Neil, Wilma and I had a pleasant day near Portnalong on Friday. It had been planned for Thursday but the weather was not pleasant so we postponed for a day. We found two plants that are new to the vice-county, both garden escapes.
Muscari armeniacum (Garden Grape-hyacinth)
Muscari armeniacum (Garden Grape-hyacinth) was by the road and there were a couple of other plants that I need to go back to later in the season. Down by the sea loch in woodland, there was a large patch of Cardamine raphanifolia (Greater Cuckooflower):
Cardamine raphanifolia (Greater Cuckooflower)
Later: The flowers on a piece I took home have now come out:
Neil identified some nice lichens:
Anaptychia runcinataDegelia atlantica
and we found Least Black Arches, a moth unfamiliar to us all and with not many records locally.
Least Black Arches
We also saw adult Double-striped Pug and Brown Silver-line plus larvae of Drinker and Northern Eggar.
Brown Silver-lineDouble-striped PugDrinker
A bug found on the coastal rocks is probably Anthocoris nemoralis though there are a couple of lookalikes:
This shows the number of species of Diptera in vice-county 104 recorded on NBN.
Diptera (true flies) include blowflies, hoverflies, craneflies, midges, gnats etc.
The top hectad is NG51 where esteemed entomologist Philip Entwistle made a major effort, followed at a distance by NM49 on Rum, NG51 (Entwistle again) and then my home square, NG53.
If you would like to help boost records for this group and live in the area, you could just sweep dead ones off your windowsill and send them to Murdo Macdonald, or to me for onward forwarding with my next batch. (Addresses available if you contact me via my e-mail address which can be found here.) However, he will not thank you for midges, gnats or other small flies.
Without much effort, I have added one to NG54 (Tipula rufina, a cranefly) and one to NG72 (Melanostoma scalare, a hoverfly) in the past few days.
Melanostoma scalare
You never know what you may find – I have one under assessment as a possible first for the British Isles.
Steve has found what appears to be Ilex x altaclerensis (I. aquifolium x perado) – Highclere Holly – under a rowan tree near Dunringell.
Ilex x altaclerensis
After a couple of false starts in recent years, this seems to be the first real example of this hybrid in the vice-county.
There is a lot of highly dwarfed Cochlearia (Scurvygrass) around the Skye coast. The early-flowering light-mauve-coloured ones are probably Cochlearia danica (Danish Scurvygrass) but are so dwarfed that it is difficult to find the defining features. However, during a brief stop at Loch Ainort a few days ago I found some with decent stems showing stalked stem leaves:
Cochlearia danica (Danish Scurvygrass)
Skye Botany Group is planning an excursion to the Beinn a’ Leac area on Raasay in mid-May. Please get in touch if you would like to join us.
Three nights ago I put out a moth trap at home and caught 60 moths of 14 species including a male Brindled Beauty and three Grey Birch. The former appears to be only the third record for the vice-county. Only the males come to light and do so very late in the night, so if you take in your moth trap before going to bed you will probably never see one.
Brindled Beauty (Male)
I initially thought that the Grey Birch were also new to my home list, but I felt I had seen one before and so looked back at images from earlier times and found that I had misidentified one in early May last year.
Grey Birch
Buoyed up by these results, last night I put out a trap at Loch Eadar da Bhaile, about 6 km north of home and in a different 10 km square of the British National Grid. I caught 89 moths of just seven species, the only slightly less common one being a single Water Carpet.
A little over a week ago, following a storm that coincided with the equinoctal tides, I found a small moth larva wandering across bare rock at the top of the shore. It may be a Eudonia sp. – micromoths known as Greys of which I have recorded three species locally. I have put it in a pot with some moss in the hope that it will pupate and then hatch.
I put the moth trap out twice in the last week of March and each time I caught a species that was new to my home list. I showed the Pine Beauty in my last post; the other is Common Plume of which there were three:
Emmelina monodactyla (Common Plume)
This is one of the few Plume Moths that overwinters as an adult. The larvae feed on bindweeds and I have more than enough Calystegia sepium (Hedge Bindweed) in the garden.
Also in the garden, I found a large yellow slug which I was able to identify as the Green Cellar Slug (Limacus maculatus). It is also known as Irish Yellow Slug though actually from south-eastern Europe, first noticed in the UK in the 1970s.
Green Cellar Slug (Limacus maculatus)
Today on a brief wander I spotted Heath Navel (Lichenomphalia umbellifera). This is quite common on the moors around here and the inconspicuous lichenized thallus contains single-celled green algae in the genus Coccomyxa, interconnected by a loose network of hyphae. The fruiting-bodies (as shown) are non-lichenized.
Heath Navel (Lichenomphalia umbellifera). With apologies for the over-exposure of the left-hand image. I forgot my camera and only had my phone with me.
Nearby the Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) had this fungus on it:
Fungus on Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
Dennis in Fungi of the Hebrides lists Propolis phacidioides, Lembosina gontardii, Coleophoma empetri and Pseudospiropes rouselianus as growing on Bearberry. Of these, C. empetri, now known as Rhabdostromina empetri, looks the most likely to my inexpert eye but I have asked for help with this one.
Later: Having remembered to consult Ellis & Ellis, Microfungi on Land Plants, I think it is Coccomyces arctostaphyli. I still need an expert to confirm or say nay.
Later still: Confirmed as Coccomyces arctostaphyli.
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 