It's usually the first sign you have stumbled by a Beaver. The splash is I think a warning to others of its clan made by slapping its tail on the water surface, and then it dives. If you are lucky it will re-appear on the surface shortly, but sometimes that's all you'll get and it will disappear.
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| Spot the Beaver! |
For a large animal Beaver can be very hard to see. This one had done the tail slap and it took me a good ten minutes to re-locate it, statue-like in the shallows. It did eventually show off by having a bit of a swim around in front of us.
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| Beaver Castor fiber |
We went back yesterday as Louise was keen to see one again. It wasn't the only creature making a commotion in the water as a huge Atlantic Salmon Salmo salar launched itself out of the water just in front of us, spectacular.
It was an eventful evening with many Daubenton's Bat's swirling about us, a Roe buck barking as we disturbed him from the undergrowth. On the way home over 100 Red Deer crossed the road in front of us.
This was the second time I'd made an evening visit to this spot recently. The photos were taken a week earlier when I took a friend there. That had been an exciting evening as before seeing the Beaver I finally got to see a live Pine Marten. I'd promised myself that I'd find my own and not go to a feeding station. Even though Pine Marten are seen by our neighbours every now and then these are not easy animals to find. No photo as it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared in front of us, posing for just the second needed to get it in the bins.
That had been the finale to an excellent day in the field. It had been a butterfly bonanza at Invergeldie, the sunny but windy afternoon conditions enabling many photographs of fritillaries.
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| Dark Green Fritillary |
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| Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary |
The afternoon had also produced Geotrupes stercorarius which I was pleased to see.
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| Geotrupes stercorarius |
Earlier in the day we'd gone up to the community woodland to look at the orchids and bumped in the first Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet of the year.
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| Narrow-bordered 5-spot Burnet |
With my P-SL I seem to be going backwards as often as forwards with the species list. The two species added above were negated by the removal of Male Fern (reading indicates this is a much more difficult identification than I thought) and an Anthomyzidae, Anthomyia pluvialis was not proven.
However, a good deal of botanical learning is leading to some more species being added to the community woodland list and to mine. I now have a copy of Stace on order which will hopefully improve my understanding.
Today was a very good moth day. Lights set last night and three traps running in our small garden led to 68 moth species and a few non-moth bits and bats. Included in the 68 were Barred Grass-veneer Agriphila inquinatella and a couple of Rustic, which surprisingly I hadn't previously recorded.
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| Rustic |
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| Agriphila inquinatella |
Not the prettiest of moths either of these, and the list included some very attractive species.
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| Argyresthia brockeella |
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| Beautiful China-mark |
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| Caloptria margaritella |
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| Coxcomb Prominent |
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| Dotted Carpet |
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| Gold Spangle |
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| V Pug |
However, the best was yet to come as late in the day I checked the pheromone traps.
This one nearly escaped as it wasn't in the trap but under the rain cover, fortunately it fell in the trap when I touched it.
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| Buff Footman, an excellent find. |
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| Welsh Clearwing |
I've used the lure for Welsh Clearwing many times with no success, until bingo! There are very few Scottish records of this species so another excellent record.
