Winged Assassins

Yesterday I built some shelving in the housekeeper's storage room, then fitted an offcut of lino, sealed it in around the edges and gave everything a good lick of paint. Massive improvement, they best thank me for it when the hotel reopens. Today I went in to topcoat the shelving and found a queen wasp busily surveying an area above the shelf. My options were to pot it up and relocate it a couple of hundred metres away, or smash it with the 2" paintbrush I held in my hand. The potting didn't go too well and so, after a brief bout of hysterical screaming and running around on the spot like a demented scaredy-cat, I boshed it hard with the paintbrush. And then I put it in a pot.

After I finished work, I figured I really ought to identify the wasp to species. HBRG are now in their third out of five years collecting data on social wasps for a forthcoming Wasps of the Highlands Atlas. With wasps I always start by looking at the facial markings, and they almost always have a black 'anchor'-shaped mark which identifies them as Vespula vulgaris, the Common Wasp. This one was different

Tiny black dot on the clypeus instead of a big black anchor mark

This wasp also has a noticeably long face, thanks to an elongated malar space (the gap between the eye and jaw). Definitely not a bog-standard Vespula vulgaris. There aren't that many species of social wasp in Britain (even fewer on Skye) but I always seem to struggle remembering which is which. A complete lack of reddish tint on the abdomen led me to believe it probably wasn't Red Wasp, which left Tree Wasp as the next most likely. 

Clean yellow and black patterning - no red in there at all

I should mention now that it took a lot of courage on my part to pick up this wasp, even though I knew it was dead. I get stung several times each year down at the glass recycling station. Posting fifteen or so black sacks worth of beer bottles into the recycling bins twice a week can be a hazardous undertaking, sometimes I'll have maybe a dozen wasps bouncing around in the back of the van with me whilst I pop the bottles into the recycling bins. 

A surprisingly hairy beast!

This is Dolichovespula sylvestris, the Tree Wasp. I find it here on Skye every year, in fact I've recorded it from the hotel annually since 2017. But the species that I'm really hoping to encounter is Dolichovespula saxonica, the Saxon Wasp. It's a species currently expanding its range northwards and has recently been found within the Highland Region. It's not one I've seen before, so I shall continue to keep a look out for it up here.

The sharp end of a wasp...

Back in the 80s, when I was first discovering rock music, I stumbled across the band W.A.S.P. and for years believed it stood for We Are Sexual Perverts. Other interpretations include White Anglo Saxon Protestants, due to the lyrics of an early song. However, it seems that the words Winged Assassins could correspond to the W and A and it fits this post far better than does Sexual Perverts or Protestants.

I absolutely played this track to death when I was seventeen. Ignore the clichéd motorbikes, snow-washed jeans and excessive hairspray usage and just appreciate the music. Though you may need to close your eyes...

Arrival of a New Toy

So it's taken two and a half weeks, but finally my trailcam has arrived!!!!

It's somewhat smaller than I expected, but that's only got to be a good thing

I quickly slapped in the batteries, turned it on and scrolled through umpteen screens of options, selecting what I figured was a good set up. Eventually I figured I ought to have a scan of the instruction booklet and make sure I'd set it up in a way that made sense. Coupla minor adjustments later and I think it's now good to go!

Nice blinging green when switched on

Motion Detection activated - check!

Yep, I'll definitely have some of that. Whatever  it is...

This screen gives you the option of setting the camera to continue recording for a specified amount of time after the object has stopped moving, assuming you have it in video rather than photography mode obviously. So if that cautious Otter suddenly spooks and freezes for 14 seconds (which they may do) the camera will continue to film despite a lack of movement, resulting in a continuous piece of video footage. Smart!

So that'll be 60fps Ultra Quality Video with audio

Lithium batteries, as recommended. Should get a good few months out of these

All I need to do now is deploy this bad boy in the tunnel and await the passage of an unsuspecting Otter. Should be pretty decent images, assuming anything activates the sensors. These are a selection of the type of images I'm expecting to obtain, though it may take anything up to three or four nights. I accept this, I can be patient.

Watch.This.Space….

This is one of the first music videos I can remember seeing, presumably on TOTP. Whenever I play it, which is about once every decade, I'm immediately put in mind of a certain pub in Smethwick where I spent my early years (the town, I mean - not the pub). No idea why!

And just because I'm in yesteryear, have some of this too

I suspect Skev and Martin will disagree on which is the better. The answer, of course, is neither. It's this - the song that welcomed me to the world of Goth 

And just for the princess...it was good when it was good. Adios.

Good Shit Happens Sometimes

I've had a fun-filled couple of days at work, doing something I really enjoy doing. The hotel stands in the angle between two roads and has a small stream, or a burn as it's properly known up here, running just south of the buildings. Here's an aerial image from a few years back

Route of burn highlighted in orange dots

This section of the burn is situated inside the hotel grounds, yet is so overgrown that you can barely see it through overhanging branches and dense Fuchsia cover. Thanks to an exceedingly wet winter, it was transformed from a gentle trickle into a raging torrent. Now that it's subsided once more I figured I ought really get in there and check for, and clear, any obstructions. Bloody hell, were there ever! 

I didn't take any pics of the 'before', but here's a pic of the 'after' from the section upstream (east) of the buildings, which I cleared yesterday afternoon. 

I'm really thrilled at how open this is now - you can actually walk up it!

This is the 'before' shot looking at the downstream section from level with the hotel buildings

Overgrown jungle

Looking better already

Anyway, I set to with bowsaw and loppers and merrily worked my way slowly down the channel. And that's when I saw this...

Otter spraint!

And just a few inches away, perched on top of a mossy rock, was this...

Fishbones to the left and a sandhopper (!) to the right

If you scroll back up to the aerial pic at the top, you'll see a yellow dot along the route of the burn. That's where this Otter marked its territory. And just nearby, you'll notice a blue dot over part of the building. That's where I live. Fifty feet away. From an Otter. FFS!!!  

Continuing down the channel, sawing and hacking at everything in my way, I spied the point at which the burn goes under the road. I figured there would be a tunnel of sorts, but I didn't realise quite how large it would be

There could be almost anything living in there...

A while later and all was revealed

You can probably guess where I headed into next...

The tunnel was just about high enough that I could walk in without stooping and it went back maybe thirty feet before narrowing to a pipe approximately four feet wide. Peering through, I could see daylight at the other end. 

This must be where the Otter comes through - it leads right down to the sea through there! 

An otter's eye view as it comes padding through the tunnel

See those larger boulders on the left side of the tunnel, I'm going to put a trailcam in there. I don't have one yet but, after a quick bout of excited texting to The Princess, she suggested I get one and see what it picks up. Hell yeah, that's a great plan! I had been toying with the idea of a sound recorder and shotgun mic set-up for noc-migging, but I think I'd have far more fun with a trailcam. There's a chap in Portree, which is about 15 miles south of here, who has Pine Marten in his garden. He's never seen it for himself, but his trailcam proves it's there! 

I've previously seen Weasel in the grounds, there are Wood Mice and Field Voles, plus the occasional Rabbit or three. There are Hedgehogs, apparently Otter too. There used to be Brown Rats but I haven't seen any for over a year now, despite there being some suspicious looking rat-sized holes in the bank of the burn. One guy swears blind he saw a family of Mink in the nearby river so they could be using the burn too. And I've seen Stoat a few times, but not near the hotel itself. All in all, I'm quite excited by the prospect! 

I need to ask around first, see if anybody local happens to have an unwanted trailcam I could nab off them, and maybe do a bit of research regards requirements, battery life, night vision capabilities etc. 

Stay tuned for trailcam madness!

Rhagium bifasciatum - accidentally uncovered from inside a dead stump yesterday