Wych Elm Galls

June 8th was a beautifully warm, sunny day; one which simply demanded my attention. I took myself up the hill and approached Uig Wood from its uppermost slopes, I had flies in mind! The image below shows the area where I spent a happy hour or so, swiping at sunbathing sarcophagids amongst a multitude of smaller dipterans. 

Sunlit, out of the wind, decidedly warm and without midges - a rare combination up here! 

Hidden beneath the sweeping boughs of these trees lies a sheep fence, topped with barbed wire. Thankfully, it does a grand job of keeping them out of the woods (as you can see, everything to the left in this image has been grazed to within an inch of its life). Don't get me started on the sheer mindlessness of rearing these awful woolly maggots, though the lost lamb pathetically bleating for it's mother was kind of cute as it spied me and slowly approached from a few hundred feet away to within about fifteen feet distance. Sorry buddy, I can offer you a can of Relentless or a swift kick up the backside, but nothing in the way of milk or motherly affection. I did briefly contemplate wrestling it into a headlock and checking the fleece for interesting critters, but it BAAAAAA'ed its way back over the crest of a hill and left me alone. Must get myself a haircut sometime soon. 

Anyway...

So I potted a handful of sarcophagids (I'd ordered the book on 23rd April. It arrived three days ago) and various other bits n bobs, and then suddenly noticed this weird-looking thing on a Wych Elm leaf

As galls go, that's actually pretty damned impressive!

I have a terrible memory when it comes to recollecting the name of something I've seen before. It doesn't matter if it was five years or five hours ago, I'm just truly abysmal at remembering scientific names. However, I am pretty good at knowing whether or not it's something I've seen before. And so, as I found myself staring at this monstrous leafy protuberance, I knew without a doubt that I'd never seen anything like it before. And then I spied more of them 

This latter image shows an earlier stage of gall development

There are lots of organisms that cause galls to develop in leaf blades, ranging from fungal attack to mite infestation, from bacterial infection to nematodes, from aphid colonies to insect larvae. I suspected aphids or flies in this instance, mostly due to the size of the thing. 

I collected one large specimen and, after I'd finally done swiping my net at flies, headed indoors to examine my find. Before that though, I jumped on the Book of Faces and promptly discovered that Stephen Bungard, professional botanist, BSBI county recorder and amateur all-round (and rapidly diversifying) naturalist had posted up pics of the exact same gall which he'd just found, and later blogged about, from neighbouring Raasay. Beaten to it by a couple of hours! Anyway, he'd already sussed the culprit and saved me the bother, though I still sliced it open and checked the contents for myself

This big old lonesome aphid, which went so far as to slowly rock back and forth (shuffle would be going too far, I feel) was the only thing I found inside the gall. Looking at the size of it, I did wonder if it hadn't already eaten the rest of the colony! Following up Stephen's identification, I concluded that he was bang on with Tetraneura ulmi, an aphid that causes spectacular galls on Ulmus leaves. And when I say spectacular....

 https://bladmineerders.nl/parasites/animalia/arthropoda/insecta/hemiptera/sternorrhyncha/aphidoidea/aphididae/eriosomatinae/eriosomatini/tetraneura/tetraneura-ulmi/

I'm hoping that by providing Bladmineerders' link to the species as a caption I can somehow bypass any untoward copyright infringement. Probably not, but the Dutch are generally quite a lenient bunch. Usually. 

Stephen mentioned that there were only four post-1998 records for the Highland Region, all of which were submitted via the HBRG. In the space of a few hours we'd unwittingly upped that by 50%, and then Neil took himself down to Tora and found it there as well, so from four to seven records and the first for some years! HBRG now have a Forum, still very much in it's infancy, but it looks useful (if ever I can log into it...) and the matter of this gall's sudden appearance now has it's own page here.

But we shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves; it turns out that there are a whole host of aphid-induced galls on Ulmus. Thankfully ours seem to be pretty clear-cut Tetraneura ulmi, but others include Kaltenbachiella pallida, Colopha impressa and Eriosoma lanuginosum. There are also several further aphid species found on Ulmus which cause leaf puckers, bulges, curls and rolled rims, namely Eriosoma ulmi (which I've recorded here before), Eriosoma anncharlotteae, Eriosoma flavum, Eriosoma patchiae and Eriosoma grossulariae. Luckily they all have slightly differently formed galls and the aphids themselves are diagnostic in colour and morphology, so they ought to be identifiable should I happen to find any of them. Still, it's something to be aware of and to look out for. Some of these species switch to a secondary host midway through the year, which could be in the roots of various grasses. So I need to get a handle on them now, before they effectively 'disappear'. 

Talking of roots...

Self-found Blyth's Reed Warbler!!!

No of course not, though there's a rather vocal Lesser Whitethroat currently holding territory down in Broadford, the first of its kind noted on Skye since 2013 apparently. I should probably go twitch it, get it on the ol' Skye List, but I won't. Anyway, seeing as I've successfully clickbaited you here.... 

Blyth's Reed Warbler - courtesy of the legends at Punkbirder

Summer finally arrived for we tundra-dwellers at the end of May. I was often to be found merrily painting walls, concrete stairways and a good many exterior doors, mowing the lawns, strimming banksides and generally cultivating a lovely sunburnt complexion across my face, neck and shoulders. A gentle but steady breeze kept the worst of the midges at bay and life was good. Then it all fell to shit as hoodies, coats and rainy wind became the norm once more, with indoor gloss-work quickly making up the bulk of my work duties. However, this past week has seen a steady increase in warmth and sunshine and Skye has now comfortably settled into the high teens/early twenties with sunshine and (very) long daylight hours being the norm. Midges are out in force, mind you.

I've been embroiled in this friendly challenge with The Ghost for much of the year, a casual piece of rivalry to keep both of us amused and enthused throughout the summer months. In his own words, I'm better at beetles than he is and he's better at flies than I am. So we've been racking up the species in an attempt to stay ahead of the other. A couple of weeks back it turned decidedly dirty. It was a race to see who would be the first to hit 100 species of flies for the year. I was in the late 80s, Ghostie was a bit further back than that. If I reached 100 first he owed me a 4-pack of Stella. If he hit 100 first I owed him a 6-pack of V. Game on! Regrettably, I lost that bet as he streaked across the 100 species barrier, leaving me and my paltry 96 fly species choking in his dust. Damn, that fella will do anything for a free energy drink! 

Calm yourself Gilbert - you'll get them next time we meet... 

I've practically given up birding of late, apart from keeping tabs on my Lockdown Birding List. I'm up to 65 species from my 'garden' (ie the hotel grounds) with a couple of noisy flyover Greylag Geese becoming the latest additions. I've found a couple of pairs of Spotted Flycatchers in Uig Wood, but I'm far more focused on flies than birds now. Wow - I never envisioned the day I'd be saying that! Beetle action has been appallingly slow for several weeks (I stopped sieving grass heaps once the midges kicked in), but the latest warm snap seems to have kickstarted them into action again with a few clicks, Cantharis and Rhagonycha beginning to become more commonly encountered whilst Dascillus cervinus seems to be everywhere I look these past few days. The trailcam has been decidedly quieter than I'd like, with bathing Hooded Crows, Blackbirds and Robins make up the bulk of the footage captured thus far. Happily, I did manage a brief flash through of this energetic wee sprite

Probably best to play at full-screen size...

Weasels just crack me up, they have such boundless energy. I bet they'd make an awesome pet! I can't actually recall if I posted the other mammal footage on here. Maybe not...

Admittedly these are both 'blink and you'll miss it' type video clips, I'm certain the trailcam will deliver the goods one day though. In case you weren't quite sure, that was an Otter barrelling its way into the tunnel. Definitely not a vole, as someone mentioned earlier.

I shall have to compose a few properly structured blogposts in the coming week or so. I have lots of images on the camera card that I've yet to even look at. I have trips and happenings to share. I've had several 'new to Skye' species this past week. For now, though, here's a mish mash of random pics

Four examples of Plateumaris discolor - all from a single sweep of my net!

Plateumaris discolor again. I've just noticed the rust fungus on the Equisetum - the heck's that then???

First midge of the season, bastard things. Be nice to figure out which species they are too.

This larva was uncovered from within its mine on Common Nettle. It could be one of several species, but the form of the mine and pattern of frass deposition narrowed it down to just two candidates. I think the relatively large, coarse spinules (tiny black hooks) along the body segments and the all black cephalic skeleton help to determine this as Agromyza pseudoreptans.

Trust a female to lead him into trouble. Deep, deep trouble at that....

The gall of Tetraneura ulmi (an aphid) on Wych Elm leaf

This pouch gall on Wych Elm is one of several rather similar galls formed by aphids. I cut this one open and found a solitary waxy grey aphid within. I've never seen this before, despite it being really quite eye-catching, so it is probably genuinely scarce here. Unless, of course, it usually occurs high up in the canopy. Anyway, it's worthy of its own blogpost due to some interesting history. One for tomorrow night, perhaps. 

Obviously, due to the ongoing Covid situation, I've not been gaily traipsing back and forth to see the Princess for some months now. In fact, I never shall again. It seems the relationship wasn't quite as strong as I had hoped and so that's that. I had a mental purge, followed by a very large physical purge involving a raging bonfire plus two industrial sized bin's worth of useless clobber and junk that I've been carting around for decades, all of which the binmen unwittingly and irretrievably took away with them. After that I felt surprisingly cleansed, it really was a cathartic process!

Couple of unruly headstones in here, but most are abiding by the two metres apart guidelines

Of course, now that the countryside has been given a chance to recover, we have seen many examples of shy, elusive wildlife slowly moving back into their old haunts once more

If you listen really hard, you too may hear wild drums and ecstatic guitar shredding coming from a thicket near you. One for the noc-miggers and their spectrograms perhaps.