A wild boar at the Jurassic Park gate

The top gate of the croft is a heavy old thing that groans when it swings, so it's been "the Jurassic Park gate" since the week we arrived. This week it finally lived up to the name.

A wild boar came down out of the woodland just after dawn and stood at the gate for a good ten minutes — completely unbothered, having a good look at what we've done with the place. By the time the camera was out it had melted back into the trees, the way they do.

Boar were extinct in Scotland for centuries; the populations in the glens now are descendants of farm escapees, and they're surprisingly shy for something built like a barrel on legs. We'd rather it didn't find the veg beds, mind. The fence on the top boundary just moved up the priority list.