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 After returning from Berlin, I was blessed with both glorious weather and the return of my luggage which had been lost for a week! The sunshine meant I saw more butterflies, some were old favourites like the Peacock and Red Admiral, but also a new one for me, the Speckled Wood which was resting on the ground by the Bowling Green.  I am afraid the photos are nothing special.  I tend to take photos to remind me of what I saw and when, so I can record them, and the phone is always handy and records the date as well.

Red Admiral on a fuchsia in my garden, Peacock on Devils-bit-scabious at Spey Dam, and Speckled Wood on the dirt at Newtonmore

On a walk along the Coffin Road (at the South end of Newtonmore), the young swallows were lining up on the fence wires.

Whilst my husband was at the dentist, I took a stroll to the old Primary School site which is now abandoned and overgrown and recorded a few plants. Some I think were remnants of "garden" planting at the school.  There were Everlasting Sweetpeas, and the Scotch Burnet Rose which used to have the lovely name of Rosa pimpinellifolia but is now called Rosa spinosissima.  It has ball shaped flowers and then black hips.  It is too late for the flowers but there were plenty of hips which are rather attractive with their ebony globes and red ends which are remnants of the original rose.

Scotch Burnet Rose

The pavement was covered in a succulent, Sedum acre, Biting stonecrop, which would have had yellow flowers but now just has the white starry sepals.

It had also decided to form a miniature garden in a bit of litter about the size of a pencil sharpener.

Taking advantage of the glorious weather, I drove up to Spey Dam and looked at some lichens on the rocks. The views were glorious.  And the lichens were interesting - but I have still to identify many of them, so that will have to wait for another time.

I was not the only visitor - plenty of walkers, and a previous explorer seemed to have left their trainers behind...

Bees and lookalikes

 At the moment, the garden is buzzing with bees. Especially bumblebees. These can be identified from the stripes on their body and the colour of the end of their abdomen. There is a good guide to the common species here

 

Of course, it is not that easy when they are flying around but I often find dead ones either in the sun room or just on the ground which makes it a bit easier to look closely. It is also confused by there being different sizes, with the Queen who is larger being seen first and then smaller male bees of similar patterns. Here are some of the ones I have found in the last week.

2 cuckoo bees and a white-tailed bumble bee

Important note: On submitting this photo to an insect expert, I find I am not very good at identifying bees! So take any species names as guesses...

On the right of the photo is a white-tailed bumblebee which is pretty common in my garden. The two bees to the left are cuckoo bees. They do not bother to make their own nest but lay their eggs in the nest of another bumblebee which then raises the cuckoo grubs as if they were its own. Each type usually resembles the bumblebee that it takes advantage of and looks pretty similar to it. They never have pollen baskets on their legs because they have no young to feed, and they are usually not as hairy as normal bumblebees.

A Drone-fly

The next insect in the photo above looks as though it could be a bee but in fact it is a hoverfly.

I have no idea what the advantage is for this fly to look like a honeybee.

Apologies for the poor photograph, as this seemed to be the only one I have of the orange tip butterfly. This one was taken at Nethy Bridge this weekend. I have seen lots of orange tip butterflies in my garden, and if you can see the orange tips they are male. The females lay their eggs on Honesty, of which I have lots in my garden, and I was about to pull the plants up before they self seed but now I will leave them and see if any little orange caterpillars appear. 

A very botanical weekend

The beautiful sunny weather last weekend was ideal for some botany activities I had planned. On the Saturday, I took a group of people from the Inverness Botany group up Glen Banchor to look at lichens.  Our first stop was an old dry stone wall by the first cattle grid.  This has so many different lichens on it that you could consider it as a lichen hunter's heaven - or hell - as it is covered in crustose species that I can't identify! I had picked out some of the easier ones to spot and put them on a help sheet:

 Even then, you have to get close up and personal when trying to see the features.

A hand lens, x10, or a little device that clips on your phone can really help you to see the details.

Here are two favourites (anything with blood in the name seems to be popular!):

Blood spot lichen (Ophioparma ventosa) growing on the stone wall

Bloody Heart Lichen (Mycoblastus sanguinarea) growing on a birch tree

The Bloody Heart Lichen has black fruits (apothecia) on it but when scratched, it is orangey-red underneath.  This is because you are exposing an  orange alga that coexists with the lichen  (Trentopohlia).  Most algae are green.  Lichens have (at least) two components: a fungus and an alga.  The fungus gives the lichen its name and provides a home for the alga. The alga produces food by photosynthesis.

On the Sunday, I joined in a Fungus Foray around Newtonmore with Prof Bruce Ing. I was amazed at how many fungi a discerning eye can spot.  There were over 50 around Loch Imrich! 

The undersides have a variety of gills and pores from which the spores fall. Apparently a fungus has to grow very accurately vertical as otherwise the spores would get stuck on the sides of the tubes etc when the spores are released!

Bruce also provided a different ID for the log pile fungus (post has been updated) as Lintneria trachyspora.

Bruce is an expert on Slime Moulds and Mildews and for the first time ever I was delighted that so many plants in my garden had mildew! Bruce took away lots of sample leaves, as apparently each family of plants has a different species of mildew ... who knew?

And finally, a visit to a friend's garden produced lots of sightings of butterflies, so here is one I have not shown before. A Peacock (Inachis io). The caterpillars feed on nettles, and the adult butterflies overwinter in sheds and outhouses.