The road to Cougie

Off to the south higher up the valley in the direction of the pony trekking centre at Cougie at the end of the forest track, the scenery just gets fantastic

the hills are relatively well planted and wooded but there is no chance of successful forestry higher up, so there is a definite tree line.

and where there is no forestry planting the pine and birch of the ancient Caledonian Forest thinly cover the lower slopes.

this is the view back down the valley towards Tomich, hidden in the valley of Strath Glass,

The Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, can generally be told apart from all other pines because of the orange tinge to the upper branches, and this is a fantastic old specimen, characteristic of the native Scottish population rather than imported plantings,

there is quite a lot of other variety amongst the trees and shrubs including this shrubby willow

there are also quite a few herbaceous flowering plants along the roadside such as devils-bit scabious and cats-ear

this is a close-up of the devils-bit, Succisa pratensis, a member of the Teasel family. It gets its name because its roots stop suddenly, as if the devil had bitten them off!

and this is the cats ear, Hypochaeris radicata, with an unknown pollinating fly

while this is Yarrow, Achillea millefolium,

and the bell heather, Erica cinerea

and of course there are some amazing lower plants including these rushes, Juncus

this Polytrichum moss with ripe sporing capsules,

and the Sphagnum that creates so much of the peat that blankets the uplands

There were relatively few insects about, but I did find this bumble bee working the devils-bit. It is a worker of the Bombus lucorum/terrestris complex. As B. lucorum is commoner in Scotland, and B. terrestris is a little less common up North, I would tend to put this as B. lucorum if I had to make a choice. This would be backed up by the clear, not muddy, yellow of the yellow stripes on the thorax and abdomen, and the obviously short face and relatively short tongue. However it would be dangerous to be too dogmatic, so it had better stay as undecided B. terrestris/lucorum.

Quick nocturnal walkabout

As I took Monty out last thing it seemed nearly pitch black beyond the Victorian street lights of the village.
I had taken the torch with me and I shone it on the moss and lichen-covered aspen and beech tree trunks by the side of the road. It was fairly easy to find woodlice, slugs, spiders and small black millipedes, the last possibly being Tachypodoiulus niger - unless the environment is too lacking in lime for it to found here!

It was amazing how much was actively crawling about! The trunks themselves were like tiny tropical forests, very dramatically coloured and textured. The same was true of Pam and Ken's garden walls, including a very active centipede rushing over the garden wall in search of prey. Even the relatively bare garage wall had the same millipedes and spiders easily visible. Again, there were many things at head height or above, all picked out very easily by the beam of the torch.

Unfortunately it wasn't easy to photograph things effectively in the dark, so little to be made of all this rushing about for the blog.

On Saturday I was thrashing back (commonly known as pruning) Pam's shrubs, and doing trips to B and Q, so missed the early afternoon sunshine. I didn't take the camera with me when I finally went out, as it was pouring with rain by now, so I'm afraid it's a very short text-only blog today!

Up the valley from Tomich

On Thursday after hunting around the garden at Tomich, as in the previous post, I walked Monty for a couple of hours along the roadways and tracks further up the valley, and concentrated on the tree foliage.
Most of the trees are birch, alder, sycamore, oak, spruce and beech, the last obviously having been planted in the great days of Guisachan House, the famous country house that dominated the whole life of the valley.
Trying the farm track, the wildlife hedge planting had been supplemented by the Sycamore cultivar, Acer pseudoplatanus ‘ ‘, with the undersides of its leaves strongly flushed purple.

Sycamore is the only Acer that gets significantly attacked by the tar spot fungus Rytidissima with the narrow yellow edge around the black fungal infection spots. This can be very helpful in identifying the tree!

Sycamore also gets other fungal diseases such as this powdery mildew on the young leaves of this sucker. I don’t know what sort of fly this is!

If there isn’t any tar-spot for identification then it’s down to the shape of the leaves, and the angle of the “keys” definitely nearer 45o than 180o from each other.

Not all the trees here are much infected with tar spot. This particular tree was a favourite haunt of a large number and wide range of flies moving over the upper-side of the leaves, and I think they must have been hovering up either the sugary honeydew or perhaps the more protein-rich pollen that gets stuck in the honeydew. This is said to be quite a common habit for hoverflies and others. Sycamore is thought to harbor a higher population of aphids than most trees, and the aphids and other sucking insects are the source of the honeydew, so this, together with a sheltered and sunny position, may be why there were so many flies on this particular tree.

The most common hoverfly was Episyrphus balteatus,

but also seen was this Syrphus (I think) species, most likely to be Syrphus vitripennis from its partly dark hind femur – the commonest species is Syrphus ribesii, but the hind femur in this is completely yellow. It should be a Syrphus species, because the yellow moustache bands reach the edges of the tergite plates (the plates on the dorsum of the abdomen), and then sweep forward rather than back, and either there are no black bands on the sternites, or they don't extend across the full width, the sternites being the plates on the underside of the abdomen. However there are also a number of other very similar genera, and they are all very confusingly alike.

There was also this rather odd looking fly, possibly a Tachinid. Oddly enough at one point it had raised its front legs off the leaf surface. In the same picture you can also see one of the many smaller black flies running over the surface of the leaves,

Beech has also been planted along the trackside and I was intrigued to notice that as the leaves were beginning to turn on most trees, this sapling was still holding on to its dead leaves from last winter! Is this a record I wonder?

I heard a pair of buzzards, Buteo buteo, overhead, and managed to catch one “in full cry”.

A little further on, there was another possible Platycheirus, this time on a buttercup flower.

The tiny bell-shaped flowers of common heather or ling, Calluna vulgaris.

A beautiful leaf of the Norway Maple Acer platanoides ‘Crimson King’, a striking tree in the overall view.

Purple beech often seems a muddy coloured leaf close up

But can again be spectacular when seen at a distance in contrast to lighter green trees

Here are some odd discoloured patches found just on a few beech leaves and not seen elsewhere

And then my eureka moment. I have often thought beech leaves to be very subject to tip (terminal) scorch, but as I’ve been examining the leaves closely of late looking for galls and mines, I also had a closer look at the scorch today – and WOW! Everytime I saw a scorched tip, leading into it was a thin channel, always starting from just beside the midrib, often torn completely through the leaf, so the scorch must in fact be a blotch mine!

If so, then this is Orchestes fagi, the very unusual beetle larva that mines its way through leaves, in this case beech leaves and only beech leaves. So I’ve finally tracked this down, and in really significant numbers, older trees in particular seeming to be highly attacked. (Later note - having checked the NBN Gateway, a chap called Murdo McDonald recorded these mines exactly here, and also at Plodda and Abriachan inter alia, in 2010!) All the larvae have apparently long since pupated and exited the leaf of course. I wonder what the adult beetle eats – is there any significance to the round holes often but not invariably found in the attacked leaves?? I suspect this to be adult beetle damage.

And here at last is the Eriophyid mite that causes the felting lines above the veins, last seen on one leaf only at Bitchett Hill. Again although I looked a fair bit I only saw this on two patches of leaves, one a single line on a single leaf, the other patch two or three lines each on three close together leaves. Why is it in apparently such low numbers? Is it having a very bad time? How does it survive year to year when the leaves fall? Am I seeing very few survivors after two successive very hard winters? And are they confined to older trees? A definite mystery!

I also found just one mine that I initially thought might be a Stigmella – by one of the trees near the river as the road enters the village. However it could also be an aberrant mine from Orchestes fagi, and actually I think this is much more likely, and that's how I've logged it. Interestingly again the leaf has the round holes I am guessing is adult damage.

Here is one of the three apparently oldest trees, all with their heartwood under attack by fungal rots.

What a fantastic day!

The garden at Tomich

Having arrived at the house at Tomich late last night to stay with Paula's parents, Ken and Pam, we woke to a really nice Highland day today. As we were getting the painting of the garage eaves organized, a very nice speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, appeared in the back garden, nectaring repeatedly on the mint flowers by the vegetable patch.

Surprisingly well coloured for the time of year, the mix of grey-green and tawny hairs on the body showed very well in a photo taken with the sun from behind the wings.

This was a very interesting butterfly to see up here, as it is one of the butterflies that has extended its range over the last few decades and recolonised large areas of Scotland. It is also relatively unusual to see it nectaring on flowers but it will do this early and late in the season when aphid activity is low, and the availability of honeydew on leaves that it normally depends upon throughout the majority of its long season is correspondingly reduced. In the garden there were plenty of Episyrphus balteatus hoverflies

and then suddenly there was a rather dumpy hoverfly running over a leaf surface. As I got the camera ready I could see that the legs were distinctly banded, black and pale (the pale sections being much whiter than the yellow illustrated in the book), the main part of the abdomen looked orangey and there was a dark tip to it.

The wings were kept firmly folded over the back, so everything beneath was a bit blurred, which was rather frustrating. I thought of Xylota segnis, a hoverfly that I knew to be common, but that I had previously had difficulty in finding, and I think this is what it must have been.

There is also a rare species, Xylota tarda that is only found in the Scottish highlands possibly associated with Aspen, Populus tremula, (there are Aspen trees within 200 m of the garden), but I couldn’t see the critical features clearly, so this remains just an intriguing possibility!! It did look so much like tarda though!
Then there was another small hoverfly, which looked as though it had grey abdominal spots. One possibility is Meligramma or Melanogyna, but again it was too difficult to see the diagnostic characteristics to be sure even that I had the right genus.

I also managed to get some shots of the birds on and around the bird feeders, mainly tits, chaffinches and siskins on the peanuts.

I also found a white-lipped banded snail Cepea hortensis on one of Pam’s plants, so I removed it, although it didn’t seem to be doing any damage!

There was a very nice parasitic wasp in the borders, which posed for a moment, and then went off looking for caterpillars to attack.

Common carder bees, Bombus, and white-tailed bumble bees, Bombus, visited the border flowers.

A very bright specimen of the hoverfly Eristalis pertenax was seen on the Michaelmas Daisies, again weeks after they seemed to disappear from around Hadlow.

A grey-dusted Tachinid fly also searched the Michaelmas Daisies, Aster, for pollen or nectar.

There was also a Heteropteran bug, possibly a capsid, but these are all difficult groups.

I saw two froghoppers along the road earlier on this morning, and this one on the Fuchsia flower looked the same. The larvae are found in the familiar cuckoo-spit earlier in the year and the adults aren’t found until the autumn, so its nice to see these now.

This small male hoverfly feeding off the Sedum is a little bit easier to identify because of the combination of its pale swollen front leg tarsal segments (swollen on the male only) and its grey rather than yellow spots, making it a Platycheirus. It is most likely to be P. albimanus, but there are a number of other possibilities. You can tell it’s a male because its eyes touch at the top of the head, as noted in many species of hoverflies and other flies.

On the other side of the drive the broom, Cytisus scoparius, seed-pods were swelling until they were fit to burst and explosively released their seeds with the occasional sharp cracks, the pods twisting into their spiral halves.

Overall a pretty lively garden for wildlife at this time of year!