Hairy Knees

Whilst at the beach yesterday, I spotted a newly washed up log. Clearly this particular log has led a pelagic existence of late, totally decorticated and covered in marine alga on the underside. I spun it over to reveal the submerged side and noticed several small (2-3mm long) isopods huddled together. Through the handlens I could see that they appeared to be Jaera and their very small size suggested that they were either immature or males. I hoped they were males, as that would allow me to key them through to species. I popped four into a pot and hoped for the best.

Back indoors I discovered that one had promptly died in the tube. Whacking it under the microscope allowed me to confirm that it was indeed male and hence keyable to species - good stuff! 

By using the FSC's Intertidal Marine Isopods and with further reference to The Handbook of the Marine Fauna of North-West Europe I quickly confirmed that it was in the genus Jaera, then had to check the shape of the preoperculum. The preoperculum is a plate found on the underside of the male's body, it lies just beyond the centre of the last abdominal segments, in effect the underside of the 'tail segment'. It can either be narrow and pointed or wide and T-shaped. Mine was the latter. Here's the pic from the book

And here's an image of the dead specimen as seen down the barrel of my microscope

What a beautiful match

This takes us away from Jaera nordmanni with its pointed preoperculum and points us towards the Jaera "albifrons" group, comprising several very similar species. 

Rubbishy pic showing the "sparse fringe of spines" on the abdominal plates

Next I had to take a very close look at the rearmost two pairs of legs and examine them for bulges and tufts of setae, or lack of. In the end I had to kinda dismantle the legs, it was just too difficult to see what was happening in amongst the tangle! 

No bulging lobe on the carpus, which was good news because that ruled out Jaera albifrons - the only species of Jaera I've previously recorded. Next up, I had to examine the upper part of the leg for a cluster of curved setae (setae are strong, bristly things that look a lot like hairs). Here's the pic from the book, very helpfully arrowed

Patch of "knee hairs" on the outer face with three diverging, curved hairs on the inner face

And here's what the rear leg of my beast looks like

That looks about right to me!

Happily, there's only one species in British waters that exhibits a "cluster of curved setae on the distal portion of the ischium" and that is Jaera ischiosetosa, a lifer for me and also (obviously...) "new" to Skye! 

There's a great photo gallery of the species on Dave Fenwick's Aphotomarine page which shows a lot more detail than my images do. 

Whilst manhandling 2mm isopods from the log into a pot, I noticed what looked to be a tiny leech crawling across the wet log. I popped it into the pot, just in case I could do anything with it. Well guess what, it wasn't a leech at all!

This 4mm cutie is an immature Limapontia depressa, a small sea slug that browses Vaucheria alga (a green seaweed) in saltmarshes. Technically I was slightly below the saltmarsh, but it's a dirt common species and supposedly abundant. Immatures can be found crawling across the surface of mud, clearly I need to spend more time with my knees wet and nose pushed down into the gloop!  I've never seen Limapontia depressa before, so deciding to have a quick look at that washed up log turned out to be a good move. 

Anyway, I have a day off work today and it seems that (miracle of miracles) the rain has pushed through and the afternoon could be mostly dry. Ish. Time to go find me some more goodies! 

Third Rock from the Sea

For the first time in a week, it wasn't raining after I finished work - huzzah! I headed down to the shore in order to have a quick peek beneath a few rocks embedded in the gritty sand. First up, though, was this beast

A beached Blue Jellyfish Cyanea lamarckii

Not sure I've seen a jellyfish in February before, though Storm Erik certainly hit us hard here in Uig. For instance, it blew the side door clean off the hotel, tearing chunks out of the doorframe where the hinges had been attached (naturally, even though all of this happened quite close to my window, I slept right through it). Come daylight, we had a right giggle fitting an emergency replacement door in the strong winds, a three man job in fact, immediately followed by almost as much fun painting it up before the next band of rain hit (gotta love it when the wind blows the black paint off your brush and all across the adjacent white walls...)

Anyways...

By now, you all know (you DO all know, right?) that I'm undertaking my Challenge 2019 and, amongst other things, this year I'm focussing on beetles. I've already had a brief, unsuccessful search for one particular species so far this year. Would I have more success today? Here's the habitat

The larger rocks are partly submerged at high tide - note they're festooned with Channelled Wrack

Seems a daft kind of place to look for a terrestrial beetle, but would you believe there's an entire air-breathing ecosystem surviving beneath each of these rocks? Well, there is - incredibly

Halorates reprobus - male (L) and female (R) on the underside of an upturned rock

Strigamia maritima - an exclusively littoral species found beneath rocks on the beach

And, thankfully, the star of today's show - 

Aepus marinus - a 2.5mm killing machine! 

At high tide these creatures survive in naturally occurring air pockets beneath the rocks. I've found that large rocks with a generally flattened underside situated on coarse gritty sands are far and away the best places to check for Aepus marinus. If the beach gravel is too fine they don't occur. Likewise, you won't find them if the substrate is too stony or comprised of cobbles. The rock has to be bedded into just the right particle size of grit, presumably suitable air pockets won't form if the conditions aren't correct. If the whole thing gets swamped, they will be inundated with seawater and drown. I do suffer a degree of guilt every time I upheave a boulder, I know it won't fit back into place quite perfectly, have I doomed everything beneath to a salty death? Surely some must succumb anyway whenever a storm hits and dislodges boulders. It takes the phrase 'living on the edge' to extremes! 

Aepus marinus, along with the very similar Aepopsis robinii, are believed to hunt tiny springtails. Their eyes are reduced and they are flightless, neither being necessary to a lifestyle of chasing prey through the cracks and crevices of grit and across buried rock faces. For a long time I suspected that mites may form a large part of the diet of these tiny beetles, for there are always many more mites present on the underside of the rocks than springtails. But, thinking about it, I now suspect that the outer cuticle of a mite would prove too tough for such a tiny beetle. Food for thought. 

Just in case anybody out there is wondering how I fared during my first week of walking my way back to fitness, I totalled 32 miles. That's not including however far I potter around during the course of work hours, I'm on about proper sustained walks. 32 miles sounds a lot, but if you average it out, it's less than five miles per day. I'm going to start walking to the pier and back before work as well as after work. Plus a long walk at least once per week. Though I really do wish it would stop raining every time I head off into the distance!

These Boots were made for Walking

So I'm probably as heavy as I've ever been in my life and I have a definite 'gut thing' happening nowadays. It's disgusting, I don't really notice it on a day to day basis, but if I stand in front of a mirror I can clearly see that I need to lose weight. I went from a 28 to a 30 inch waist when I hit thirty (despite eating as much junk food as I liked) but now I'm wearing 34 inch trousers, though to be fair I do need a belt to hold them up. Why don't they do a 33 inch, that would fit me just fine? Anyway... 

I well remember one night, laying in bed with the lass that I used to live with, when she put her arm across me and said, "are you getting a paunch?" I was mortified! I was only thirty, I still remember it vividly. Now, I've never been to a gym in my life but I used to have a six pack (abs, not beers) just through having a physically demanding job. I used to have decent arm and leg muscles too. 

Sun's out, gun's out! Me wrestling a giant pineapple on Tenerife in 2008. 

You really wouldn't wanna take a right hook from that fella! Course nowadays I'd need to do at least fifteen minutes of stretches and warm ups beforehand just in case I injured myself... 

Fast forward a few too many years and I now have a cushty job where I rarely need to flex a muscle or break a sweat, though sadly I certainly do break sweat quite often. My internal thermostat is basically shot, has been for several years now. Anything over 16 degrees and I sweat! 

Nowadays I have the biceps and triceps of a half-starved Gollum. That soft, floppy gut is fairly accurate too...

So where am I going with this? Have I stumbled my way into a midlife crisis? Maybe... 

I've decided that I need to be more active than I currently am, my nickname (Walkabout, not The Gibster) is a bit of a joke nowadays. On Monday I walked across to The Quiraing and back, a tidy 14 miles - give or take a few hundred metres. The following day I wandered down to the shop, through the woods, down to the pier and back, up the Chasm of Doom, through the cemetery and back down to the hotel (approx three and a half miles). Today I was on a training course, so spent the day essentially immobile, sat on my arse trying to fit in with the crowd. But afterwards I wandered down to the pier and back, racking up another three miles. That amounts to around about 20 miles walked in the last three days. 

I have it in mind that I ought to do one decently long walk per week and that I should be marching myself down to the pier and back on a daily basis. It's a modest start, but if I do a ten mile walk once a week, and visit the pier daily, that should add up to around about 30 miles a week. Not enough! I'm gonna aim at 35 miles per week, that's not including any of this shite 10,000 steps a day nonsense that folks go on about, just by wearing a watch on their wrist. You could rack up just by bumbling around the house all day. No, I mean 35 miles worth of walking. Last summer I did my pier march before and after work, so that's six miles without counting all of my 'incidental steps' throughout the day. If I do that 5 days a week, plus my long walk, I'll be topping forty miles walking per week. That's quite a lot! So saying, I was doing that every two days back when I walked Land's End to John O'Groats - and that was with tent, clothes, bedding, food, water, maps and cooking gear on my back. Mind you, I lost over two stone in the process...! 

I have to 'fess up, even though I've been moderately repulsed at the sight of my own body for quite a wee while now, a lot of the impetus for this change has come through reading the brilliant DMC Journal, so hat's off to you buddy, for the push to make a change in my lifestyle. 

And for those of you expecting to be shown some sort of nature shizzle....

Best I could do at short notice! 

"I've got more Chins than Chinatown" haha! I mean, oh dear oh dear....

What Lies Beneath

After yesterday's long walk, I was pleased to find that my legs still worked just fine and I wasn't suffering any throbbing, stiffness, aches, pains or blisters whatsoever. In fact, I felt that I could walk for miles and miles again today - but I knew the weather was meant to deteriorate this afternoon, so I kept it local. 

I headed down to Uig Wood and set to heaving over boulders and rubble behind the community hall car park area, always good for large numbers of Tandonia budapestensis and Deroceras invadens amongst smaller numbers of Deroceras reticulatum and the odd Boettgerilla pallens or Limax maximus, neither of which I saw today, though plenty of the others were present. Slugs aside, I was mainly looking for beetles in an attempt to bump up the tally for my Challenge 2019.

I managed just one beetle. Not one species, I mean just one individual! Dunno where all the carabids were today, all I found was this one staphylinid

Quedius fuliginosus - 13mm in length and one I've recorded from here before

My first impression was that it was going to be somewhere in the Philonthus/Quedius area, and indeed it keyed through to Quedius fuliginosus, one I've had here before and already known from the Inner Hebrides.

I also found a few fly larva on the underside of boulders, which was a bit surprising. Usually I only ever find these things in leaf litter. Or perhaps I'm just getting better at finding them, now that I'm actively looking for them?

Syrphidae hoverfly larva - possibly from the genus Epistrophe 
Edit confirmed now by Nicola Garnham on the UK Hoverflies Larval Group Facebook Group

Fanniidae (lesser housefly family) larva. Something like 60 species in Britain (Fannia and Piezura)

Some sort of mysterious fly larva, I guess?

I also found this tiny thing beneath a boulder in long grasses at the top of the beach

An ensign scale, probably an Arctorthezia sp.

It appears that Arctorthezia cataphracta is the likely species, but I found this online paper which has added a couple of species to the genus. I need to grill this beast properly under the microscope to be sure. Newsteadia floccosa is the only other confusion species as far as I can tell, but this doesn't appear to be anywhere near as 'ornately' scaled as that species. Going through the keys, this doesn't happily drop out anywhere, either I'm being a dolt (likely) or it's not on the British list (unlikely!)

One last insect of interest (to me, at least) was this hopper nymph found beneath a bit of mossy bark laying on the woodland floor

I still have absolutely no idea what it is, but I find these fluffy-tailed beasts quite often, always beneath large trees in established woodland. And invariably sheltering beneath debris/boulders part buried in the soil.

SO...basically a whole bunch of unidentified/unidentifiable stuff - this is not the way it was supposed to be! It's a pity the fly larvae aren't quite so readily identifiable. Maybe I should attempt to rear a few through.

Today's song is very special to me. Not because I'm a huge Beverley Hills Cop fan, but because about ten days back the plumber cut off the hot water and heating to my annex. Today he's fixed it, I have warmth again! This means I can finally start using my microscope again, it had expanded internally in the cold temperatures, rendering it completely unusable. After a brief nervous breakdown, I put it into storage in a heated building elsewhere on site. Much to my relief (you have no idea just how much!) it realigned itself once warmed up, but it's stayed offsite until now. Happy days indeed :)

First Long Walk of the Year

Yesterday, a lass at work asked me if I'd ever walked up to The Quiraing before. Well I haven't, though I've driven through it a few times. Today we put that right and took a wander up the hills, complete with a friendly pooch who seemed to revel in splashing through the slushy puddles and wading chest deep through flooded gulleys. The snow cover was minimal, but meltwater had produced some impressive icicles as it ran over banks and overhangs 

Eventually we arrived at The Quiraing car park which, for a wonder, was not filled to bursting point with cars and minibuses. We wandered up to a natural platform and were rewarded with spectacular views over the east side of Trotternish right across the waters to snow-covered Applecross. 

I did a short 360° video, apologies for the wind noise, it was just a tad blustery up there! 

Anyway, I liked it

Doesn't seem that long ago that I noticed the first grey hair in my beard - sheesh! 

Now, you may recall that this is a nature blog and are probably wondering where all the wildlife pics are. Well...um...so we didn't really find very much in the way of life out there! Ravens yeah, and a Hoodie, other than that it was just sheep and a couple of cattle. Though I did spot quite a few small Holly bushes around Idrigill (still no sign of the leaf miner, though - this must be the only part of Britain without it!) We also failed to spy a single eagle, quite incredible really seeing as we walked more than ten miles through the hilltops. I suspect foul play or a jinx, there's no way I've spent that amount of time in prime territory and not seen one before, not up here anyway. 

However, here's one I prepared earlier. This is from just a few days back, proof that they are here!

Massively cropped pic of a noisy Golden Eagle 

Door to door, I walked a smidge over 14 miles today and I feel great for it too! I'm going to get walking fit again, live up to my nickname once more. I hope to undertake at least one long walk per week, I might start up my 'to the pier and back' marches too, only three miles but at proper marching pace. My best time last year was 44 minutes, which is slightly faster than the US Army quick march pace. 

Though come tomorrow this may well be my theme tune!

Wintry weather - at last!

Today was glorious, truly beautiful - clear blue skies, hardly a breath of wind and overnight there had been a snowfall. Snow! Only a light dusting, maybe an inch or so, but wow - what a stunner of a day. Although, seeing as I'd been looking forward to sieving moss for inverts come my next day off, it did scupper my plans just a tad. So, I changed plans and hit the river instead, at least that wouldn't be covered in snow...

The woods were alive with birds, a party of Long-tailed Tits noisily spluttered their way through the understorey, a couple of Treecreepers trilled as they clambered moss-laden tree trunks, a group of Icelandic Redwings worked their way across the woodland floor and a flock of Siskins let me slowly approach to within about twenty feet as they fed on Alder cones, no more than eight feet above the footpath I was ambling along - magical. Ravens 'prrukk-ed' low overhead and a Mistle Thrush passed over, heard but unseen, a good bird in these parts. 

Just a few days back the river had been a rushing torrent, testament to all the rain we've enjoyed of late. Today however, it was strangely quiet and tranquil

I fancied that I could cross and explore the far bank for the first time this year. Unfortunately, the fallen tree I ordinarily use as a bridge has washed away and that seemingly gentle river is still two feet deep in the rock-strewn shallows. One for another time, methinks. 

However, below the weir is a quiet, shallow backwater which looked to be well worth exploring. This is where I find most of my freshwater flatworms, River Limpets, stonefly and mayfly larvae. Maybe I'd find some water beetles too? 

This was a raging torrent last week,  it's quite amazing just how tough a plant Luzula sylvatica is! 

 But what did I find in the waters? Well, I found water beetles - an adult and two larvae

It wiggled and I saw it - whatever it is! 

Answers on a post card, please

A quick look at water beetle larvae led me to Elmis, but I'm not wholly convinced that's what I have here. I took two home with me for further investigation. I'm boldly assuming they are beetle larvae! 

Definitely not the Water Louse Asellus aquaticus that I thought I'd found! 

I'll have to see if I can suss out the species, either that or try to rear it through. I could buy a tiny glass tank and aerate it, I guess? Could be fun!

EDIT: The 4-segmented legs, tipped with a single claw, combined with the flattened, heavily sclerotised body segments narrow it down to a workable number of families. However, the real breakthrough came when I checked the antennae, which comprise two basal segments and then approximately 20 tiny, bead-like segments. The sole family to exhibit antennae comprising more than 11 segments (and usually approx. 20) is Scirtidae. There are 20 species in Britain across various genera, though a few can be struck off due to their distribution range. Not sure how far I can go with the larvae, but I'll see what I can manage. 

Here's a nice one for you, one you probably don't know. Listen to the lyrics, let me know your thoughts on the river he can't cross. My own take is that it's a song about death and the after life.

Neo, run! The weevil is an Agent

I scooped a medium-sized weevil off a wall a few days back, this afternoon I got around to checking it. As suspected, it was Otiorhynchus sulcatus, the Vine Weevil. Not an uncommon species up here, typically found sitting halfway up a whitewashed wall, as indeed this one was.

I figured I better just double-check I had the ID right. The key makes mention of the relative lengths and widths of various antennomeres so I needed to take a close look at the antennae. Easy, I'll take a quick photo and zoom in to check.

Little did I know that I was dealing with an Agent!

Bullet dodging antennomeres!

Well, that was unexpected. Had I, in fact, discovered the greater of two weevils, I wondered? Either way, this is my tenth species of beetle for the year. Don't worry, it'll pick up soon, I know it will.

Here's the original bullet dodging scene, if you aren't familiar with The Matrix I suggest you set aside a couple of hours tonight and remedy that straight away. Don't bother wasting your life watching the sequels though.

Hint: always aim for the legs