Nature Notes from Argyll
(and occasionally other places)

Tue 27 Apr 2010 Loch Nell

A midweek recording visit to an oak, ash and hazel wood beside Loch Nell.  After months of nothing to look at but lichens, I chose this sheltered south-facing spot as likely to give people a sight of some early flowers and insects.  Wasn't sunny enough for butterflies but there were definitely some flowers - and lots of lichens!

Primroses flowering among the jumble of tree roots and boulders that form the steep loch side.
 

A place where it's easier to get to the loch shore.
 

The loch through oak with ivy.
 

A mauve flower of the usually white Wood Sorrel, and a nice find by Olya - galls of the wasp Trigonaspis megaptera on the dormant buds at the base of an oak.
 

Bones and fur left on moss partway up an oak.  My guess at the victim is a wood mouse.  The culprit will be a bird of some kind. Opposite: Tree Slug on moss on hazel.

A pinkish-brown resupinate fungus covering most of the underside of a large oak branch.  It would not give spores so I can't ID it.  My guess is a Peniophora species.
 

I know this one.  Witch's Butter.  On the same oak.
 

Blackthorn, another early flowerer.  Spring is really here.  It's been a long wait.
 

Still can't ignore the lichens in a wood like this.  There were a lot of Atlantic species on the oaks, ashes and hazels.  But here are some fine clumps of Ramalina fastigiata on Hawthorn.
 

A pair of stoneflies found on some loose wood by the loch shore and deftly caught in this plastic container.  I make them Diura bicaudata.  The male is the one with short wings.
 

Returning from the wood through open country, one of the earliest plants to flower is bog-cotton - in this case Harestail Bog-cotton.   This tiny freshwater clam was found by Olya in a small flush of water.  I'd never seen anything like it before but I think it's a Pisidium species, the Fingernail Clam.

All photos and other content copyright © Carl Farmer