Canna/Sanday

A small group of us were taken to Canna by boat from Skye last week. Paul, our skipper, kindly gave of his time and requested only a donation towards RNLI. We had an excellent cruise in a very calm sea and saw porpoises and bottle-nosed dolphins. Seabird numbers seemed down, no doubt partly the result of avian flu, though we had good numbers of Manx Shearwaters and gannets. Guillemots were a bit few and far between and we only saw one pair of Great Skuas.

We spent most of our time on Sanday and plant-wise things were much as expected. The Mertensia was doing well

Oysterplant Photo: J Walmisley

and the small dune system was full of the expected plants, albeit desiccated after the recent drought. The shoreline marshes had Bolboschoenus maritimus (Sea Club-rush), Ranunculus sceleratus (Celery-leaved Buttercup), Lycopus europaeus (Gypsywort) and so on. I am afraid I wasn’t very active with the camera. The Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima (Sea Beet) was down to two plants and the Helosciadium inundatum (Lesser Marshwort) was not to be found at An t-Oban. I have tried repeatedly for this, recorded in 1984, but the loch has become very overgrown and it may well have gone. In any event, it is now very difficult to re-find.

Nick added Cystopteris fragilis (Brittle Bladder-fern) to the Canna/Sanday list and I spotted Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove), the first Canna/Sanday record since 1994!

Canna is a great place to visit and now has its own microbrewery. What’s not to like?

Chorthippus parallelus on Carex panicea

Odds & Ends

This little rove beetle was on the outside of the house. It is Tachinus subterraneus (thanks Bruce and Stephen M) and amazingly not recorded by Richard Moore during his years of beetle recording on Raasay. There are curiously few Scottish records on NBN, too.

Tachinus subterraneus

This moth-fly today is Psychoda sp. but going further than that requires checking the genitalia and/or antennal tip – not for me nor even for my bug/beetle/general entomology expert friend!

Psychoda sp

In the bay outside there are two Canada Geese – numerous enough to be a pest in places but a real rarity on Raasay.

Canada Goose on Raasay

Early February at Home

There is a lone curlew on the shore. I think there was just one this time last year – perhaps the same individual. Recently, there have been a flock of Purple Sandpipers, Turnstones and a pair of Goosanders to add to the usual Red-breasted Mergansers, Mallards, Eider, etc.

I have recorded Rhododendron Bud Blast before. Then it was called Pycnostysanus azaleae, but now it is Seifertia azaleae.

Seifertia azaleae

Several galls are present on small sallows along the road. I opened one up and found it to be caused by the gall midge Rabdophaga salicis.

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  Rabdophaga salicis Larva

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  Rabdophaga salicis Gall

Early one morning, I found this little chap in the bathroom, Amaurobius similis or perhaps A. fenestralis :

Amaurobius cf similis

We are having a period of cold weaher but escaping the serious snow affecting much of Scotland.

The Garden Safari Continues

Soon, I shall write something about plants, given the title of this blog. Meanwhile here is a Square-spot Rustic larva from leaf litter below the Blackcurrants:

Square-spot Rustic Larva

Two Hebrew Character moths from the moth trap:

Hebrew Character x2

I get lots of these looking like the right-hand specimen, but the larger brown form on the left had me baffled.

As last April, there is a Black-headed Gull on the sea in front of us:

Black-headed Gull

In the Garden

Recent days have been fine and sunny so I have spent a lot of time gardening. More digging and tidying have resulted in several more caterpillars but they have looked too difficult to identify for me to try. A single click beetle larva (wireworm) in one of the vegetable beds does not concern me  – 100 would be different! Anyway, I like click beetles with their spine and notch system that produces the click and bounces them into the air.

There have been many flies about, mostly small, but some larger like this Eudasyphora (likely E. cyanella or E. cyanicolor) (Thanks, Seth):

Eudasyphora sp.

The moth trap yielded four moths, one each of Hebrew Character, Early Grey, Clouded Drab and Red Chestnut.

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The annual plague of white-legged snake millipedes has started. I see I wrote about these a year ago.

MIllipedes on outside wall

There was a chiffchaff in the garden a few days ago (reported to Skye Birds) and a raft of eider singing in the bay. The Herring Gulls were at ease awaiting the tide:

Herring Gulls

Beyond Glen Caladale

I have just spotted that this was never posted at the end of May, so for the record…..

One of the few remaining tetrads with no records ever was NG32H to the west of Eynort and south of Talisker Bay. On Tuesday Neil and I chose to walk in from Eynort and sorted that out with 136 records.

We found no great rarities but Asplenium marinum (Sea Spleenwort) on the shore and Silene acaulis (Moss Campion) on the cliffs were nice.

Silene acaulis

On the way we saw some fine examples of animal topiary with the gorse:

Gorse topiary

We startled a barn owl off the cliffs and a peregrine flashed pass at one point. We also spotted a fine Argent & Sable:

Argent & Sable

 

 

Loch Eadar dà Bhaile, Raasay

Seven members of Skye Nature Group circumnavigated (well, nearly) Loch Eadar dà Bhaile, the loch between the townships of Balachuirn and Balameanach on Wednesday. This is a rich loch where the vegetation is slowly covering the open water. We recorded 123 plants of which Fragaria vesca (Wild Strawberry), Hypericum androsaemum (Tutsan) and Sanicula europaea (Sanicle) were new to the monad (1km square). Additionally, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Bearberry) was spotted (in large quantities) for the first time since the 1990s.

We started up a woodcock and found a newt – not in the loch – and the fungi were good, including Birch Jelly (Exidia repanda), Green Elfcup (Chlorociboria aeruginascens) (probably) and Pipe Club (Macrotyphula fistulosa var. contorta).

Chlorociboria aeruginascens

Macrotyphula fistulosa

Oh yes – and we inspected the 170m run of Crocosmia pottsii (Potts’ Montbretia) from Balameanach to the shore of Loch Eadar dà Bhaile that until this year had been recorded as Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora (Montbretia (C. aurea x pottsii)).

Crocosmia pottsii at Balameanach

Those Red Squares

Neil has now paddled to the east side of Longay to record in NG63Q and in passing had a look at the northern tip of Pabay where NG62U features on the list of VC104 tetrads. The latter, as shown on the OS map, has no land above the high water mark and unsurprisingly, Neil found it to contain no plants. There are several like this in the vice-county and in future editions of my tetrad numbers map I shall turn these another colour meaning there really are zero vascular plants.

Yesterday Neil kindly shared his double kayak with me and we went to Griana-sgeir off Fladday (itself off Raasay) as this is the only land in NG55Q and never recorded before. We found 23 plants in this small outpost, normally the domain of seals and seabirds.

Griana-sgeir

There is an area of shell sand but it lies entirely below the high water mark, so does not influence the vegetation. The major environmental factor apart from the exposed coastal location appears to be the seabirds, adding nitrogenous material to the area.

Gull nest

I spotted this fly on a dandelion and await Murdo’s verdict, though it may not be possible to determine from an image. I had no net or containers with me, but I did capture some ants….

Fly on Griana-sgeir

We did not land on Glas Eilean as there is a large tern colony – we estimated about 200 birds, but we did go to Fraoch Eilean which was very different from Griana-sgeir, having rowan trees and bracken – but still only 28 plant species recorded.  Both these islands are in a tetrad that has been well recorded on Raasay but I had never been to them before.

Neil spotted a fabulous little moth Pammene rhediella (Fruitlet Mining Tortrix) on the rowan (there were quite a number of them):

Pammene rhediella on rowan

 

Catch-up: Non-botany at Home

Our first cuckoo of the year woke me up at 0450.  April 23rd is a popular date for the first cuckoo at West Suisnish.

For those living further south, a black-headed gull will be a common sight, but not here:

Black-headed Gull at West Suisnish

This little spider is Textrix dendiculata, the toothed weaver (thanks for i.d. Gemma) and was basking on the outside of the house:

Textrix dendiculata (Toothed Weaver)

The moth trap has been out a few times with Hebrew Character moths being by far the most frequent but this Early Thorn was nice:

Early Thorn

and Seth has kindly determined this carabid beetle from the bathroom basin as Pterostichus nigrita:

Pterostichus nigrita

 

Corncrakes – Talk on Wednesday

A bit late but…..