Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles

Someone has planted two groups of three Monkey-puzzle trees (Araucaria araucana) on the lower slopes of Temptation Hill on Raasay. (There could be more.) This seems slightly strange to me, but perhaps no stranger than the Forestry planting little patches of cypress all over the place in the same area. They should perhaps have been planted more than one metre apart if they are to grow to full size.

Nearby a small forest of Ribes sanguineum (Flowering Currant – silly name as all Ribes species flower!) is coming into flower:

Recent finds have included lots of this Globular Springtail on a picnic table (Thanks Stephen M for identification):

and, yes, those marks at the bottom of the picture are millimetre divisions.

Larvae of The Drinker were out in numbers yesterday:

There were lots of this common fly sunning themselves on a wooden bridge across the Arish Burn:

I see this one pretty much all year:

The moth trap has been out a couple of times but has yielded nothing new for the time of year in the way of moths. Adults caught so far this year are Dotted Border, Hebrew Character, Mottled Grey, Pale Brindled Beauty and Red Chestnut.

However a coouple of days ago there were no moths in the trap, just a few gnats and this fine spider:

According to the Spider and Harvestman Recording Scheme website this species is “very scattered…. in northern Britain”, “can be found in most wetland habitats, especially in emergent vegetation at the edge of water and occasionally on sand dunes” and “adults have been found throughout the year, but mostly in late spring to mid-summer and late summer to early autumn”. My specimen is not far from wetlands but I am not sure that it is late spring yet nor that being found in a moth trap is entirely normal. Something of an outlier as a record.

I had omitted Plantago lanceolata (Ribwort Plantain) and Ranunculus repens (Creeping Buttercup) from my list of weeds flowering in the garden. Both have been flowering for some time, but now I can add Conopodium majus (Pignut), Galium saxatile (Heath Bedstraw), Trifolium repens (White Clover) and Veronica serpyllifolia subsp. serpyllifolia (Thyme-leaved Speedwell). The last flowers are on the Ficaria verna subsp. fertilis (Lesser Celandine); I am not sure that it will quite make June.

Ficaria verna subsp. fertilis (Lesser Celandine)

I fell over a large toad on my way to turn on the moth trap a few nights ago, but my other recent animal records have involved arthropods. This Ichneumon is Ophion sp., but that is as far as I am going as it is a very tricky genus, and the taxonomy is in flux. Even if that were not so, it would undoubtedly challenge my skills to sort it out.

Ophion sp.

Ophion sp.

It has been a good couple of days for micro-moths with my very own Large Longhorn (the arrows show the end of the antennae, explaining the vernacular name):

Nematopogon swammerdamella

plus three others, two of which I had not seen here before:

Syndemis musculana

Neofaculta ericetella

Micropterix aureatella

Brilliant hairstyle.

Other critters of note have included this sawfly with a pentagon on its thorax

Pachyprotasis rapae    (Thanks, Jenni)

and this spider

Microlinyphia pusilla     (Thanks, Katie)