The Skye Ostrich

So I've just 'enjoyed' ten days of covid-related naffness, confined to barracks for the duration because I kept testing positive. The good news is that I'm now free to get out there and enjoy the unprecedented good weather that hit Skye pretty much the same time I hit my bed. I had two days of fever chills which were a bit rubbish, but other than that it wasn't honestly too bad. Something different every day, but the only lasting symptom is an ongoing lack of appetite. Maybe I'll finally start losing some gut, silver linings and all that.

Today was the first of my two days off work. I shot out of bed at the crack of 10:45am (you'd think I'd be sick of the sight of my bed...) and was on the road a short while later. Coz my new motto seems to be breakfast is for losers, right? Lunch too. Dinner is still a bit hit and miss...

I wasn't sure where to go first, but I ended up at Dunvegan. I had it in mind to check if the Coral Beach road was open yet, as it happens I didn't make it any further north than about 200 metres beyond Dunvegan Castle. Why? Well, because I spotted this lot at the side of the road, that's why!

Well they certainly stand out like a sore thumb!

I won't say that I sent The Gibstermobile into a barely-controlled sliding skid, but it's probably a good thing for me that the traffic police weren't anywhere to be seen. I carefully parked up (abandoned the car in a roadside ditch) and being mindful of oncoming traffic (ran straight down the centre of the road, arms and legs windmilling) I slowly approached the plants in question (I arrived panting, bent over, hands on knees with snot streaming down my face - cheers for all that, covid) and suddenly recalled an image from James Merryweather's Britain's Ferns of well-spaced, bright green 'shuttlecocks' across a woodland floor....could this be Ostrich Fern, I wondered. On Skye? Surely not, I had gen for somewhere near Elgin or Aberdeen or somesuch for Ostrich Fern. How could I possibly have missed the fact that there are Skye plants? Surely it had to be something else. I took more pics

There's something that strikes me as being just ever so slightly sinister about the uncoiling fronds, a bit like rearing cobra heads maybe? Or perhaps more like The Alien when it uncoils from the wall in Ripley's escape pod? Anyway, it turns out that these really are Ostrich Ferns - this being a brand new plant for me, my 46th species of fern and my 1499th species of wild plant seen in Britain. Which species will be number 1500, I wonder?

Back indoors I jumped online and dragged up the BSBI map for Ostrich Fern Matteuccia struthiopteris. Guess what - it's already known from this very patch of Dunvegan roadside and has been there since at least 1976! Grrrrr....that's an annoyance. It also means I need to interrogate the database a lot more closely than I have been, it's not like me to miss a glaringly obvious lifer growing in my home Vice County!

Music time. It turns out that there aren't too many ostrich-related songs on YouTube that are suitable for folks aged over four-and-a-half. Happily I found this one by Steppenwolf, the band that apparently did more than Born to be Wild... As ever, hope you enjoy!