Skye Botany Group went to Glendrynoch to look at some holly hybrids and varieties. We also found possible Carex sylvatica (Wood-sedge) which I shall go back to check in a few weeks’ when it has grown a bit bigger. This would be nice as it would be the first record in NG43 since 1983.
Invertebrates included Bombylius major (Dark-edged Bee-fly), Cylindroiulus punctatus (a millipede) and Adelges laricis (Larch Adelgid), this last being new, at least in NBN terms, to the vice-county and most of the northwest. So yesterday I went hunting Adelges laricis on Raasay where there is plenty of larch. I failed on that, but found both Bombylius major and Cylindroiulus punctatus plus Hemerobius stigma (a brown lacewing), Eristalis pertinax (Common Drone Fly), Melanostoma scalare (Chequered Hoverfly) and various other inverts. I added back several plant species to the Raasay monad NG5536 that had not been recorded since before 2000, but nothing uncommon.
Meanwhile, Deirdre has found a fine ichneumonid in Glenbrittle Forest:
We are advised that it is definitely Ischnoceros and very probably I. rusticus but we cannot be certain of the species. The nearest record is about 75 km to the northeast in the Beinn Eighe NNR in 1984. Still in the same 100 km square NG!
Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles 
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