Eagle-eyed

I've just returned from an overnighter to Cairngorm, followed by a visit to Sleat in the southern part of Skye on the way back. The night drive onto the mainland was productive, with a Pine Marten a few miles before the Skye Bridge and a Badger scampering across the road close enough to make me hit the brakes just a few miles after the bridge. Throw in the usual Red Deer and Roe Deer, plus a few unidentified bats, and it was quite the mammalfest! Somehow I've yet to see a Wood Mouse this year, they are usually easy to see leaping across the roads of a night but I've blanked thus far. 

Cairngorm itself was crowded so I restricted myself to the Coire na Ciste ridge, which is probably my favourite area anyway. I bimbled upwards for a while, saw some nice stuff, then bimbled back down again in the pouring rain. Luckily I had brought my waterproof gear with me. Annoyingly I'd left it in the car far below. 

The Coire na Ciste ridge path

I found a lovely little pool that I've always walked past without noticing before and stumbled into a cushion of Trailing Azalea just coming into flower. 

 

Several dead frogs in here, I'm surprised they're up this high! 

Plant highlights were the Trailing Azalea, Interrupted Clubmoss and Three-leaved Rush. No sign of Dwarf Cornel or Sheathed Sedge yet, I guess it must be too early for the shoots to appear. 

Interrupted Clubmoss is locally common amongst the dwarf shrub layer

Fir Clubmoss looking like a Phoenix emerging from the ashes!

Skye was drenched in sunlight upon my return, hence the decision to visit Sleat in search of inverts. I found my first Green Hairstreak and Speckled Woods of the year. Migrant birds were in good voice with three singing Whinchats being the passerine highlight. But I almost fell over backwards as a pair of Golden Eagles appeared from over a ridge and decided to circle directly above me for several minutes! I don't mean to sound flippant, but I live on Skye and therefore I see both eagle species more often than most folks probably do. But I'm confident that I've never before seen Golden Eagles as well, or as low, or for so long, as I have today. And I mean ever.

It's looking vertically downwards - straight at me!!!!

The younger bird seemed to be showing a great deal of interest in me. I don't know what caught its attention, but it wheeled directly overhead for a good length of time, sometimes joined by the older bird whereupon they would wheel higher and wider, but then breaking off and almost inevitably returning to fly directly over me once more. Maybe it was simply curious. Maybe it was hungry. Maybe it had never seen a grown man sitting in the grass laughing to himself in amazement. None of my images show the uppertail pattern of the young bird, but judging by the extent of white at the base of the tail feathers and the lack of moulted flight feathers I think it must be last year's bird with one of its parents.

These huge birds soared in tandem across the hillsides, across the heather-clad slope that I sat on, across the woodland and then, after about ten minutes, slowly drifted over a hill and were gone. What an incredible experience. Living this far north does admittedly come with a few disadvantages, but bloody hell you folks in the south can keep your egrets, parakeets, woodpeckers and whatnot. I'll happily make do with crippling views of giant raptors, thank you very much.  

A Hairy Situation

Work is pretty full-on at the moment, but I successfully retained my two days off last week and promptly hit the mainland for an overnight adventure. I had gen for a small plant that I've been quietly hoping to encounter someday. Last Tuesday was that day.

There are at least 13 of the plants in question on view here

Those who know me will be aware of my penchant for small things. "Fluff, dust and grit" to quote one well-known 'super-naturalist'. The plant I had travelled here to see was Hairy Whitlowgrass Erophila majuscula; there's one sat at the end of the pen in the piccie above. And for those who enjoy a Where's Wally-type challenge, there are at least another dozen hiding in plain view. It's the sort of plant that is easily overlooked and ordinarily takes a bit of searching for. The fact that I had a ten-figure grid reference was definitely something of a bonus. The fact that the gen was a mere four days old obviously also helped because there's nothing worse than chasing a plant record only to discover that the site was turned into a housing estate twenty years earlier. Well I say that, continuing to futilely search in aforementioned housing estate whilst being circled by the local yoof on bikes is definitely worse. Luckily I've only had that happen to me once (turns out that hunting residential streets for Italian Toadflax in Glasgow can be a bit meh when the school holidays are on. Who knew...) 

I'm now going to bombard you with images of Hairy Whitlowgrass. The forked hairs are pretty cool to look at beneath a microscope, but the plants themselves are a lot cooler so here, enjoy! 

It's a pretty little thing, isn't it? You can see that despite the early season, some are starting to go to seed already. These tiny annuals have a rapid life cycle, appearing and then disappearing once more within a matter of months. I spent quite a while admiring these plants through my handlens and was thankful that nobody spotted me, I must have looked a right weirdo with my face pressed to the ground and my arse in the air! Well ok, guilty as charged.

I didn't count them, but at a very rough guestimate there were several hundreds of Hairy Whitlowgrass plants in an area of several square metres. Maybe even a few thousand. I'm glad I arrived at what may well be their peak flowering period, a very small but spectacular display indeed!

I took a wander and found a couple of colonies of Slave-maker Ants Formica sanguinea alongside their 'slaves' Formica lemani. Lots of Common Wintergreen present too which, despite its name, I don't find very commonly at all. 

Half a mile away sat a patch of forest that I've never explored before. A roadside sign showed an image of a Red Squirrel, a species I haven't seen so far this year. I came away afterwards still needing Red Squirrel for the yearlist, but it was a lovely walk through some very scenic forestry. I'll visit again in warmer weather, I expect there's all sorts of interesting insects just waiting to be found.

On my way back to Skye I took the road down to Fort Augustus rather than through Inverness. It's a slower road and one I rarely take, but on this occasion my choice was a fortuitous one. I rounded a bend and came face to face with a pair of Feral Goats on the verge. I slammed into a nearby layby and walked back up the road. No sign of them, damnit. I soon found them a short way into the trees and managed a couple of pics. 

Some serious sets of horns on these beasts! 

Yesterday I had great fun setting up a scaffold tower. It didn't come with instructions and so it may yet collapse into a big pile of poles, though hopefully not whilst I'm up on top of it! Now that the good weather has arrived I can finally properly tackle the large walls of the hotel. The frontage hasn't been painted since it was built twelve years ago and the moss has really taken a hold on the exposed render. Much scraping, wire brushing and fungicidal application was required, tomorrow will be the turn of the stabilising solution and then I can start throwing paint up the walls. The other apex is in an even worse state of affairs. This was my top floor office this morning, in absolutely stunning weather.

And then a crofter decided to set fire to a nearby hillside. The hotel was engulfed in a hazy smoke that made my eyes sting, forcing me off the scaffold and seeing all windows and doors closed before the smoke alarms went off.

Kinda pretty. In a smelly, eye-watering kind of way....

The view from a mile away. The hotel is inside the circled area. Honestly.

Muirburn season on Skye is over. Traditionally it used to end on 15th April (with exceptions being allowed until 30th April with the landowner's permission and a good reason for lateness) but new legislation says that muirburns have to be held before 31st March in order to protect ground-dwelling animals and ground-nesting birds. I've notified the local RSPB group, who apparently have an app to log such things. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Hen Harriers nest up here, the week before May is not the time to be setting fire to their breeding areas. 

The other end of the loch yesterday. This muirburn was also reported to the RSPB

By and large, I find Skye crofters to be a friendly bunch of hardworking people. As individuals they are not inherently arseholes. But as a profession they do leave an awful lot to be desired. Nothing will come of these burns, I can almost guarantee that. Hopefully the winged inverts fled the flames, the ground-nesting birds didn't have chicks in the nest and anything else either ran away or found safety underground. My accommodation still smells of smoke, I still smell of smoke, but at least I wasn't burned alive just so domesticated livestock have fresh shoots to eat this summer. 

Wetter than an Otter's Pocket

The hotel reopened today, meaning I'm back on a fixed rota from now until the middle of October. My allocated days off each week are Wednesday and Thursday and so, what this being a Wednesday, I absented myself from proceedings and headed out into the rain. The other (note singular not plural) member of daytime staff messaged me a while later, "Morning, have we slept in?" to which I replied "Check the rota you wrote, I'm off for the next two days. Have funtimes." At that very second, and not a moment before, I knew the penny would have finally dropped in her head. Shit, I'm on my own and we don't have any more staff - panic!! Hey ho, it's not like I haven't mentioned this before once or twice...

At that precise moment in time I was about fifty miles away at a lovely place called Kilmarie, situated most way down the Elgol road. If you don't know the Elgol road, this classic video (of some other guy, it's not me) is definitely worth watching. The last minute or so is the best bit.

I was sat in my car re-checking the weather forecast and wondering how it had changed so drastically in the hour or so since I'd set off. A bit of mid-morning drizzle had seemingly morphed into wall-to-wall solid rain, talk about instant karma. I glanced at my butterfly net on the backseat, laughed to myself, and donned waterproofs.  

The woodland tracks were essentially deep mud, so I cut through the trees instead and followed the river towards the sea. There's a lone Yellow Azalea in the middle of these woods, I found it during a botany walk in 2019 and it remains the sole record in the vice county (apart from a planted one from 2013), so I thought I ought to pop over and say hello just to get it on my Skye Yearlist. I actually walked past it on the way in, but found it as I was heading out again afterwards. It's just coming into bud, but there were several of last year's aborted buds showing a heavy infestation of Seifertia azaleae, otherwise known as Rhododendron Budblast

Rhododendron Budblast blasting an Azalea bud

It's nice to see this fungus fruiting, ordinarily all I see are the black bristles. Definitely alive and hence definitely countable for my Big Yearlist. Common knowledge will have you believe that it is the action of Rhododendron Leafhoppers piercing the unopened buds which acts as the vector for spreading Seifertia fungus. Which may be true in some areas. But Skye has no Rhododendron Leafhoppers. iRecord shows just a single (questionable, I would say) Scottish record, all others are from south of Yorkshire. Clearly there's more to the story than it being caused by hoppers.

My Skye Yearlist currently stands at 878 species and the target is 1500 species. The thought process behind having a Skye yearlist is that it will keep me active locally, rather than just constantly working and then shooting off to the mainland on my days off. We'll see how it pans out as the year progresses. 

Invert activity in the woods was low, apart from Tree Slugs and Balea sarsii which were both seen in abundance. I did manage a passable piccie of what is surely Skye's commonest barkfly. Incredible to think that it's a South American species first found in Europe a mere eleven years ago (see this paper) and yet is now ubiquitous here on Skye, even coming indoors on occasion. 

Chilenocaecilius ornatipennis

A small moth flew up at my feet and pitched into the undergrowth. It looked like a pale Argyresthia species, but once it was in the pot I could see it for what it actually was.

Plutella xylostella the Diamondback Moth

Bob, the Skye bird recorder, runs a moth trap in his garden. He had several of these in his trap this morning. They are a migrant from southern climes, possibly directly out of Africa in the case of these individuals. Small Mottled Willow is also turning up all over the place recently, again on the back of the southerly winds from Africa. Quite incredible really. 

By the time I'd wandered back towards the car I was pretty wet. But even with fogged up windows I managed the Elgol road back to Broadford without mishap. Maybe the guy in the video should think about getting some proper tyres fitted rather than those low-profile jobbies he had. I'm not sure what tomorrow's plans are yet, but they won't include being at work.

In other news, there have been no further sightings of yesterday's Orca pod. In fact it seems that I was the very last person to see them. I've been advised today that it's a fundamental belief of all pan-species naturalists that all species are equally important. But Killer Whale is more equal than others! 

Can't say I disagree.

I have this playing in the background. If it doesn't get your feet tapping and your head bobbing there's something not quite right with you is all I can say. As always, hope you enjoy!

 

Orca

I've been busy at work today, hence I didn't really look at my phone until about half five which is when I knocked off for the day. Seventeen new messages on the local cetacean WhatsApp group...wow, that never happens! I opened the chat - two Orca at the top end of Skye at 4pm. A map of where they were at midday, this coming after the 4pm message. Odd. Yep, definitely seven of them...WTF?!?!! I skimmed down to the most recent message, which was from two minutes earlier "I'm at Flodigarry...they're heading north again. Got very clear view. At least 7" from none other than Yorkshire Sylvia. Knowing Sylvia can be a little...obtuse...sometimes, I immediately decided to clarify. "Just finished work and seen all this - wow! Sylvia, are you onto 7 Orca right now? From Flod?" and she instantly replied with a thumbs up. Blimey, this was happening in real time. She was watching seven Orca right now. From me to Flodigarry is, according to Google maps, 1hr and 4 mins. I did it in 43 minutes, and that included pulling into a shop for sandwiches, a pack of Doritos, a Mars Bar and a Red Bull. Well, I hadn't eaten since breakfast...

I found myself on a hilltop overlooking Flodigarry Island, but without any sign of the Orca. That familiar sinking feeling came over me once again. Why can't I ever connect with these beasts? I scrolled back through the previous messages and suddenly realised one said that they were heading northwards. Hmmm, that's basically the open sea, next stop Stornoway. I used to work at Flodigarry a while back, so I know the area fairly well. There's an old WWII radar station, just a shell of a building nowadays, that sits on a headland giving fine views across the sea looking northwards. It's just a couple of miles from Flodigarry, a little north of it too. I aimed for that.

I arrived to find none other than Rigell (local cetacean nutjob) and his girlfriend, who's name I don't know, stood at the clifftop. He had his drone out with the telephoto lens deployed, scanning for the Orca. He gave up in the end, said that he'd seen them from Flodigarry an hour earlier but that they had been heading very far out until even Sylvia's spotting scope couldn't pick them up, which is when he'd redeployed to the radar station. Great minds and all that..

After about 15 minutes they left, but a young Italian tourist arrived, closely followed by a couple of local guys. We scanned the sea for a few minutes before I decided to grab my scope from the car. Using the building as a windbreak, I began intently scanning the sea to the north. After about three minutes I thought I glimpsed a tall black fin, absolutely miles out. Had I imagined it? I locked on to the patch of sea in question and just stared. BOOM - three black shapes broke the surface and, with a bit of a splash, disappeared once more. A single second of viewing time - but holy crap, surely those were Orca?? Still locked onto same patch of sea, a huge upright black dorsal fin attached to a black and white body suddenly rose into view with a very forceful blow - ORCA!!!!!! "I've got them! I've got the Orca! I've got them in my scope!" I yelled, possibly with a f-word thrown in, I can't honesty recall. I slammed my eye back to the scope and watched as more and more fins and backs appeared in my view, definitely five in sight at the same time. Incredible!

By now the other three guys were standing beside me, obviously all keen to have a peer through the scope. The first guy had a look but couldn't see anything for ages. I began with "they're really small. Well no, I mean obviously they're big, but they're far away so they look really small" which caused his mate to burst out laughing, whereupon we re-enacted the Father Ted scene with the small vs far away cows. The Italian lad looked both worried and confused, I'm guessing that Father Ted isn't exactly mainstream on Italian TV.

Using a distant fishing boat as a marker, and the different bands of colour of the sea itself to guide him, I explained whereabouts he should be looking and suddenly he exclaimed "I see them! I see them!" which is when his mate basically pushed him out of the way so he could have a peer too. The second guy got onto them straight away and watched for a short while. The Italian lad seemed a little hesitant to use the scope, but I insisted and pretty soon he too was watching them and his huge smile was just awesome to see. The first two guys were locals on the WhatsApp group, but the young guy was a tourist who had seen people standing on the hilltop and simply wondered what was going on.  

After a few minutes of the guys taking turns to look through my scope, they eventually stood back and I reclaimed it for myself and settled down for some proper viewing. And what a treat! There were definitely three larger animals, the fin on the bull was just ridiculously tall, like a black isosceles triangle and the pale saddle was easy to see on him. The smaller Orca didn't seem to ride as high in the water when they surfaced, it wasn't as easy to see their saddle markings. The white face patch was clearly apparent on the larger animals as they surfaced with a surprisingly forceful blow, a high white plume that was very visible even at such a distance. A few times I saw one do a kind of half-lob breach and on just one occasion I saw one leap. The group milled around in much the same vicinity for most of the time I watched them, before they began to swim more purposefully eastwards, spending far less time at the surface and without any splashing. In fact, they were quite difficult to follow and, after accidentally knocking my scope, I failed to relocate them. 

By now a crofter was trying to park his tractor inside the derelict building and my car was in his way. At the same time, three young Highland Cattle arrived to be fed and had a little panic as I opened my car door, scattering in all directions. I figured it was as good a time as any to quit, I had finally managed to chase down Orca, and not the expected John Coe and Aquarius duo. I don't know where this particular Orca pod came from, presumably one of the Irish/Icelandic family units? What I do know is that they were utterly awesome and worth every second of the long wait I've endured before seeing them. Magical! 

Listing

Of late I find myself listing. Listing as in a ship that's been loaded up by morons and now carries a dangerously uneven cargo. Listing. My enthusiasm is not high, my output is also not high. It's a combination of several things, but certainly the absurdity of how my workplace is 'managed' is right up there. Three days until the hotel reopens and we are a staff of four. The shifts start at 7:15am and they finish anytime between 10 and 11pm, seven days per week. It's just fucking ridiculous. I've been saying for months - literally for months - to be proactive, to get organised, to plan ahead, to find staff well in advance, to definitely not leave anything to the last minute. This could so easily and simply been dealt with, but no. Fuckwits. It's very clear to me now that I've been dealing with cretins. It is what it is, I have no further fucks to give. I apologise for dropping the f-bomb, it just feels eminently suitable. And the fuck am I working split shifts seven days per week, it wasn't me who led us into this mess.

Ok, I feel a bit better having sounded off. Shall we tackle some nature stuff now, seeing as that's why we're all here?

My Big Year has slowed down lately but it certainly hasn't stopped. The yearlist stood at 997 species yesterday. Today, despite the lashing rain and ferocious gusts of wind, I headed out to add the missing three additions. Did I find them? First of all, let's do some catching up since the last blogpost (bless me father for it has been ten days since my last confession blog...)

This was how Skye looked three days after I wrote that 'winter had passed' in my last blogpost. In hindsight, it was a bit of an idiotic thing to tempt Fate with.

Glen Sligachan - Red Cuillin to the left and Black Cuillin to the right

The snow only lasted a couple of days here at lower levels, though The Cuillins themselves endured more snow and are still entirely covered. We had a little bit more snow yesterday, coinciding nicely with my first Swallow of the Spring

This from the Skye Birds website (SG is me)

I've had a handful of Sand Martins, the Swallow above and a single Chiffchaff. Plus quite a few LBBGulls and plenty of passage Black-headed Gulls, Meadow Pipits and alba wagtails. Siskins are suddenly here too, but I've yet to see my first Linnet, Redpoll or Wheatear of the year. The Whooper Swans have gone, all headed back across to Iceland and we've had by far the largest numbers of Redwings and Fieldfares of the winter pass through over the last few days. We had one day of heavy Pink-foot northbound passage, my largest count was of three skeins totalling 250 overhead, but the goose floodgates have yet to open. There have been no butterfly sightings at all and the moth trappers have had very poor rewards. However...

Wingless female Rannoch Brindled Belly-button Fluff

Winged male Rannoch Brindled Beauty

In a bizarre few minutes, I'd messaged Bob, a moth trapper on Sleat, asking him to notify me once he'd started catching Rannoch Brindled Beauty in his trap, and that it surely wouldn't be long now. An entire THREE minutes later Martin shared images of a female Rannoch Brindled Beauty he'd just found sat on a fencepost near Bob's house! Bob eventually messaged back saying that he'd not been trapping because of the low temperatures. The following day I heading off to see if I too could locate one. I only found one male and one female, as shown above, but it's still quite early for them. Rannoch Brindled Beauty was a lifer for me last year and finding one still provides something of a thrill. Hopefully I'll have opportunities to search for new sites over the next few weeks. On Skye these are only known from Sleat, but I expect they are more widespread. My first Tipula rufina of the year was sheltering on one of the fenceposts I checked. The sun came out and suddenly the world seemed marvellous. I was already on Sleat in the far south of the island so I decided to do some exploring, see what I could find.

Tachina ursina -  a furry Spring-flying tachinid

The willow catkins have only just started opening up this past week, I papped a few just for comparison because it's something I've never done before. I'll maybe make a small project of photographing flowering trees in the coming weeks

Salix cinerea Grey Willow 

Salix purpurea Purple Willow

I've never understood why Purple Willow should be so named, but looking at these catkins it now seems pretty obvious! Note the utter lack of insects at the catkins. Though it was pretty cold, to be fair.

Alchemilla conjuncta is naturalised at a couple of spots on Skye

My cabin fever induced desire to visit the mainland was strong. My digs are all good and well but, after six months of living there alone, the need for a change of scene does sometimes hit quite hard. I was only a few miles from the Skye Bridge and tomorrow was forecast to be warm (!) I gave it all of about ten seconds consideration and headed for the bridge. Once again it was Speyside that called out to me... I hadn't really clocked that it was the Easter Weekend, but the sheer volume of traffic on the road rammed the fact home to me. There's a lot to be said for night driving and I was a bit frustrated with myself for getting caught up in the slow-moving daytime traffic. Eventually I arrived in Grantown, found some food and checked in to my hotel room for the night, more than ready for tomorrow's promised warm weather! This being Easter, the prices had gone up; my cheap-as-chips room was now £40 for the night. The next mainland overnight stay will be spent inside my battered tent, I expect.

The following morning was cool and cloudy, but windless and with the promise of sunshine. I headed for a forestry track that I know well. It leads into the westernmost section of Abernethy Forest Reserve and never fails to produce something decent. It didn't take long before I started encountering crossbills, hidden in the treetops. By the depth and tone of the calls I was pretty sure these were Parrot Crossbills and sure enough a few eventually revealed enough of themselves for me to appreciate the thick neck and deep curve of the lower mandible, though the light was pretty rubbish regards seeing colour tones. One began to sing right above me and I recorded a full two minutes' worth on the Merlin app. I captured plenty of the deep chup contact and flight calls too - fabulous! That evening, back on Skye again, I discovered that the recordings are missing. I have no idea why they weren't saved but it's really, really very annoying. I do have video of a flock of Parrot Crossbills that I took a couple of years back, but the sound quality is quite poor. So yeah, very bloody annoying. (Edit: you need to hit a Save button now, I don't recall doing that before so I guess it's a new feature).

Less annoying by far were the day-flying tortrix moths that I swung my net at. There were at least two species that I netted, neither of which I recognised. They had the look of pine feeding species to me, out with the camera...

Philedonides lunana - which is not a pine feeding species at all

Rhyacionia logaea - a bit of a Scottish Highlands speciality. This one is a pine feeder!

There were only a couple of Philedonides lunana daft enough to fly in front of this net-wielding nutter, but the Rhyacionia logaea were positively abundant and I swiped several with ease. Both were lifers for me but, far more importantly, they are both lifers for Ghostie. Obviously I pinged my pics off to him... I also swiped a few lacewings, all of which keyed through to Hemerobius stigma which is a species I've had from these woods before. I also swept a few flies, one of which was Suilla parva which I've only seen once before, another was Suilla affinis which I've never recorded before. It's all about the subscutellar hairs. A sphaerocerid keyed through to Crumomyia roserii, the third member of the genus I've identified so far and another lifer. A lone 7-spot Ladybird was my first of the year. They are on Skye, but they're really pretty scarce. I then found some substantial Birch Polypores and gave them a sharp tap over my net, the result being a good number of tiny beetles.

The long one on its back keyed to Rhizophagus dispar, one I've had before with Mark Telfer

Formica lugubris. Note the lamentable absence of Shining Guest Ant

I noticed that quite a few needles of young Scots Pine had some sort of a rust fungus on them. I took a few pics and popped some into a pot for further investigation once back indoors. Well, upon that further investigation it became rather obvious that the rust fungus was not a fungus at all. Each rust-coloured spot had a circular hole in the centre of it. I now think this is feeding damage, possibly from a hemipteroid. If anyone has any ideas I'd certainly be glad to hear them in the comments section below.

Any thoughts, guys?

I swung southwards a few miles and dropped in to Dunachton Fen. It was very wet, really I needed wellies but I'd left those in the car. I managed a few more inverts including Coccidula rufa, Acleris hyemana, several more Tachina ursina and what I think may well be the first Birch Catkin Bug Kleidoceris resedae I've ever seen in Scotland. I had no idea they were up here! I swiped a Pterostichus out of the air as it flew past my nose, gen det required to identify it as a female Pterostichus rhaeticus. A very quick wander into Newtonmore added Oceanspray and Rose-of-Sharon onto the duff plantlist, but a much more exciting encounter came at the base of a huge ornamental conifer when a queen Tree Bumblebee Bombus hypnorum buzzed around my feet. This is just my second Scottish sighting of the species, following on from one in an Inverness cemetery last summer. They'll be on Skye within the next five years, I reckon. 

That sums up my away day to the mainland. My yearlist was fast approaching 1000 species and a bit of mopping up with things like Wall Lettuce and Italian Lords & Ladies (both very scarce on Skye but known from Broadford) and a few jams into such delights as Creeping Thistle and Greater Plantain brought that tally to 997 species. 

Today I stayed local in my search for the extra three species. First up, I headed for Brookside, home of Skye's only known American Skunk-cabbage plants. I counted 13 along the riverbanks then found 55 in marshy ground further upstream, clearly the origin of the riverside plants. Problem is, the 55 are growing on private land. Personally I'd jump the fence and dig them all up, but it's not my place to do so. Maybe SLEF should get involved with the landowner, see if they would willingly dig them up themselves. Either way, American Skunk-cabbage is one of the main Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS) that SLEF are involved with. I think I'll drop them an email.

First of the three species was a solitary plant of Tulipa gesneriana, a dwarf variety that has popped up in the same spot for at least the last three years. It's been confirmed by the BSBI Recorder as gesneriana, though I've never seen a tulip the size of a snowdrop before. The Sorbaria sorbifolia was in full leafburst and looking lovely and a few plants of Wood Avens were Skye yearticks (did I mention my Skye Yearlist yet?)  

Second pitstop was Uig Wood and adjacent shoreline. This was a bit of a cheat because I knew I could find Hybrid Monkeyflower in a ditch here. And sure enough there it was, number 999 for the year. I figured Silverweed on the shore path would be a likely addition, before realising I was stood next to Northern Dock - boom, that's 1000 for the year! Silverweed was about fifteen metres further on, followed by a Leopard Slug beneath a rock a hundred metres further. 1002 species for the year, sweet. The rain that followed can only be described as ferocious, luckily I was back at the car within minutes. It's still raining now. I bet that Swallow I saw yesterday is having serious life thoughts right now.