakes and scones to keep the café customers happy.
There was a slight rise in the river level near the end of the month but it soon abated as the good weather kicked back in again.
