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Dave has found a single flowering plant of the Nationally Scarce Cephalanthera longifolia (Narrow-leaved Helleborine) near Rigg on Skye in a new tetrad (2 x 2 km square of the British National Grid). Well done him!
Update: he has found four more.
Last October Neil found galls on the box hedges in Raasay House walled garden. We were pretty sure that they are caused by the psyllid Psylla buxi, but in the absence of any bugs we were not minded to make an official record. Today I went back and found both early instar larvae covered in ‘flocculent wax’ and an adult.
This is only the fourth record in Scotland by NBN reckoning.
A walk along the estuary of the Varragill River and the south side of Loch Portree produced several interesting sightings, such as a Dance Fly (Empis sp.) a Caddis that I think is either Limnephilus elegans or L. vittatus and some lilies that I think are Lilium pyrenaicum (Pyrenean Lily) that have grown unusually tall in the shade of trees. I am seeking help with the insects.
L. pyrenaicum is the only species of Lilium known to be naturalised on Skye, though this site is in a new 10 km square.
Back home, a rose bush is covered in aphids that I have struggled to identify (maybe Metopolophium dirhodum?) and so I have asked for help again. There are a couple of brown immobilsed ones that I suspect have been parasitised. Also on the same bush there is a small fungal infection that looks like a Phragmidium but is beyond my abilities to identify precisely.
Bill & Deirdre report a colony of Early Purple Orchids (Orchis mascula) with a fair number of pale, stripy flowers:
I think this is within the normal range of variation that I see, though I would expect only the occasional variant like this. A few years ago I had a pure white specimen on Raasay but I have not seen it again.
John tells me that the first two spikes of Pseudorchis albida (Small-white Orchid) are flowering in his lawn up in Waternish. He is hoping for more.
Skye Botany Group came to Raasay to see Orthilia secunda (Serrated Wintergreen) and Polystichum lonchitis (Holly-fern) as per my report a few weeks ago. In passing we added back Thalictrum alpinum (Alpine Meadow-rue) and Salix repens (Creeping Willow) to the tetrad list, not recorded there since before 2000.
The moth trap a couple of nights ago attracted 34 moths of 20 different species, which was a nice mix. These included Sweet Gale Moth, only the third or fourth record for the vice-county according to the spreadsheet provided by the County Moth Recorder.
In the polytunnel yesterday I found this hoverfly, Chrysotoxum arcuatum (sometimes called Northern Spearhorn) which in NBN terms is only the second VC record, the first being by Neil in 2021.
And roaming about on the garage floor was this harvestman, Rilaena triangularis. It is probably very common but the only record for the vice-county on NBN post-1999 is also mine from 2019 on Skye.
I got around to determining a pondskater from a moorland pool on Raasay that I had collected at the end of April, using the key from Southwood’s Land and Water Bugs of the British Isles. Fittingly it turns out to be Gerris costae (Moorland Pondskater), previously recorded on Raasay by Stephen Moran.
Another excursion with Neil & Wilma on Thursday gave us several interesting finds. A micro-moth we had never seen before turns out to be only the third or fourth vice-county record: Schreckensteinia festaliella (Bramble False-feather or Bramble Skeletonizer).
This slime mould appears to be Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa:
and this enormous Barrel Jellyfish was swimming by the shore:
A long-planted conifer keys out as Abies nordmanniana (Caucasian Fir), familiar in recent years in juvenile form as a Christmas tree, but this is a mature individual.
First record for VC104!
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 