Blog Entries from Plants of Skye, Raasay & The Small Isles
A couple of oddments: In the ditch by the main road in Inverarish, Raasay there is a a lot of filamentous green algae. There may be others too, but the bulk is a Spirogyra. There are, however, a…
Psyllid (
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This far north, most trees are not really in leaf yet, but the Hawthorn outside our gate is. This little chap which is probably either Cacopsylla melanoneura or C. affinis was sitting on a fresh leaf…
Mostly Birds (
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Two days ago, the first swallow, yesterday the first cuckoo and in the bay a Great Northern Diver. A Raasay vole has taken up residence below the bird feeder – I kept finding stones moved by the…
Yesterday morning beside my moth trap (a bit dull: 11 Clouded Drab, 7 Hebrew Character, 1 Red Chestnut, 1 Common Quaker), there was a harvestman that looked different from those I normally see. It…
HBRG (
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Saturday saw the spring meeting of Highland Biological Recording Group. This is the organisation’s 40th year. There were some excellent talks, mostly on insects, plus an update on the new website and…
Uncertainties (
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This rove beetle was on the outside of the house: I was hoping that it would be Philonthus cognatus with its distinctive yellow on the underside of the first segments of the antennae, but no. I…
Yesterday, I found this small weevil on Common Nettle (Urtica dioica) in the garden: There are only two records of this for VC104 on NBN, one of them from my garden on nettles nearly three years ago…
Plant News (
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Joanna tells me that the SBG outing to Canna added Ophioglossum vulgatum (Adder’s-tongue) to the Canna list. Neil has spotted three spikes of Neottia nidus-avis (Bird’s-nest Orchid) near Portree from…
Everlasting-Pea (
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In 1979, John Palmer, a highly competent botanist, visited Skye and Raasay and made a number of interesting records. He sent me his Raasay records in 1992 and about a year after his death in 2019, I…
A Creeping Buttercup plant in the garden is infected with something; I think it may be Leptotrochila ranunculi, but there is no sign of the diagnostic apothecia (yet). This small fly was also in the…
