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.