I saw sawflies!

 It has been a month since my last post as the glorious dry warm weather meant that I did lots outside rather than sitting indoors writing a blog post, but a few coincidences have inspired me to write about sawflies.

In the garden, one of my gooseberry bushes has been mostly reduced to a skeleton of its former self,  and in spite of waking past it most days, I failed to notice the hordes of caterpillars eating the leaves. Being green (like the leaves) they are well camouflaged so it is easy to miss them until the damage is done.   Most of the caterpillars have now been picked off and left for the birds to eat. 

Left - gooseberry with leaves, middle- leaves have been eaten, right- the culprits

The caterpillars  start at the bottom of the bush and eat their way up.  They are the caterpillars of Gooseberry Sawfly, though I have never seen the fly, just the caterpillars.  Apparently, sawflies are called that because their ovipositor (egg laying appendage) is saw shaped.

A similar fly lays its eggs on  the flower called Solomon's Seal.  I have just checked my plants and they are fine just now, but I have seen the caterpillars in previous years.  The fly drills little holes along the stem to lay its eggs.

A row of empty sawfly holes and the caterpillar

The flies seem to come and go unnoticed, but I saw one that could not be missed.  It was sitting on some insect netting that I was about to put over my veg.  It couldn't be missed as it was an inch long! It was also rather sluggish and stayed put while I took photos and then moved it elsewhere.  It wasn't actually any safer as our resident blackbird then  nabbed it and fed it to its youngster! I looked it up and it was a Birch Sawfly.

25mm long Birch Sawfly

It was underneath the Birch trees at the end of the garden so maybe it had worn itself out laying eggs...

To finish on a more photogenic note, the shore of  Uath Lochans on a sunny day had a lovely display of Hare's-tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum).

Apologies for the out of focus shot but it does show how delightfully fluffy they are!

It's Orchid Time

It’s orchid time down on Newtonmore Golf Course and I took advantage of a few warm days to have two leisurely walks through the golf course and along the Wildcat trail. I managed to find all five kinds of orchids but have not yet gone looking for the Frog Orchids which are much harder to find.

Orchids, left to right: Fragrant, Northern Marsh, Greater Butterfly and Heath Spotted

The distribution of orchids was a bit different this year. There are several Greater Butterfly-orchids on the top golf course quite near the extensive sewage pipe works which has completely destroyed the grassland alongside the track. Luckily the golf course rough on the other side of the track seems to be flourishing.

 There are plenty of orchids on the lower golf course in the rough especially alongside number 16 fairway where I was astonished to find 52 small white orchids which is the most I’ve ever seen and they are spread widely. Small white is quite a scarce orchid. If you are looking for it – it’s small and white! It is quite easy to confuse with Alpine Bistort (Persicaria vivipara) from a distance. Alpine Bistort has small flowers at the top but little bulbils lower down so that it can either reproduce from seed if the flowers get pollinated or vegetatively as the little bulbils will grow into new plants when they fall.

\Left:Alpine  Bistort, Right: Small-white orchid 

There were plenty of insects to do the pollinating. The heads of the Hogweed were covered with little flies:

and the Melancholy Thistle had attracted the bees which were completely covered in pollen.

I also found a weird -looking fly lying in the grass beneath a Birch tree. It seemed rather groggy and allowed me to take pictures of it without flying away. It was about 2 cm across and had a distinctive yellow bar across the top of its abdomen and had yellow antennae and legs as well.

 

 It was easily identified by Google lens as a Birch Sawfly (Cimbex femoratus). They spend most of their life as larvae and only last eight days as flies so I suspect this one was on its eighth day! You do have to be careful with Google lens and checkout its suggestions but it can be helpful to know where to start.