An Orange Ladybird (Halyzia sedecimguttata) appeared in the lounge yesterday, presumably from the locally sourced Sitka Spruce Christmas tree. Athough not associated with conifers in the summer, Stephen M tells me that many ‘non-conifer’ ladybirds take to the shelter of pines, spruce and juniper in the winter.
Richard recorded this one from Raasay but only from NG54 as far as I can tell.
My contribution to the Raasay Community Newsletter for December is a second look at saltmarsh plants. It is available through a link on the Recording and Resources page of my website.
My talk at the Scottish Annual Meeting of the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland and the Botanical Society of Scotland was entitled A year in the life of a Scottish Recorder and the slides are available via the link – though they are of limited use without the accompanying ad hoc chatter.
I quite liked the following two diagrams together. The first shows daylight hours in Portree in 2015:
The second shows records per month for VC 104 in 2015:
Quite apart from the unsurprising correlation between the two (with perhaps a slight lag in records to allow for growth in the plants), this means 3 plant records were made in VC104 for every daylight hour of 2015 (13,715 records/4504 hours). One member of my audience said that just listening to my talk made him feel tired.
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 