Mystery Solved

A few months back, local naturalist Neil 'Rockhopper' Roberts found some prominent galls on a dead plant. In a bid to elucidate the identity of the gall causer, he popped some pics of the dead plant up on a FB group and asked for help (plant ID not being his strong point). Sadly, what with the plant being dead, none of us could ID it with any certainty. Although I did point out that I believed it to be a hawkweed..... just remember that bit! Here's Neil's images of the galls as he found them.

 

And here's his image of the few he collected, taken when he was back indoors later that day.

I did a bit of internet searching and came up with a wasp that galls Common Cat's-ear as a possibility. Neil and Stephen didn't like that idea, the mystery plant was too woody for Common Cat's-ear and with hindsight I could only agree with them. Here's a screenshot of the actual thread (apparently it was 19 weeks ago!)

So I continued to scour the internet for clues as to the identity of the galls on Neil's mystery plant. Suddenly I had it. Yep I absolutely definitely had it. Sweet! Sadly nobody else agreed with me, so I stomped off in a huff and quit wasting my time trying to help the disbelievers....

I felt vexed by the galls, I simply had to know the species of plant involved. I was almost certain it was a hawkweed and that the wasps would prove to be Aulacidea hieracii, so I visited the site and grabbed two galls that lacked exit holes. In theory they would be packed full of wasp grubs/pupae and, given a bit of time and luck, the adult wasps would emerge in due course and I'd be able to key them through to species. Which in turn would lead me to the identity of the plant. Or I could just wait for the leaves to develop. 

Events transpired to provide the wasps before the leaves. A week ago today, I glanced at the potted galls to discover a veritable horde of wasps stomping up and down the length of the glass tube. Oooh, I'm a daddy! 

At this stage I just panicked and bunged a dozen or so into alcohol (hoping for both sexes in case the key required features from both) and let the rest escape into the clean air of Uig. 

After work today, I headed out with my binoculars intent on finding a Rose-coloured Starling. There's a bit of an epic invasion of these gorgeous birds into Britain at the moment with several being discovered up on Skye this week. I've always fancied finding one tagging along with the Starling flock down at Uig Pier, the only other local site that I believe is ideal are the sheep fields at Eyre. I visited both (finding Starlings but no pink ones), plus a few other sites inbetween, before heading off towards Bernisdale. A single Rose-coloured Starling turned up there a couple of years back and, although I'm not massively familiar with that part of Skye, I was in the mood for exploring so headed off with high hopes. I soon found myself passing Neil's mystery plants and, after a fruitless scan of the fields/fences and rooftops for a Pink Stink, checked the plants in question only to discover they were now in leaf. O-ho, guess what?

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a flippin' hawkweed isn't it! 

 

Feeling somewhat vindicated (ha!) I headed back to the wasps I collected and tried to suss them to species. I recently purchased the entire set of RES Keys to Hymenoptera, which cost a small fortune, but at least I have keys to every single hymenopteran out there. Or at least, the ones that were known to occur when the keys were published. Several of the keys are older than I am, nomenclature has altered, species have come and also probably gone. But it is what it is, I'm pretty confident the wasps are Cynipidae and of the genus Aulacidea (again, smug much...moi?)  

By reading between the lines I could narrow it almost to species without even glancing at the key. Not all Aulacidea gall hawkweeds, so that narrows it down. Some gall in the roots, others low down on the stems and others gall high up on the stems, as this one did. What it all comes down to, fundamentally, is the shape of the scutellar fovea and the number and length of dorsal lines that run down the length of the mesonotum. Here are the four options as shown in the RES key (itself dated 28th February 1963...)

 

A

B

C

D

Somehow these put me in mind of the facemask of The Predator, or maybe a Stormtrooper, but actually they are dorsal views of the thorax for four different species. I had my own thoughts as to which species had caused the galls, but here's my attempt to capture the same features by aiming my camera down the barrel of my microscope. It worked with limited success. I've removed the colour to make comparisons a bit simpler (but mostly to get rid of the awful chromatic aberrations!)

The important feature is the line above the two eyes on the mask, scutellar fovea (the pair of darkened depressions in the lower half of the thorax). Is it straight or is it curved, and if it isn't straight does it curve upwards or downwards. Clearly it is straight, which matches images C and D above. Then we need to check the shape of the fovea, are they like a square with slightly rounded corners (C) or are they wider at the top and with an indistinct area to the lower inner corner (D)?

Also, we need to pay attention to the dorsal lines running the length of the mesonotum itself. Image C has three basal dorsal lines which peter out before reaching the top edge and none coming down from the upper margin. Image D has five basal dorsal lines, of which the second and fourth ones reach the upper margin, and a pair at the top end which peter out before reaching the centre of the disc.

I'll add another couple of images to help you see what's going on, because one image alone isn't really very clear.

Hopefully you agree that it best matches image D. Image D is Aulacidea hieracii, which is what I suggested it would be a whole 19 weeks ago! Anyway, job done. All we need to do now is identify the hawkweed. I'll maybe leave that one to Stephen, he's the plant expert around these parts! 

Billy No Mates

So that's it all done now, I am bereft of visiting pan-species listers for the forseeable. Last weekend was spent in the company of fellow nature nutters Pete and Ali, this weekend it was Dave and Alan. Throw in generous helpings of local naturalists Stephen (plants), Nick (bryophytes) and Neil (inverts) and I think it's fair to say I've had a pretty epic couple of weekends this month! I now have a bit of catching up to do in order to get back on track with my work shifts. I worked nine days straight in order to take three consecutive days off for Pete and Ali. Now I have to work another seven or eight consecutive days to make up for the three days I took off for Dave and Alan. The good news is that I've left my holiday allowance untouched, so I should be able to get away for a decent break sometime in the autumn/winter period. 

Before Dave left this morning, we had another quick squint at lots of Hieracium growing on a vertical rock face. Dave spotted a neat cluster of Thyme Broomrape erupting through their host. I don't see this plant very often at all, maybe just three or four times in the last four years, so to find a whole group of them was pretty sweet. I think this is the only species of broomrape to occur on Skye, I'll have to check. Smart things anyway, in a strange kind of way. 

And then there was this leafy Hieracium ('leafy' because it has numerous leaves up the stem, as opposed to none/one/two cauline leaves, or maybe just a bract), the first such example we had seen this weekend. There are various possibilities involved, I shall come back to it when it's flowering in case I can actually get it to species. If not, I know a man who can. 

Dave did a double-take at a nearby rose, but it was only Sherard's Downy Rose, a common enough species up here. I then showed him a Glaucous Dog-rose. He seemed a tad unconvinced and decided to double-check it by running it through the key in Stace 4. Between us we determined that it was, in fact...a Glaucous Dog-rose! He's such a doubting Thomas, haha! But then it was a new plant for him, hence his caution to take me at my word. He's a very meticulous kind of chap. But it was good to run it through the key anyway, something I should do more often when it comes to things like roses. 

We'd cleaned up on most of Dave's target plant species, but he still needed Long-stalked Pondweed. Stephen had suggested the north end of Loch Flada as a good bet, and indeed that's precisely where I've seen it before. Dave had a grapnel and line, we were going fishing for pondweeds! 

Loch Flada was a no-go, the strong wind was pushing the waves too hard against the dam. We tried the shoreline but Dave's grapnel was too light to carry far, in fact the wind blew it back at us before it even hit the water! I tied a nearby stone to his line to provide extra weight, but we still failed to find anything of interest. 

I suggested we try the smaller (and hopefully more sheltered) loch by the Kilt Rock carpark. Bit more success achieved here, though it started raining almost as soon as we arrived. Here's Dave attempting to untangle his grapnel after a bit of an unfortunate first throw whereby he somehow hooked his own line instead of pondweeds 

And here he is reeling in his 'catch'

Sadly for us, all we found was Myriophyllum alterniflorum on each and every cast of the grapnel. We could see Bog Pondweed at the margins and found bits of washed up Perfoliate Pondweed, but no luck with the target species. Eventually we ran out of time, Dave simply had to hit the road southwards. It's been over six years since I last saw Dave, I told him in no uncertain terms not to leave it so long next time. I now have an open offer of a small botanical tour of Somerset next time in in that part of the world. Just hope it won't be in the depths of winter. 

Grasses in the Mist

The weather today was not great. Dave and Alan both needed to visit the Old Man of Storr to look for a couple of plants. Dave needed Poa glauca (Glaucous Meadow-grass) and Alan needed Alchemilla wichurae (Rock Lady's-mantle). Notice how I put the scientific names ahead of the vernaculars. This means I'm now a fully-fledged botanist. Or maybe it's just that I've been spending lots of time with proper botanists lately. 

Given that we arrived before 8am and that the wind was gusting the drizzling rain at something approaching 40mph, it wasn't a complete surprise to discover that we had the place entirely to ourselves. We walked through the gateway and began following the path upwards. 40mph drizzle hitting you sideways isn't actually too bad really, unless of course you were to leave the side pocket of your waterproof jacket unzipped, thus allowing the rain to work its way into your non-waterproof fleece resulting in a sodden fleece, jumper and t-shirt and a rather wet chest. But you'd have to be a complete numpty to do that, right?  *sigh*..... 

I've never walked along the Storr track before without passing somebody every ten seconds or so, and often much more frequently than that. Hence I've never really paid any attention to where I'm going on the first section of path, you just face the human chain coming back down the hill, walk against the flow, and that's that. But the path unexpectedly forked, and then just as unexpectedly forked again a few hundred metres later. I didn't remember there being any forks in the path, I'm always too busy chatting and not paying attention when I've been here previously. Visibility was down to about 200 metres. Ordinarily I'd just aim for the cliffs but today I couldn't even see them and I suddenly worried we might not be on the correct path. Keeping the wind to our left, I continued onwards and hoped I was leading us the right way. Much to my relief a familiar pond and gateway emerged through the gloom. Sweet! Dave and Alan followed on behind, each silently wrapped in their own thoughts as we marched upwards towards our target of Needle Rock. It was just too damn wet and windy to attempt any kind of conversation. 

Since my last visit to The Storr, which was in July of last year, they've constructed a brilliant stone stairway up the steep section. It's a really impressive bit of work too. No more slip sliding in the mud or destroying the ever-widening verges. Everybody neatly funnelled up one wide set of steps, habitat destruction to the surrounds effectively minimised and no danger of getting bogged in muck and mud any more. Here's a quick video of Dave walking up the steps. I asked him 'Are you having fun?' and he replied 'not so much', but you'll do well to catch much of that exchange over the noise of the wind.

Once we had gained more height the weather decided to deteriorate some more. Oh what joy. I couldn't see Needle Rock, even though it's absolutely bloody massive, but I knew which way it lay so we headed off. The visibility grew steadily worse, down to just a couple of hundred feet now. Suddenly I saw a vague outline in the sky - Needle Rock! We scudded our way across the slopes and took shelter in the leeward side. Holy shite, I'm so glad we hadn't attempted yesterday's Cuillin expedition today, I don't think we'd even have made it across the valley floor! 

We struck out along the base of the crag, fully expecting this to be a smash and grab affair. Somehow we spent over an hour scouring the ledges for our target grass and lady's mantle, but all to no avail. I decided to brave the exposed face and was hit by a wall of water being flung at me with very considerable force. The drizzle of our ascent had quite clearly changed into a ferocious downpour, it felt as though I was being water-cannoned. Clinging to the rock I Spidermanned my way around the base, being rewarded with a right proper soaking but still no sign of our target plants. After ten minutes of abuse, I worked my way back around to Dave and Alan to find them sheltering beneath an overhang and talking about birds of paradise - whaaaat??? C'mon chaps, at least play ball and help me search for your lifers! 

Figuring we needed to try elsewhere, I scurried across 150ft of open ground to check the base of another huge outcropping and quickly began to search the leeward face of that. Within just a couple of minutes I found what I suspected was Poa glauca. Quite a bit of it too with a few plants just coming into flower. I grabbed one stem and scurried back towards the chaps, now all but invisible to me behind curtains of windswept rain. Here's a few very poor images of the grass in question

I did warn you they were very poor images!

Alan wasn't fussed, he was happy to stay in his hideyhole. All he wanted the Alchemilla. Dave looked into the rain, steeled himself for the dash across open ground, and followed me to the Poa patch. Here he is taking photo's of the grass in question. And remember, this is the leeward side of the rock!

Our handlenses were too steamed up to look through. We didn't dare attempt to reach for the grasses book, it would be ruined in seconds. Dave took a stem to check indoors later. We returned to Alan and set off in search of his Alchemilla wichurae. Despite quite a bit of effort on my and Dave's part, Alan failed to convince himself that he was looking at the real deal, then casually mentioned that he wouldn't be able to tick it anyway seeing as nothing was in flower. He would simply try for it elsewhere later in the year. I won't call him an ingrate, but I wasn't massively impressed that he'd let us spend so much time comparing the hairiness, leaf sinus angles and a multitude of other minutiae on dozens of Alchemilla leaves, all in the lashing rain, when he knew he was never going to tick it anyway. It was about then that I realised I'd torn one arm of my waterproof jacket almost clean off around the shoulder seam, neatly explaining the cold, wet patch steadily spreading across my back. Meh. 

Thankfully, abortive Alchemilla quest over, we unanimously agreed that conditions were just too difficult to undertake further botany, so we carefully began our descent. Dave then almost immediately spotted two plants that screamed Poa glauca to both of us (we were now uncovinced by the first grass, but these two looked perfect). Happy that Dave had actually seen Poa glauca now, we continued down the trail. Quite incredibly, there were folks heading up the path as we headed back towards the carpark. One fella was wearing shorts and white trainers, another guy had one of those backpacks for carrying children in. I'm sure that he was keeping warm enough, boldly marching up the steep hill, but his small child must have been frozen/soaked/both in the open-fronted rucksack thingy. Quite why these people, and we must have passed at least thirty of them, were heading up the mountain in these conditions is a bit of a mystery to me. I guess they've come to Skye and The Storr is (quite rightly) very high on the bucketlist. But, naturalists and climbers aside, it can only be for the spectacular rock formations and stunning views, neither of which were even remotely visible today. I reckon visibility was down to not much more than 100ft at times and the wind almost blew me clean over several times, and I'm a pretty solid 200lb lump not a small child or petite lady! 

It just reinforces my view that all tourists are crazy. I mean, we had a rare grass to look at, which is a perfectly sane and entirely justifiable reason for heading up a mountain in storm force winds and driving rain. But tourists are just plain crazy, that's all I have to say.  

Alan is heading back to Basingstoke in Hampshire this afternoon. Dave is heading off back to Somerset around midday tomorrow. The rain has currently stopped and the wind strength has dropped away. I think we're going pondweed hunting in a loch tomorrow morning. We have a grapnel on a long bit of line, we have the BSBI guide to pondweeds, should be a giggle. 

The Rarest Plant I Have Ever Seen?

Today was a huge day. Dave Gibbs and Alan Lewis are up on Skye for a few days and have asked me to help them see a few choice target plants. Highest on their list is Alpine Rock-cress Arabis alpina, possibly the Holy Grail of high altitude plants on Skye. Closely followed by Iceland-purslane, in my opinion, though the rock-cress is far, far (far!) rarer. 

I had of course enlisted the help of a couple of botanical heavyweights, Stephen Bungard the BSBI Recorder for Skye who knew the precise location of The Arabis and, just as importantly, was willing to lead us to it, plus bryologist extraordinaire Nick Hodgetts. What these two men don't know about the plantlife of Skye just isn't worth knowing, it's that simple. Neil was with us too, he's just damned good fun to be around and has more energy than the rest of us put together. 

Botanising to the left, bryologising to the right

The Arabis, as it is generally known to discerning botanists, occurs in precisely four isolated spots in The Cuillins, a jagged spine of mountains in central Skye. Access is on foot, usually from some distance away, and whichever way you look the cliffs and scree slopes stare back at you as though they've noticed an intruder in their midst and are slowly debating what to do about it. There's a definite and distinct sense of foreboding, particularly as you lean on a boulder to catch your breath and stare ever upwards towards peaks lost in cloud. The cliffs make you feel small. The occasional falling rock, crash-bouncing its way down a scree slope in an echoing clatter is precisely the sort of thing that helps create an underlying sense of unease. We'd passed the Fairy Pools with associated daytripping tourists, now we were entering troll country and they seemed mischievious to my mind. 

Dave and Alan. This was the easiest part of the trail, almost level terrain in fact.  

The Arabis only occurs at height. We'd be heading into the cloudbase - and then some

The path fizzled out about here. Our goal was the distant peak in the centre of this image

Apart from the obvious risk of troll attack, this was a actually a very nice part of the world to explore. Alan is very into his bryophytes and he spent a lot of time poring over tiny green scuzz with Nick. As is usual, I soon found myself caught up in it all and was handed various tiny sprigs of greenery to examine with my handlens. I find bryophytes very difficult to get to grips with. In fact, I haven't gotten to grips with them at all! I can do a very select few, but Nick confidently names almost everything by eye and never ever forgets the name. Ever. Beneath a handens they are transformed, to realise that the square centimetre of greenery you're looking at consists of three or four different species, and then to have Nick name all six in it is just boggling. I think I'm happier just admiring them rather than trying and failing to name them, but somehow some of it has actually sunk in. 

The largest patch of Plagiobryum zierii Nick has ever seen in The Cuillins

There are at least four different species in there!

Wending our way ever uphill, we kept an eye open for montane plants. The Cuillins are relatively species-poor, Stephen said he'd only ever recorded a little over 100 species in this area, but that didn't mean we didn't find anything of interest.

Stone Bramble - several patches of these scattered at lower level

Mountain Sorrel - loads of this on the lower slopes

Neil found a tenanted fly mine in a leaf of Mountain Sorrel. Internet seaches suggest the culprit to be Pegomya solennis, but in truth it could easily be another Pegomya or a different genus altogether. I don't believe the leafmining websites are as comprehensive as they claim to be, I'd need to rear it through. Out of curiosity I chewed a leaf, not as strong a flavour as Common Sorrel but acceptable. Neil also found the best example of Puccinia violae of the day, which is a rust fungus specific to violets. Here's a pic of the underside of the violet leaf blade

Alpine Lady's-mantle was decidedly abundant on rock ledges and amongst the scree. I found a large clump still bearing last year's dead leaves and stems, which just happens to be the precise substrate for a rare microfungus. Here's the pics, note the raised black dots in the lower pic - they're the fungal fruitbodies.

Anthostomella alchemillae on last year's dead flowerhead and stem

Dave took a bit away with him to examine under the microscope when he was home again. Alan just patted me on the head and walked straight by without stopping, saying he "wasn't that sad". I decided right there and then that my gut instincts were spot on and he was, in fact, a bit of a jerk.

By now we were gaining height and our walk had become a bit of a scramble. I asked Stephen if we were in with a chance of Alpine Saw-wort and he replied that we definitely were and, all of one minute later, called that he had some! Amazingly, I realised that all fatigue had vanished as I sped up the scree to gawp at my first ever Alpine Saw-wort plants. 

Stephen explained that only a small proportion of  Alpine Saw-wort plants on Skye flower in any given year, and that we were still a bit early for them to be flowering anyway. And then he spotted one in full bud and surely only days away from flowering!

By now we were quite high up the valley and it was becoming quite an effort to make much headway as the terrain became increasingly steep and likely to slip away underfoot. 

Spectacular views now that the clouds had cleared!

It took us another hour or so to reach the area just below the skyline, but we arrived in high spirits and headed for the small overhang that The Arabis calls home. Neil and Dave were first ones to arrive, I couldn't hear any shouts of joy, but then I couldn't hear any upset swearing either. What was happening? I finally finished my traverse of the scree slope and found myself peering between heads and shoulders at a surprisingly robust-looking white-flowered plant. 

Fuckaduck - that's Alpine Rock-cress!!!!

We'd seen quite a bit of Northern Rock-cress on the way up, but this Alpine Rock-cress plant seemed overall more luxuriant and maybe a paler green colour too. Dave and Alan were thrilled that it was in flower and producing seed pods. Not many folks get a chance to view this plant, and some of those that do find they are too early and it's still in bud, or too late and it's gone to seed. We'd timed it pretty much perfectly - happy days! 

Stephen made it very clear that this plant was fully protected by law and we were not even allowed to touch it. He seemed pretty serious too. He also told us we were looking at the lowest altitude Alpine Rock-cress in Britain (and then that the highest altitude plant is about twenty metres higher, ha!) There was a thought that Victorian botanists had accidentally carried the seeds of this plant into the mountains on their boots after visiting the mountains of Europe, but no hard evidence exists to prove that. The four known sites all appear to be of native plants, though this colony and the fourth are some distance away from the other two. I actually have no idea how such tiny, isolated populations remain viable.

As he does each time he visits an Alpine Rock-cress site, Stephen counted the basal rosettes (approx 50 in this patch) and took lots of photos of the plant and its immediate surroundings. We were sworn to secrecy regards the exact location of this plant, so if you were hoping to tap me for gen, I'm sorry but that's just not happening. Neil will probably tell you though if you buy him a sweetie. 

I hate to say it, but I think Nick is looking at a moss and not at The Arabis!!!!!!!

We decided it was time for a lunch stop, I'm not sure how many folks have sat within six foot of this crippling rarity whilst casually swilling Lucozade and wolfing down a veggie pasty, but I certainly did. I almost threw my apple core away, before thinking better of it and eating it whole. I would hate to think future botanists would be confronted with an apple tree up here, and who even knows what the trolls would think of it all. 

Dave getting about as close as we were allowed to The Arabis

The descent was long and quite hard work on my knee, which traditionally gives me grief on long downhill slogs. An old war wound, so to speak, but it's not annoying enough to slow me down. All the same, it was a relief to get off the rocks and just walk normally again!

I cannot thank Stephen enough for agreeing to guide us up the mountains to see this amazing rarity. This year I had determined to fill a few gaps in my montane plants list. Beinn Edra last week provided me with Sibbaldia, Three-flowered Rush, Dwarf Willow, Chickweed Willowherb, Dwarf Cudweed, Spiked Wood-rush and Iceland-purslane. Today I have also added Alpine Saw-wort and Alpine Rock-cress. By no means is that a clean sweep of the plants I still need to see, but it's a damned fine start! 

Oh, and tomorrow I'm dragging my poor knee up the Old Man of Storr so Dave and Alan can find a few more target plants. I'm going to need some time off after my time off.......

Fish Porn!

With a title like that I'm anticipating a huge surge in page views, maybe even into double figures if I'm lucky...

To continue on from the previous post, Ali and Pete were here for their second full day on Skye and Neil had agreed to join us for a second dose of natural history madness. Our targets today were to enter the otherworldly Spar Cave  located at the far end of the Elgol road, and to then work our way back northwards stopping off at various sites of interest including the sole known breeding grounds on Skye of the Brook Lamprey, an eel-like fish with a sucker for a mouth. 

We met Neil and his better half Debs at Elgol and wasted no time heading off for the cave. The route is across a field, down a steep track through trees, across the bottom of a boulder-strewn canyon, around a headland via large boulders exposed at low tide, then along narrow ledges until reaching the inlet with Spar Cave at the far end. It's great fun traversing the ledges, fingertips gripping whatever you can find whilst shuffling your feet along narrow ledges. Knowing that Ali probably wasn't going to enjoy the ledges, I decided to wade welly deep through the water-filled inlet and guide him along in case he got stuck (to be fair, if he fell it would only be a few feet into water a foot deep. I was just feeling heroic, I guess). Anyway, Ali was perfectly fine and I got an entire welly full of seawater seeing as the water was deeper than I thought. Arse. But soon we were at the cave entrance. Turns out neither Ali or Pete had thought to bring a torch (...!) luckily I'd brought three for just such an eventuality. Into the gloom we went.

I didn't actually take any pics of Spar Cave, so I've nabbed some off the internet for you to look at instead. They're better than any I would have taken anyway, though in real life it's far more impressive altogether, what with the water dripping everywhere and the huge weight of rock poised overhead, flowstone formations under your feet and the coldness you feel as soon as you're more than about a hundred feet in. If you get the opportunity to visit Spar Cave - do it! Just check the tides first.

Flowstone staircase heading up and up and up....

Some randomer at bottom of first flowstone staircase

Very cold pool beyond second flowstone staircase. Folks swim in this!

Over-dressed randomer attempting a hero stance

We did see a couple of very small critters skittering about in a pool, and a solitary Cave Spider on a wall, but essentially it is a lifeless - if pretty damned cool - kind of place and we didn't fancy being caught out by the incoming tide, so we headed for the open air once more to find that Neil had found a few choice bits 'n bobs in the rockpools below. 

Meta menardi - one of the Cave Spiders and really quite sizeable too

We quickly joined Neil standing knee-deep in the rockpools and amassed a small but varied selection of weird creatures. Plenty of Broad-clawed Porcelain Crabs, a handful of fish, various seaweeds, many small molluscs and lots of different sponges, including this one which I think looks a bit like a squashed purse

Grantia compressa aka the Compressed Purse Sponge

Neil decided to take the bull by the horns, or rather the prawn by the tail

Palaemon serratus aka the Common Prawn - and a monster-sized one at that!

Potentially the best find of the day was discovered as Neil overturned a large slab of submerged rock and found three sea slugs gathered in the middle of a mass of fish eggs. Two were quickly potted (sadly I don't think any of us took pics of them in situ on top of the fish eggs) and passed around to be admired. This was Pete's first sea slug, I feel he was slightly underwhelmed by their lack of gaudy frills and rainbow colours, but they were pretty cool nonetheless. I took some seriously crap shots, so I've "borrowed" a couple of Neil's pics. Ahem....

These delightful little creatures are a species of Calma. We didn't know that at the time, Neil later put these pics up on a FB group and I did a bit of internet trawling that night. Happily we came up with the same answer - Calma gobioophaga, which translates as 'goby egg eater' coz yep, those fish eggs they were swimming across is what they eat! I had no idea that sea slugs ate fish eggs, but these do. In the bottom image you can see that the eyes are slightly ahead of the second pair of 'tentacles' (actually rhinophores) which is at odds with the two species of Calma known to occur in Britain. See this link for details. Eventually, a European expert came to the rescue and told us that sometimes the eyes can be ahead of the rhinophores in Calma gobioophaga, mystery solved and a very decent new 'dot' on the distribution map has been made. Skye is substantially further north than any previous British records for this species. Neil and Ali have been asked to formally submit the record and their images are likely to grace the cover of a certain marine mollusca magazine sometime soon! Fame, fortune and glory shall be theirs! 

We pottered about for a while as the tide slowly came back in. A young couple were still making their way into the cave and half an hour later they rounded the corner and back into view. He was wet up to his waist and she didn't look madly happy, I think he piggy-backed her out of the cave. Kids nowadays. 

We had a quick lunch break on the midge free rocks, Ali swept a male Eristalinus aeneus, a hoverfly with very spotty and partially hairy eyes which was a lifer for me. True to form, I took a barrage of crap shots. 

I spotted this lichen on a coastal rock, which looks to me like Caloplaca flavovirescens, but Ali thinks it's more likely to be Caloplaca crenulatella. To be fair, Ali knows a lot more about lichens than I do, so he's probably right. Any takers out there?

Caloplacaflacca oojiwotsit

Quitting Spar Cave and the Elgol area, we headed northwards and stopped at a small pond where I remembered finding a pondweed that Stephen named. We saw the pondweed, and that night I asked Stephen if he could remember which one it was. He could, and named it a second time for me - Red Pondweed Potomageton alpinus. Yep, that sounded right and was new to the guys. 

It was at this point that I realised I was sharing the back of Pete's car with a horsefly. I potted it up, fully expecting it to be the ubiquitous Haematopota pluvialis. But in fact it was a female Haematopota crassicornis, which would have been a lifer for Pete and Ali had they bothered to turn around and look at it - but they didn't. Lifer for me though! I also potted a male Northern Blackbottle Protophormia terraenovae from the same back seat of Pete's car. Not a lifer, but only the second I've seen this year.  

We stopped beside a small stream running into Loch Cill Chriosd and quickly walked down the bank, scanning the shallow water for movement. "There's some!" I yelled as I caught sight of thrashing silver bodies between stones. Brook Lampreys spawning, fantastic! They were a lifer for Ali, Pete and Neil,  I'd already seen two at this exact same spot just a week or so back, I was very relieved that they were still present for the guys to admire too. Eventually, I thought 'sod it, I'm going in', and carefully waded across the stream for a closer look. I think it was probably worth it...

Arse end of spawning Brook Lampreys. But I can better that...

They're very short clips, and I can only apologise for the awful voice-overs, but I'm quite pleased with my first attempt at filming spawning lampreys. I had no idea the camera would record our voices whilst I held it underwater, I'm quite impressed with that. 

As I was clambering out of the stream bed, I noticed a freshly emerged Golden-ringed Dragonfly sat by my foot. This was a new species for Ali and he was quite keen for a closer look. Can't say I blame him, they're amazing creatures when you see one up close.

A teneral individual - check the still milky eyes

The eyes will darken up and the wings fully harden once the insect has been adult for a few more hours. I didn't see the excuviae it had crawled from, but presumably it wasn't too far away. 

Just across the road from the stream is a small patch of woodland. I asked Neil if he remembered whereabouts the Mountain Avens grew and he replied, "och aye, just over in the thingme" which is a pretty poor impression of how he actually talks, the important thing was that he knew where they were and both Pete and Ali were uber keen to see it. Two minutes later....

It's a pretty enough flower, but to my mind I think it's at its very best when in seed. It has extensive, shaggy pappus which gives it a really distinctive fluffy look. It was whilst it was in this stage that I first encountered the plant. Right here with Neil, in fact. 

We had to be back for our pre-booked evening meal, so bade farewell to Neil and Debs and slammed northwards. But not before I talked the boys into a quick pitstop at Sligachan for a couple of very decent plants. First up was a mini-twitch all of about 100ft to see Whorled Caraway poking up through streamside Heather. Just one plant was visible, and sadly not in flower yet, but nice to see and a lifer for Ali. Then we hit the moorland in search of a certain lochan I'd visited once before. 

Less than five minutes later we had to stop for Ali to lifetick Mountain Everlasting before continuing on in search of water. I wasn't sure how many new plants the guys had racked up so far during the trip, but it seemed quite a few. Pete had set himself a target of yearlisting more species of plant than was on his entire British plantlist when he first totalled up his PSL in 2017. His target was to beat 819 species, Mountain Everlasting was one nearer that tally so he too was pleased to see it. Not as pleased as Ali, who was distinctly punch-drunk with lifer overload!

After a couple of false starts, I finally found the lochan in question and started scanning the bottom for rare aquatic plants. They may not look much at the moment, give it another month and they'll look a lot better when in flower, but these are Water Lobelia with it's strap-shaped leaves and Pipewort with it's sharp poiny-looking basal rosette. 

Pipewort is a ridiculously scarce plant in Europe, occurring in the southern half of Skye, the western tip of Ardnamurchan and on Coll. It also occurs on the west coast of Ireland, and that's it. It's main distribution lies in North America, I don't know how or why it occurs in The Hebrides and Ireland but Sligachan is a reliable site for it. Pete even found one of last years' stems floating about in the lochan. We coud hear a distant Greenshank calling from an area of bog, a nesting bird here, and Ali ticked his second dragonfly species of the day - this time a Four-spotted Chaser. Again, not something you're likely to find in Fife though common enough on Skye. 

We hurried back for our meal, another excellent day safely under our belts. 

The Pipewort lochan

Pete (foreground) and some dodgy fella holding his sweep net upside down (pic by Ali)