Minke Whale

Spotted a Minke from the ferry when returning to Islay yesterday evening. Just west of north end of Gigha - which I find is a very good place for some reason. Also hundreds and hundreds of Razorbills and Guiillemots - some with young at foot (so to speak). Good numbers of shearwaters were about and also spotted one porpoise.

Photo - Sealifesurveys of Tobermory on Mull

Carl

Spotted dogfish

We caught three spotted dogfish this morning in our lobster pot in Tobermory using mackerel heads for bait - having eaten the mackerel for dinner last night.

The 'Eclipse' crew

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

A bit late

A couple of Hares caught on camera this afternoon, not exactly "mad as a March Hare", as we are now in mid July......

Ian

Not Home Alone

I had an e-mail from "Auntie Betty" at 03.47 today to say that she had just seen an adult Barn Owl come in to the nest box with a mouse. The youngster has been quite active today, preening itself!

Margaret

Greater Butterfly Orchid

The site close to where I live in Bruichladdich some years has nearly 100 flowering spikes, some years hardly any. Last year there were just six. This year a search of part of it revealed 12. It's clearly not a good year for the site, though, because in past years there have been dozens of spotted and marsh orchid spikes, too, and this year there are very few. I suspect it dried out too much during May and June.
The photo shows a Greater Butterlly Orchid with a (very small) Northern Marsh Orchid alongside.

Malcolm

Beach flowers

Four flowers from the rocks and beach in front of the Centre, Sea mayweed (Matricaria maritima), Sea milkwort (Glaux maritima), Sea plantain (Plantago maritima) and Sea rocket (Cacile maritima)

Home Alone...

It's a month to the day since the star of this year's Owl TV appeared, and he/she continues to grow extremely rapidly. The adult female Barn Owl has not been seen in the nest box all day today, this is the longest she has been gone in the 4 weeks since the chick hatched. The chick has been quite active in her absence, stretching its wings and peering at the big bad world outside through the opening in the box.

Bluebottle

If this fly didn't have the annoying habit of buzzing loudly when inside a room, or the less than pleasant habit of laying its eggs on any meat or fish it can find, then I'm confident we would regard it as a very attractive part of our insect fauna. After all, it is in the genus 'Calliphora' which means 'beautifully showing'. However, its specific name is also descriptive, being 'vomitoria'!

Malcolm

Froglets - free to a good home....

The tadpoles at the centre are metamorphosing into tiny frogs - so if anyone has a pond and fancies helping to restock it - please pop by and see if we have any youngsters available...!!

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria)

I have always thought that there are two signs that summer is on the turn - that we are on the downward slope of the year and that the geese will soon be here.... The first is when the drake eiders start to gather in groups for the eclipse - the second is the appearance of the Purple loosestrife spikes....

Here they are.

Carl

European lobster (Homarus gammarus)

Lobsters are supposed to be noctural beasts, hiding away during the day and only coming out at night to feed. Not so our lobster at the Wildlife Centre who although he has been provided with a nice clay drainpipe to disappear into, seems to be a bit of a showoff and is out most of the day - particularly if there is someone to talk to. When he first arrived he was kind of nervous and although he would come out, he would shoot back into his hole at the slightest movement. Now he appears to be much more confident - and it takes a serious disturbance to make him retreat.

He started off by eating mostly limpets, easily crushing the shells with his massive claws, but has since decided that he prefers mussels - presumably they are less hassle to open and, as any hominid seafood fan will attest, taste much better than limpets. He certainly seems to be growing anyway so we are hopeful that he will be shedding his exoskeleton sometime soon.

Roadside plants

Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris), Silverweed (Potentilla anserina) and Pineapple mayweed (Chamomilla suaveolens)

www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/

Came across this website this morning - which looks interesting....

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/

Carl

Bog Asphodel

Conspicuous yellow flowers of moorland at the moment are the upright spikes of Bog Asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum), a member of the lily family, related to Snowdrop and Daffodil.

Malcolm

Quote of the day

From The Sunday Herald - "Footprints from a monster centipede known as Arthropleura have been discovered on the isle of Arran. It grew up to 2.6 metres long and was one of the largest land insects known."

More garden wildflowers

More wildflowers from my garden, Creeping buttercup (Ranunculous repens) and Daisies (Bellis perennis), Self Heal (Prunella vulgaris), Common Forget-me-not (Myosotis arvensis) also, showing that it is not only moths that have splendid names, the marvellously monikered Ivy-leaved toadflax (Cymbalaria muratis).

Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) and Devils Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis)

These were on a dry sandy verge near Wester Ellister.

The Rattle is semi-parasitic - drawing some of its nutrients from the root systems of neighboring plants.

The Scabious is the foodplant for Marsh fritillary butterflies. Both plants were rather thin scraggy specimens - I remember seeing them rather more luxuriant than this...

Harvestman

This leggy fellow was wandering about in the house down in Portnahaven - so I persuaded him to pose for a couple of photographs before putting him outside - which he/she probably didn't thank me for given the weather last night

Spotted orchid variations

They seem to vary enormously in size too. This spotted beauty was close to the road outside Portnahaven today

Spotted orchids

Carl posted a photo of a Common Spotted Orchid a couple of days ago. Here it is again (on the right - or below, as the layout of the photos varies with screen width!), together with a photo of a Heath Spotted Orchid. The most obvious difference is the shape of the lowest petal - the 'lip' - which has a distinct middle lobe in the Common Spotted while it hardly shows as a lobe at all in the Heath Spotted. Both species are very variable in colour, from almost white to purple. The Heath Spotted is more numerous and widespread because it likes acid soils of which there is much more on Islay than neutral or alkaline. If you can find the boundary between the limestone and the acid rocks, as you can near Ballygrant, for example, you can see the two species growing close together each on its own preferred soil.

Malcolm

Water bugs and beetles

These were found in the pond at Lorgba - which is only tiny, although quite deep - with its edge defined by a tractor tyre. The Water cricket (Velia caprai) is the handsome chap with orange sides. I am unsure what the water beetle is. Any suggestions? The beetle comes to the surface regularly to breathe by sticking its abdomen through the surface film and staying there for about five seconds - as can be seen in the photo - then zooming back down to the bottom.

Carl

Short-Eared Owl

Here's a terrific picture of a recently fledged Short-Eared Owl taken by Gordon Yates on his last trip up.

Wildflowers in our garden

I have been looking to see how many different wildflowers can be found in our garden - which is not exactly the tidiest in the world, but it is not exactly neglected either. There are a remarkable number. Here are a few for starters...

Scots lovage (Ligusticum scoticum), Ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) and Bush vetch (Vicia sepium)



Carl

Moths again

A rather cool and windy night produced a smaller catch than the previous two, just 26 though of 15 different species.
Sometimes moth names are like poetic flights of fancy, e.g. Maiden's Blush, Delicate, Light Feathered Rustic (none of which I have caught or expect to catch), but sometimes the name exactly describes the key features, e.g. (as illustrated here) Burnished Brass, Buff-tip and Bright-line Brown-eye.

Malcolm

Beach Combing

Our first activity session of the season went well yesterday. We scoured Uiskentuie Strand for all things colourful, pretty, hard and smelly, with the occasional diversion to watch Little Terns hovering above the waves. We found a variety of clam shells, mermaids' purses, whelk egg cases, pebbles, sheep's wool, crab shells (shore and spider), sea lettuce and eel grass (the food of geese). And I've probably forgotten something . . .

We pooled all our treasures to make this piece of beach art - a Leatherback Turtle (just in case it's not obvious!)

Becky

Microlight

I was a very wet cyclist by the time I arrived in Bowmore this morning, so it was a great pleasure to ride home this evening in the sunshine with only a gentle breeze to impede my progress. Stopped off just past Crosshouses to poke about on the rough ground there and took a few pictures of flowers. I kept hearing this gentle buzzing noise and then suddently this motorized hang-glider type thing flew over my head, did a couple of circuits and landed, not very elegantly in the bog. You never know what is going to happen next here....

The flowers are Cross-leaved heath (Erica tetralix) Common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) and Tormentil (Potentilla erecta)

Rain!!

Yes, as Carl said, it rained last night and this morning - to the tune of 21 mm (or getting on for an inch), the most since 24 mm on 31st May. And total rainfall for the whole of June was just 23 mm which is way below average. These figures come from Islay airport where there is a fully equipped automatic weather station. Go to: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/UnitedKingdom/Islay.htm and there you can find forecasts, current weather and history (i.e. past records), and you can select max and min temperatures, wind direction and strength, precipitation, etc.

The data only go back to late 2001, when the met station was set up. But looking at the June figures for 2002 to 2009 reveals that the average rainfall in those eight years was 90 mm, with a range of 59 to 127! It's certainly been dry this year.

Malcolm

Buttercups and Bantams

The drought seems to have broken. The rain has been lashing against the windows here at Lorgba all night and the wind is rumbling round our roof in a manner more reminiscent of March than July. The forecast for the next few days is mixed at best - with another big blow and more lashings of rain on the horizon for next week according to the ever excellent, if sometimes depressing http://www.xcweather.co.uk/

It is a morning therefore to dig out a picture of buttercups and blue skies - this one is from Bruich Jerich, (the wee glen behind Port Charlotte). One of our bantam hens emerged from the big patch of six foot high docks at Lorgba with fifteen chicks a couple of days ago as well. Not exactly wildlife - but a cheerful, summery event non-the-less.

Carl