Out west

We went away for a week. We've not done that for a while. We went to a wee village on the banks of Loch Fyne. I was quite excited about this as there are a lot more species of lichens in the remnants of the temperate rain forest. However, not everything went according to plan, as the previous post might indicate.

I did find plenty of lichens, which of course I'm still working through, not quite as tricky as bryophytes, mostly because the AI is not bad and getting better at lichens, but it's pretty hopeless with mosses, so it takes hours to even start to identify them.

No, I don't know this one....

Thuidium tamariscinum, I think. This is the one that carpets the west.

I've got myself set up with the chemicals required for lichen hunting, and a way of safely transporting them, although I'm yet to use them. Maybe tomorrow as I have a few samples to check out.

Anyway, there were plenty of fairly obvious lichens that were relatively easy to identify; no chemicals necessary. Lobaria pulmonaria was everywhere in the right habitat. 

Lungwort Lobaria pulmonaria

 

There  is one place near home that it grows, but I found it in any places there, without really trying. I also managed to find its relative Lobaria virens, which I hadn't found before.

Lobaria virens

 

As it turned out there were some insects that I came across that were considerably more exciting than these lichens, well I prefer things with legs when it comes down to it.

Scathophaga calida, a not especially common littoral fly.

A rummage on the beach by the rental house was even more interesting. A centipede and a millipede tick first off. 

Strigamia maritima, a common centipede of the high tideline which I really should have recorded before.

Cylindroiulus punctatus, a common enough millipede which again I had previously ignored.

I'd turned over quite a few rocks and stones, bits of wood and other detritus along the strand line. Then I turned over a stone, much like others, but the substrate below was more compact, perhaps a tad less liable to be inundated. And there were beetles! I haven't even attempted to the Staphylinids that were there, likely Aleocharinae, they'll probably be a nightmare to identify. However, there were also some tiny (c2.5mm) Carabids. St first I thought they were Aepus marinus, but fortunately I took a few specimens (and Wikipedia has the incorrect species illustrated for A. marinus BTW).  When I put these under the microscope yesterday I found that they were the closely related Aepopsis robinii, these are even less common, particularly in Scotland, with just 8 records on the NBN.

This image does not show the elytral shape well, see lowest image, however, the eyes are comparatively large and the elytra are glabrous apart from the sensory setae.

A live one, but a good job I took the specimen.

Showing the rounded apices to the elytra, so there is a notch between them, Aepus marinus, the confusion species, has straight apices to the elytra so there is no notch. Other differences - smaller eyes and fine hairs on the elytra.

 

There were about fifteen of these under the one stone. 

Under the piece of wood where I found the Cylindroiulus there were also some odd white things. These vaguely rang a bell, but I could not recall what the connection was; Burray maybe. A post on the P-SL FB Group and I was reminded of Ensign Scale Insects, I had seen, and collected one or two in Burray in the past, actually at the bottom of BH's garden. However, my photos raised a bit of consternation as my photos could not be ascribed to a UK species. It then turns out that PTS has found what is probably the same species elsewhere on the west coast. It may be that these are a North American species of Arctorthezia.

 

Arctorthezia species perhaps occidentalis

Of course I'd failed to take a specimen, so I need to return...

There's more to post about this outing. The birds were pretty good, we saw seven Harbour Porpoise way up the loch, and Harbour Seal. I found one or two plants of interest and it was scenically very different from home. But I need to sort out more photos first....