Today was absolutely stunningly beautiful, clear blue skies and not a breath of wind. It's not often that the weather on Skye is fabulous, but when it is advantages need to be taken. I had a quick ponder and figured now was the ideal time to ascend the Old Man of Storr in search of a rare caterpillar.
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| Is it ok to say 'epic'? |
Somewhere around 60 million years ago, back when I were a lad, Skye was wracked by volcanic explosions and huge lava flows. At this site, the lava solidified into very hard rock, far heavier and harder than the rock beneath it. Eventually the softer rock could take no more and a huge landslide occurred, I'm talking many millions of tonnes along several miles of ridge. Some parts remained essentially upright whilst the landscape around them slid away, two such survivors are the Old Man and Needle Rock. Needle Rock was my search area for today's target species. Well, two species in fact. See that pointy little rock at the far right of the image above. The 'small' one...
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| Needle Rock. It just keeps getting bigger the closer you are to it |
Please do a Google Image search for Needle Rock (also sometimes called Cathedral Rock) and the Old Man of Storr. My pics are crap, you'll be blown away by some of the images that are online. And even more blown away if you ever come up here and see them for yourself. Talking of blown away, I was definitely huffing and puffing on the way up. I actually sat down for a rest twice! I definitely need to up my fitness levels this year.
Much of the path that leads around Needle Rock is roped off, specifically to reduce footfall and erosion of the surrounding area. So it was inevitable that a ranger would call up to me to "Hello you, please come down off the rock and return to the path"... sigh... I waved a couple of times but in the end he came up to me to see what I was up to. He may be a ranger, but that doesn't mean a whole lot of anything up here in Scotland where the access rights are as liberal as just about anywhere in the world. He knows he's powerless to force or insist that somebody gets off Needle Rock, he just has to hope that the person he's talking to doesn't know it too. Sadly for him, I did. I explained that I was surveying for a rare moth, showed him some images of the caterpillar plus its foodplant and in the end we had a good old natter. Shaking my hand, he apologised for "just doing his job" and wished me happy hunting. I continued my search, hoping it would indeed get happier because I hadn't seen any caterpillars yet.
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| Purple Saxifrage is just about coming into flower |
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| Four small cushions of Northern Rock-cress, this being my target plant |
As a bit of background regards the history of this moth in Britain, one single specimen was collected from Benn Eighe (approximately 35 miles across the sea from the Old Man of Storr) in 1954 and that was it until 2009 when more were found at the same place. It was during this 2009 search that, for the very first time (!), it was discovered that Northern Rock-cress was the moth's foodplant. Skye is known to hold healthy populations of Northern Rock-cress so, during 2009 and 2010, various sites along the Trotternish Ridge (including the Old Man of Storr) were searched and the moth duly found at most of them! Since then, it's been found on Mull and one other mainland site. Although sometimes locally frequent, Plutella haasi remains an incredibly scarce find in Britain. This was my first attempt to locate it for myself.
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| Most plants were very small. The remainder were tiny. |
After examining maybe 30 or 40 tiny Northern Rock-cress plants through my handlens, I suddenly found myself looking at one that had fine webbing strewn throughout the basal half. Oooh blimey, Plutella haasi caterpillars spin silken webbing in Northern Rock-cress plants... Being ever so careful, I began an intimate examination of the plant, following the webbing down to the base and then back up again until suddenly I saw a shape through the leaves. A caterpillar-shaped shape, in fact! Brace yourself for some appalling pics.
The image below is taken from the UKMoths page for Plutella haasi. I've included it so you have an idea what you're looking for in my rubbishy pics!
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My rubbishy pics now follow. Best of luck!
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| It was 'just a tad' awkward to see, no matter how many angles I tried |
Just for context, the thicket of leaves and stems that this Plutella haasi larva is hiding in measures approximately 1cm across. Here's a pic of the entire plant being held between my thumb and forefinger. The caterpillar is fully visible, helpfully highlighted by an arrow in the lower image.
I was very careful not to accidentally uproot any Northern Rock-cress and especially careful with this particular plant. Happily my fat fingers were up to the task and no plants, caterpillars or anything else was hurt in the making of this blogpost. Apart from some moss that I knocked off a ledge, my bad. The trek back down to the carpark was an absolute joy compared to the sweaty slog up. Once back at the bottom, I found a staff member with a walkie talkie and asked if she could relay a message to Jordan for me (the warden I met earlier). She agreed and I said "let him know that the fella clambering on the rocks found the moth and it was lovely to meet him". Hopefully, if he finds me wandering off-piste again he'll not try to give me a hard time about it.
I've let the new County Moth Recorder know the good news. I've also let Ghostie know because he's massively into moths and (far more importantly) he still needs it. If he ever gets his arse back to Skye I could potentially be talked into sweating my way back up the damn mountainside once more to show it to him. To be fair, I couldn't find any Rock Lady's-mantle today, it too being a very rare species, so a return trip could be in order anyway. Poa glauca and Poa alpina are up there too. And Iceland Purslane. And....
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