Two jackets, two jumpers, two shirts

The cold has arrived. And with it snow, not an especially common form of precipitation in Orkney, although Harray is perhaps more prone to the white stuff than other parts of Mainland. A lot of snow. Snow drifting today so that vehicular access to the house from The Shunan end would be a no go. We watched our farmer neighbour clearing the snow from the other road though so there is a way in and out if need be.

Snow views from nearby.

Brown Hare trail.

Harray kirk.

Jack Snipe remains, I think.

As we walked down the hill to our Wee Wood we flushed a Sparrowhawk. On the way back the hound was sniffing in the wood and I found these remains, Jack Snipe I think. A ringer's measurement would make the wing 110mm which is outside the range for Snipe.

 The walk also produced, Merlin, Grey Heron, Reed Bunting and Meadow Pipit.

Before the snow came I've been searching for moth larvae again. Beating some Gorse I again found Cydia ulicelana, but also quite a few very small beetles. I groaned when they turned out to belong to the Cryptophagidae, fungus beetles, as I've found these very hard to ID in the past. Fortunately, Mike Hackston's keys to the rescue, and with a bit of careful examination they came out to Micrambe and pretty swiftly to Micrambe ulicis which lives in Gorse. (Thanks to CW for confirming the ID.)

Micrambe ulicis.

Cydia ulicelana, cat and a load of frass.

The caterpillar is now in a rearing jar with at least one pupa.

We'd also visited Hobbister before the snow. Mostly because we needed to drop off the lawn mower at the repair shop. The mower being in a very sad state. No cetaceans this time but a bit of delving around found a nice Pseudo-scorpion or two and a Lithobius caterpillar which I will need to find time to key out.

Lithobius sp, I need to key this out, a bit unfortunate that the antennae are both broken as I think segment number is an identification factor.

Neobisium carcinoides, a pseudo-scorpion.

If Neobisium carcinoides was a large beastie it would be terrifying, fortunately it is a small thing of a few millimetres.

A bit of moth hunting before the snow produced a very nice Mottled Umber female in the Wee Wood, I think this is a new species for the square.

Mottled Umber, female.

The following nite there were ten Winter Moths around the garden, including four pairs in-cop, the most females I've ever seen in one night I think.

Winter Moths, in-cop.

Finally, a couple of armchair ticks. BH spotted that one of my micro-moths on iRecord was misidentified, a good job someone is on the ball! I'd been too hasty with my ID and the moth from June in Finstown was actually Falseuncaria ruficiliana, not Eupoecilia angustana, thank you BH. I need to correct this ID in this blog I think.

The other armchair tick was Scrobipalpa acuminatella which I'd got right , but entered on iRecord as "Likely" (so not tickable). But SP from the Graciliidae Scheme verified my record from my photos, good result!

So a couple of ticks for the PSL list. The site looks fab', now it has been incorporated into Bubo Listing, good job folks. But I'm still a long way off getting my list up-to-date.

Lastly a petition to sign. Coul Links is again under threat from a potential golf course development which would destroy it. We've enough fucking golf courses, there's only one Coul Links! Please sign it's a fabulous place. Highland Council want to approve the planning application despite objections from numerous bodies and its own planning officers. We need the Scottish Government to step in and stop this act of vandalism. Thanks.

https://greens.scot/SaveCoulLinks

Rain, wind, more rain... calm

Not great weather, it must be said. Indoors and continuing to sort through the Orkney moth list, progress, but slow.

Out in the field I did collect some more Knapweed Centurea sp seed heads. I'm not sure which species of Knapweed this is, it is in a birdcrop field and was sown about five years or so ago. A few weeks back I found some tiny orange larvae in a seed head when I dissected it. There are a range of species which may be found in the seed heads. These looked like Diptera larvae but they were very tiny. Anyway, I dissected these ones and found the bright orange larvae again. They are very tiny, 1.2mm.

Probably a Cecidomyiidae larva. These are predatory, so in the seed head, hunting.

It was suggested that this could be Aphidoletes, an aphid hunter (thanks LJ). Anyway, I have two rearing jars with these in now, with luck something will emerge that is identifiable.

Here's some video of it in the seed head.

 

On New Year's Day I picked up a beetle that I'd offered to identify.

I'm pretty sure this is Leiodes obesa, if so 2nd Orkney record.

Quite a small thing and this genus isn't especially easy, but there are three common species, of which this is one, and it fits pretty well. Hind tibia and antenna are important for ID.

Big, blunt tooth apically on the hind tibia, this side of the long spur, not easy to see.

11th antennal segment at least as wide as 9th and 10th.

Today was a very beautiful day. Here's what it looked like at dawn from the garden.

A relief after all the wind and rain we've had of late.

We went for a walk and on the way back, having my white umbrella and a mallet handle with me I beat a Gorse Ulex europaeus bush to an inch of its life....

And it kindly surrendered some denizens of its spikey interior.

Pupa.

Cydia ulicetana maybe.

I suspect the pupa and larva are from Cydia ulicetana, a moth I've never trapped, despite it perhaps being common. Anyway, the pupae and the one cat' are in a rearing pot now. I have another rearing pot, potentially of this species from a larva I collected in a seed pod at the end of last year.

 There were a couple of beetles in there as well, I suspect they will be hard to identify but I'll give them a go. Oh, and a crab spider, but it was most likely the common one, I cannot remember its name. 

The mallet handle is handy to carry to go with the umbrella beating tray. The mallet was, I think, my dad's which I inherited. It shattered into many pieces the other day when I was mending the For Sale sign at the end of our road. It must have been fifty years old, maybe older. Anyway, the handle lives on as a useful implement.

The evening was beautiful too so I headed down to Loch of Harray on a photographic mission.

Loch of Harray.

Photos taken and various birds noted I headed back to the car. Quite a few year ticks, Long-tailed Duck, Slavonian Grebe and something calling that I didn't immediately recognise, but probably Whooper Swans. A lot of Pink-feet yapping away. Put the kit safe in the car, seatbelt on, looked up, set off, something caught my eye, and standing in the burn a few metres from me was a Great White Egret. I managed to stick the iso on max and fired a few shots off.

Great White Egret, not quite in the dark.

A car in my rear view so I had to move, this being single track. A nice end to the day.

New Year's Day

 Yesterday (31/12/2023) and the Great White Egret was present briefly on The Shunan. But not seen today.

However I shouldn't complain. I'd booked to go on the Field Club ramble, or amble, around Stromness. I'd managed to get my act together enough to get up early, walk the hound and then scoot to Finstown first. I debated between The Slip for white-wingers or Heddle Rd for passerines, I didn't have time for both. Heddle Road it was and it was a good choice. I don't think many folk will have ever have had Treecreeper in their first twenty species of the year in Orkney.

Treecreeper. The ring is locally applied, ringer's garden across the road from where I was watching.

I glimpsed Coal Tit a few times as well before finally getting a decent view of one of the sneeky wee beasts. No photo opportunity though.

Then off to Stromness and a meet up with the Field Club. It was a lovely day and we wandered past Stromness Loons, to the Reservoir and then round. Highlights were four Short-eared Owls, three Kestrels and two hen Harriers. There was a quite old Blackthorn hedge which I was unaware of, and I found a larval case of Coleophora alticolella, which folk found interesting.

Larval case, Coleophora alticolella.

Having looked carefully at the case I think it may still be occupied so I've labelled it up and put it in a rearing pot, I've never seen the adult moth.

At lunch time I managed to find a moss and a lichen of interest. However, I think they were both species I've recorded previously.

Peltigera membranacea, a dog lichen.

Hylocomium splendens, a moss, rather a common one.

After lunch we tried to find a couple of prostrate Junipers, one of which is purportedly huge, 8m. However, other folk were looking at the sea and although we were very distant the Orcas in Hoy Sound were pretty obvious. There was a male and about seven others, presumably the 65s. We watched the Orcas for a good while, in the end they seemed to just head out west. And somehow I missed the Juniper, I will go back.

Tea and stolen were enjoyed, thank you MT and GW. There had been a fair bit of useful discussion about moths during the day which I've followed up on today. The moth stuff is a lot of work, kind of like a job!

On the way home I stopped at some Otters.