Loch Fitty

At the south end of the St.Ninians area is Loch Fitty - a large, stocked fishing pond which I had never been to, somehow assuming it wasn't going to be very interesting. It turns out that this is now part of the Fife Pilgrim Way, a walk that takes you through St.Ninians south to Dunfermline. It also turns out that it can be somewhat interesting.

I wandered up from Kingseat, where you can park, to only the southern edge of Loch Fitty, where there's a causeway into the south of St.Ninians. Here there was a decent amount of flood refuse, which was obviously going to provide sufficient entertainment for even an extended lunchbreak.

Causeway with foreground flood refuse

There were a good number of beetles, with several commoner species which were nevertheless new for the year (e.g. the ground beetle Paranchus albipes, the leaf beetle Hyrdothassa glabra). There were a couple new to me too, though these are relatively common and well recorded in Fife.

New for year, the click Hypnoidus riparius

New for me, Dryops ernesti

Also new for me, Calathus melanocephalus

So far this area's been pretty good to me. Looking forward to joining the dots. The east side seems to have a lot of people and heavy machinery around, and I think they are actually working on completing roads/paths around the site. In some ways that will be a shame. It's very nice to visit the site with nobody else there!

Here's the Fife Pilgrim Way, from St.Andrews to Culross (or vice versa?). It's a pretty decent transect across the southern half of Fife.

Weirdly, when I look at my beetle recording this year (including on the Pilgrim Way!) I find this spooky pattern:

There's only one song for this...