Saturday 12 October 2019

Bats

Following up on the very brief sighting a fortnight back I borrowed a bat detector (thanks EH). I walked out of the house with the detector and immediately got a signal. Locating the bats, there were at least two, fiddling about with the wavelength strongest was 48khz, so conclusion was Common Pipistrelle. The Bat Group came up last night and having almost given up we got bat sound again at the same wavelength and one sighting. Could I have missed these for ten years? I think not but I do wonder how long they've been here. Other mammals this week.

Pygmy Shrew found drowned in the pony's water.

Hedgehog, very small juv, by the side of the road as I drove to a meeting in Stromness.

And in the last week the cats have brought in one Wood Mouse and one Orkney Vole.

No new moths but a good selection of late season beasts including a second Red-green Carpet. Small Wainscot, a few Silver Y, a few Brindled Ochre, Brick.


Red-green Carpet

A new lichen for the patch is a dog lichen, Peltigera membranacea.


Peltigera membranacea

Plenty of Redwing about but not anything more interesting until today when a likely exilipes Arctic Redpoll appeared for a second or two before vapourising, I will be searching early the morn.



2 comments:

Gibster said...

Not disputing it, but your Peltigera seems very brown for membranacea. Here on Skye it's a distinctly grey beast. Peltigera is a tricky genus though, we may both be right or wrong with equal likeliness!

Alastair said...

I think I'm right... I took a sample and keyed it through Dobson (although to be honest, marvellous book though it is, it's a bit beyond me and I spend half my time in the glossary). There are only five species on the Orkney list which helps. Colour differences could be down to light and camera settings (or processing through Photoscape) I guess. Thanks for commenting, as I will take another look, as you might gather I find lichens very hard.