Not-so-sweet Honeysuckle

A few years ago several Skye stalwarts botanised the mean streets of Portree as part of the Urban Flora of Scotland Project ('urban' being any town with a population over 1000. Skye has two such towns). My own survey area consisted two monads to the north of the town centre and today I recalled finding a spot behind bushes that had been used as a dumping ground by the houses opposite. In particular, I recalled a large amount of Pick-a-back Plant growing beneath trees and I 'needed' Pick-a-back Plant for my yearlist. With an hour to kill in Portree, I parked up and took a wander down towards the area in question. Pretty soon I was ducking beneath trees and entered a small dell full of alien plants. Mostly it was wall to wall Pick-a-back Plant, but also a lot of Montbretia, some small Rhododendrons, plenty of Yellow Archangel and the like. A typical scenario here on Skye, green waste fly-tipping is not seen as an issue whatsoever. Personally speaking, I would love to slap the householders with a huge fine and then make them dig up the results of their illegal dumping. Happily (for them) it's a good thing that I'm not in a position to demand any such punishments. 

I spied a small growth of honeysuckle, twining its way up a brash pile. The lanceolate leaves immediately put me in mind of Henry's Honeysuckle, though they seemed rather too pale and limp for that species. I've only ever seen Henry's Honeysuckle at a site in Lochgilphead in Argyll and that was back in 2022. I did briefly revisit it in 2024 so that Ghostie could tick it, but from memory it was a far more vigorous and robust plant. Of course, the plant in front of me was a mere youngster, maybe it will bulk up as time progresses. I took a few phone pics and a sample sprig before wandering back to the car to consult my copies of Stace and Poland. 

Stace, in this instance, was of no use to me at all. Stace is all about the flowering parts and my plant didn't have any. Poland was much better but, for once, it failed to lead me to a confident conclusion. I suspect the plant is just too immature to identify. It's definitely not Henry's Honeysuckle, the petiolar ridge and distribution of hairs on the leaf are completely wrong. Japanese Honeysuckle seems a better fit, but I've never seen it with leaves anywhere near as lanceolate as this. 

Just so's you know, I've mostly written this post as a memory jog for myself. If I'm reading this in a couple of year's time I might say "oh yeah, I better go see if that honeysuckle is flowering and identifiable yet!" However, if you tune in later this year I may have reached an identity for you. 

In other news, I'm well over 400 species for the year so far. I'm hoping to smash 500 species by the end of the month, that would be pretty cool I feel. I've yet to leave the northern half of Skye this year, my life thus far comprises an area 30 miles top to bottom and considerably less than 20 miles across. I'm not planning to impose any silly rules upon myself regards staying on Skye throughout, I have far too many mainland plant targets in mind for that to ever happen.

I live beneath the red dot and have yet to leave the marked area this year 

Temperatures are due to reach the heady heights of 6°C this weekend, I may well fire up the light trap and see if I can nudge the odd moth or dipteran into the trap. Watch this space to find out!

Microscopic Life

I'm on a bit of a mission to add a minimum of one new species to my yearlist every day, purely to see how long I can keep it going for before I blank. Yesterday the weather was vile, sideways rain and not at all warm. But my stupid little mission forced me out in an effort to find that 'something new' for the day. I didn't go far. About quarter of a mile north of me is a boggy area with a couple of shallow Sphagnum pools hidden amongst stands of Soft-rush. I took three empty tubes and headed out into the weather, intent on collecting a water sample. The other two tubes were back up, just in case I found something else to collect. I sloshed north, scooped some water into a pot, eyeballed a pink Sphagnum, wondered if I could ID it, and popped a bit into a second pot. Then sloshed straight back indoors again.

I thoroughly enjoy pipetting a few drops of pondwater onto a microscope slide and then systematically scanning the contents through my microscope. I have a little Apex Practitioner microscope which is actually perfectly fine for much of the time. I do need to upgrade though, maybe the Apex Scholar would be a sensible option. I'd like to start measuring some of the smaller objects and an oil immersion lens would be very handy too. Plus a binocular rather than monocular model would be a lot more comfortable to use for extended periods of time. 

At the moment I simply hold my Olympus TG-7 to the eyepiece and take images that way. I turn the focus to manual on the camera, which stops it seeking something to focus on, then use the microscope's focus wheel to bring the image sharp in the camera. The depth of field in my microscope is incredibly narrow, sometimes I need to take several images at ever so slightly different focal lengths to capture a feature on the object I'm looking at. The auto-stacking mode of the TG-7 doesn't work in this configuration, a pity really as that's precisely what I need. It's a bit of a flaky technique, and the camera is handheld which will introduce movement, but it's the best I can do at the moment. Results are decidedly mediocre, as you can see for yourself. 

First up are a few desmids for you. These photosynthesising algae achieve their greatest numbers during the long days of summer, but a few individuals can still be found even now in midwinter. Desmid diversity seems very limited in my sample, I'm not sure if that's down to the site or due to the time of year. 

Micrasterias jenneri with a chain of Tabellaria behind it

Euastrum humerosum looking like a Gummy Bear standing to attention

Xanthidium armatum looking like a WWII naval mine

Netrium digitus the tiny floating cucumber

Desmids are single-celled algae, the paler area in the centre of the paired lobes is the cell nucleus. I still find it incredible that my cheap and chirpy microscope enables me to identify such tiny organisms with a high degree of confidence. 

Another group of single-celled algae that commonly occur in Sphagnum water samples are the diatoms. The identification of the vast majority of these is beyond the capabilities of my current microscope, but I can do a handful of them. One easy to recognise group are those of the genus Tabellaria, of which just four species occur in Britain. Should be easy? No, not really. 

Tabellaria flocculosa - the 'squarish-shaped' one

Tabellaria fenestrata - the dead cell at the bottom holds the clue!

Massive crop of image above

Tabellaria form chain-like colonies. Each individual in the chain exudes a type of glue from special pores in the frustule and links itself to its neighbour by a corner. In the image we can see several individuals that are joined at the corners, the glue can be seen as a blurry smudge between individuals. Note that the bottom individual is transparent, meaning it has died, and the glue holding it to its neighbour is starting to come undone. My thought is that the glue is produced whilst the diatom is alive and presumably deteriorates if not replenished? The dead individual can be seen to comprise three long segments. The middle segment has a tiny but distinct inward kink at either end, which allows us to name the species as Tabellaria fenestrata. The only one to form square-shapes is Tabellaria flocculosa, though it does sometimes extend to more of a rectangular shape. Identifying Tabellaria quadriseptata and Tabellaria hercynica are well beyond my capabilities for now.  

There were a few rotifers in the sample (I can't do those) and many exceedingly tiny whizzy things (can't do those either) plus a good number of testate amoeba liberally scattered throughout the sample. Most of these are too small for me to pick up the kind of detail necessary to run them to genus. But some of the larger or more bizarre ones are definitely doable. Here's a selection for you to squint at.

Galeripora (Arcella) discoides yep, it looks exactly like a doughnut

Centropyxis spinosa exhibiting a smaller aperture and more curved spines than C.aculeata

Planocarina carinata munching on some hapless small things

Despite the lateral bumps, this is also Planocarina carinata!

I love watching these amoebae, though a large degree of patience is required to catch one in action. The almost transparent pseudopodia move very slowly, reaching out from within the test and oozing outwards in the search for something to digest. Judging by the amount of food items visible inside many of the tests, they are highly efficient hunters. Or maybe they just take a very long time to digest anything.  

Very occasionally a 'huge' copepod will flash through the field of view, a startling thing indeed after an hour of slowly panning around a field of essentially stationary objects. What I don't find very often are tardigrades, possibly a good thing because I'm not able to identify them to species, but they're fun to watch as they slowly swim nowhere. 

 Hyalotheca dissiliens encased in a near transparent tube of thick mucilage

I still have plenty of water left in the tube, doubtless I'll pop a few more drops beneath the microscope over the next day or so. The pink Sphagnum that I grabbed as an afterthought turned out to be Sphagnum rubellum, determined by the shape and length of the stem leaves and microscopically by the elongated and tightly packed cells in the basal corners of the stem leaves. It's been fairly recently split out as a full species after having previously been known as a form of S.capillifolium. Nick Hodgetts showed me capillifolium a few years back (he wrote the Sphagnum book, I take his word when he tells me what Sphagnum I'm looking at!) but Sphagnum rubellum itself is a lifer for me. 

So, a rainy day and a fifteen minute escapade into it has given me quite a few new species for my yearlist and, most surprisingly, four lifers for my PSL! Happy days indeed.

Rare Millipede

Yesterday I wrote this: 

I've yet to find a centipede for the year, but I'm slowly working my way through the millipedes with this being the 6th species found so far. Nationally, there are many species of myriapod that I've yet to see, so it's definitely worth my while taking the time to key more of these through until I become more familiar with them.

Tonight I did my usual headtorch safari around part of the hotel garden and suddenly realised I'd never checked beneath the twenty or so boulders that are embedded in soil near the base of some trees. I heaved a few over, they really are quite well embedded, and spotted a small black staphylinid and a small white millipede. They both went into a pot and the first one to be checked was the millipede. 

It was entirely white and around 6mm long. I noticed that the first abdominal segment failed to overlap the head and very almost bunged it away as being a juvenile Chordeuma (immature and hence not identifiable to species, but presumably C.proximum as per yesterday's examples). And then I noticed the complicated-looking gonopods with a couple of hooks on them. Hang on...so it must be a fully grown male millipede. A very small, all white male millipede at that. Blimey, and to think I almost discarded it! I opened up the millipede key and began. A closer look revealed rounded bumps or humps on the 'shoulders' of the body segments, I've never seen that before. Partway through the key to 'snake' millipedes, it dropped out as a 'flat-back' millipede. Oh right! I was very definitely in new territory with this individual. 

This is the only meaningful image I took of the entire animal. Length is 6mm

The ocelli were essentially invisible, though the key told me they were there. I adjusted the angle until finally I think I saw two, possibly three ocelli. Not at all easy. Initially I would have said it was a blind species, but the two choices given were a brownish animal with at least 10 ocelli arranged in a triangle and usually over 9mm in length, or a creamy white/amber coloured animal, less than 9mm and a single line of up to six ocelli.  

The next part of the key asked if the ocelli were distinct and arranged in a line of 4-6, or were there up to 3 ocelli arranged in a line and very difficult to see. Er yeah, I'll go with the latter option! The key then advised that two difficult-to-key species drop out here and that novices should seek the help of an expert. So I messaged Mark Telfer, asking if he had any pics of the gonopods for the two species other than the illustrations shown in the key (I'd already looked and failed to find images online). 

In the meantime I continued with the key. Essentially I had to dissect out the gonopods and align them in a certain position, allowing me to see if there were one or two pairs of projections at the front edge. The key went on to say that individuals of both species display variation in the form of the gonopods, and that even experts may find them difficult to distinguish from one another. Well I'd come this far, I wasn't being quailed by the wording in the final couplet of the key. 

Probably the best of a bad bunch of images that I managed

It is very difficult to reproduce in an image what your eyes see when you look down the barrel of a microscope. Partly because things resolve a lot easier using binocular vision, partly because you lose the 3D effect in an image and partly because the eye separates the various small parts as being individual pieces, whereas the camera just takes an image of whatever is in focus. It's frustrating, so you will just have to take my word that, at certain orientations, the various parts of the gonopods lined up and matched pretty closely the diagram for Brachychaeteuma bagnalli and didn't really resemble Brachychaetaeteuma bradeae very well at all, these being the two options given. 

Penultimate stage of specimen preparation

I successfully dissected out the gonopods (well, I basically destroyed the body segments all around them until all that remained were the gonopods and a fragment of the body segment housing them) and then orientated them until I could see them from directly in front as well as from above. The pair of large, hooked 'arms' were pretty obvious from most angles, but the pair of lateral extensions were surprisingly tricky to see until the orientation was just right. Then they were easy to see. I had the camera ready to take a picture, when a gust of wind came through the window and blew everything away. It's still gusting now, so much for the calm conditions of earlier. The gonopods, at a guess, measure about a third of a mm in diameter. I looked, trust me I looked, but I just couldn't find them. 

Happy with my identification of Brachychaeteuma bagnalli, I checked BMIG and the Blower (1985) key, which had better illustrations than the key I was using, and then added the species to my PSL. It was only at that point that I realised that Steve Gregory, the myriapod god himself, is the only other lister to have recorded the species! Oh gosh, Mark Telfer hasn't seen it and there I was asking him for images of it. That's pretty shocking, I do hope I haven't offended him. 

Anyway, that's seven species of millipede for the year so far. Still no centipedes, but they'll come soon enough I'm sure. My yearlist has crept up incrementally in the last 24 hours to 274 species (a noisy Barn Owl being the latest, about 20 minutes ago) compared to Ghostie's 115 species. My car is in the garage tomorrow, having the rear shockers replaced. Unbelievably, the rear box on the exhaust fell off today. I've notified the garage, but there's no way they'll have the part for tomorrow. Probably be another five week wait. Hopefully they can weld a collar on, or something, until a new one arrives and they can fit me in. I'm going to just wander the streets while I wait, see if I can't scrape up another 26 species to make it a nice round 300 in a week.  

A Feet Up Kind of Day

I've had a very relaxing day today. I wandered around the garden for a while, found a few more bits n' bobs for my yearlist, several of which were full on Patch Ticks, then I sat upstairs and did a spot of sea-watching from the sofa. With a coffee. I haven't seen a single person today, it's been lovely.

This is the life!

Yesterday's gull-fest has disappeared, a mere 20-30 Kittiwakes sheltering in the loch, plus singletons of Razorbill, Red-throated Diver, Black-throated Diver and the first Little Grebe that I've seen here. The grebe was diving just offshore and came up with a small, elongated fish. I'm tempted to guess at 15-spined Stickleback but sadly the images on my camera just aren't good enough to say. Maybe I'll catch one in a net instead. 

Impossible to say. I only know it was a fish by the way it was wriggling!

The garden wander turned up very little; a handful more plants, some bryophytes from a rotten log, a couple of millipedes and a snail from under logs, two lichens and a couple of expected bird species. I'm very much looking forward to the snow disappearing and the ground thawing out so that I can look for a few more plants and inverts. The light trap has stayed off lately, pointless even thinking about it until the air temperature is above zero and the winds drop off.

I found a Chordeuma millipede under a stone yesterday. It was a female, which means it's not possible to distinguish which of the two British species it belongs to (unless you barcode it, I suppose). Barcoding aside, an examination of a male's gonopods is required to see which species you have. Today I found some more, two were male and so were duly popped into a pot, as was a smaller species which turned out to be the very common Proteroiulus fuscus. I had to despatch the two Chordeuma millipedes in order to check the precise shape and ornamentation of various appendages of the gonopods. Here's an image of the relevant part, which is smoothly curved and not pointed and triangular

My image above and the feature marked on the key's illustration below

The key is quite a few years old now, Chordeuma proximum is known from various parts of western Scotland, including the Inner Hebrides where I am. I've yet to find a centipede for the year, but I'm slowly working my way through the millipedes with this being the 6th species found so far. Nationally, there are many species of myriapod that I've yet to see, so it's definitely worth my while taking the time to key more of these through until I become more familiar with them. 

Right, back to having fun-times with the bryophytes... Several of the larger trees here have mats of Hypnum cascading down them. The likely options are Hypnum cupressiforme and Hypnum andoi. I couldn't see any capsules, meaning I had to have a look at the shape of the cells both mid-leaf and at the basal angles. Technically, the shape of the leaf is also useful but potentially a bit ambiguous. So I stuck to checking cell shape. 

Ignore the black circle - it's an air bubble

The darker, squared-off section is the basal corner of a leaf. Behind it are the long mid-leaf cells of a second leaf. As you can see, the cells in the basal angle are blocky-looking, a bit irregularly shaped and almost touch each other. And the very narrow mid-leaf cells are sinuous and run close to each other. Comparing to the illustrations in my keys, these conform to Hypnum cupressiforme and not H.andoi. It's an incredibly common moss on tree trunks, so it's no surprise at all to have it confirmed as cupressiforme. 

Riccardia palmata - wave your hands in the air like you just don't care

I've been very casually noting any plants I find in flower this month. I didn't do a New Year's Plant Hunt as run by the BSBI, though I have done so before. Thus far I've seen Gorse, Daisy, Groundsel and a single Lesser Celandine in flower. All yellow flowers. I've noticed this preponderance for yellow before, maybe because the earliest pollinators to fly in the year are typically the Diptera, and they are strongly attracted to yellow. As are bumblebees, which also fly earlier than most other pollinators. Anyway, pics of each below.

I've just noticed what appears to be a patch of Aphanes next to the Daisy, I didn't see that at the time. That's a yeartick, whichever one it is! My yearlist stands at 268 species, 127 of these being on Patch. I'll try to make time each day this week to get out for at least an hour or so, even if it's only headtorch safaris around the hotel grounds. I'm half-expecting and half-dreading flushing a Woodcock beneath the trees. Woodcock would be a full on Patch tick as well as a yeartick, but I don't want to blunder around accidentally flushing birds while the weather is so crap for them. They've enough issues to deal with at the moment without me booting them up. 

Tomorrow I'll finally have to crack on and do some painting. It's been great taking the last four days off (though I normally have the weekends off anyway), but if I want to earn some money I'll need to put the hours in. Hey ho, it was good while it lasted! 

Bryophyte Club

It snowed again overnight, meaning most plantlife was covered and I didn't much fancy my chances finding inverts. So I decided to have another look at woodland tree trunks in search of the Fairy Beads that I failed to locate yesterday. I needed to grab some food, so hit the co-op in Portree and figured I'd check the woods a mile or so away whilst in the area. But before that I dropped in to Bayfield to check the gull flock. No white-wingers yet (though they're turning up along the Outer Hebs now, so it won't be long until we get some here), and then I made a tit of myself.

There's a bit of a steep slope down into Bayfield and upon trying to leave all I managed to do was wheelspin in the snow and slide backwards. I tried again, with a bit more welly this time, and slid backwards once again. Shite. I then took a pretty serious run up and still failed to reach the top. Just then Neil the postman turned up, checking the gulls for a white-winger would you believe. Neil is ace, he knows every road, track and alleyway on Skye. "Drive down that path, it leads into the main car park and you'll make it up the exit slope I'm sure" was his advice. So yeah, I drove down the path and escaped out the car park. Good knowledge Neil! 

I headed for the woodland behind Cuillin Hills Hotel and soon headed off the path and into the wilds.

'The wilds'

Ok, so it's unlikely to harbour wolves, bison or moose, but this is Portree after all. And I was after liverworts on tree trunks, not wolves. I quite fancied my chances. A surprisingly short while later and...

This is a colony of Microlejeunea ulicina, otherwise known as Fairy Beads

Microlejeunea ulicina is tiny but quite easy to recognise once you manage to spot it. However, there are a couple of lookalike liverworts, so I collected this sample to check it properly beneath the microscope once back indoors. I had a check of various trunks, finding a good number of liverwort and moss species. Sadly I had no idea what most of them were, I'm really pretty weak on bryophyte identification. I recognised the warty perianths of Frullania dilatata, that's a ubiquitous species up here and one that I do know. I grabbed a brownish Frullania and popped it in a pot, could be one of two or three species and again I'd need the microscope to tell. 

I restricted myself to collecting just one other liverwort species. Any more than about three or four samples and I tend to lose the will to live. In small enough doses I can just about handle them. But first, I needed to check those Fairy Beads beneath the microscope.

Confirmed as Microlejeunea ulicina due to the presence of bilobed underleaves

I think I'm right in saying that this is Britain's smallest liverwort. The Frullania was substantially larger and yet gave me more of a run around than the Fairy Beads had due to what initially appeared to be conflicting features. Frullania stems are covered with flattened overlapping leaves, so that from above you can't see the stem at all. On the stem itself are a further set of leaves, cunningly known as underleaves. These underleaves are notched and the depth of the notch varies between the species. Coupled with this are the colour of the main leaves and the presence or absence of enlarged oil cells in them. These oil cells can be scattered, may briefly form a row, or may be present as a strong line. My underleaves said Frullania tamarisci which has a curved row of oil cells running across the leaf surface. Except the leaves didn't have any oil cells, never mind in a row. Eventually, I found some leaves exhibiting the required row of oil cells. Why are liverworts so bloomin' difficult, even a supposedly easy genus was giving me stress palpitations!

It took me a long while to find those rows of oil cells. I couldn't see others on further leaves

The final sample that I took back for microscopic examination was quite easy to suss thanks to a very obvious confirmatory feature - a whacking big band of colourless cells running along the length of the leaf, nice! 

This is Diplophyllum albicans, a common liverwort and one that I've seen before

I soaked the Diplophyllum albicans in water, seeing as it had shrivelled up whilst in transit. Then I popped it onto a microscope slide and squished it beneath a coverslip, the results are the images above. I don't much care for the air bubbles (or the background), but I can see about making a better job of it next time. 

Shit, did I just say next time? Oh dear. Er, I mean oh yay!

My PSL for the year is coming along pretty well. I'm up to 253 species compared with Ghostie's 114 species. Of course that means nothing, he pulls the tortoise and hare trick every year and always wins. Let's see if I run out of steam too early this year. I still fancy my chances (considering it's day 3 out of 365...) 

First lifers of 2026

It was a beautifully crisp, clear morning today. I (briefly) contemplated doing some painting, then headed out to see what I could find. It was still far too windy to be worth attempting any whale spotting, so I headed towards the woods at Glenbernisdale with a mind to checking for lichens. Options are easy if you're a pan-species lister.

The road out of Greshornish looking far more lovely than it usually does!

I parked up and entered the woods at Glenbernisdale, brand new notebook in hand, merrily scribbling the names of various plants, lichens and invertebrates as I encountered them. Not too many invertebrates, to be fair. I found a few millipedes and a snail beneath one log, a couple of beetles and more millipedes beneath another, but mostly I was gawping at the lichens and bryophytes, thinking that one day I really will come here and do them justice. For now, I yearticked the ones I knew, puzzled over the ones I used to know and just admired the ones I had no clue about. So yeah, a lot of gawping and admiring, not an awful lot of identifying. 

Parmeliella thriptophylla overgrowing mosses

Sticta canariensis amongst mosses

The usual Atlantic Rainforest cohort of Lobaria, Pannaria, Pectenia, Ricasolia, Normandina and Sticta were all duly noted and greeted. I tried to find the miniature liverwort Microlejeunea ulicina, but had to make do with rather a lot of Radula complanata instead. I'll come back another day and try again, it's ordinarily quite easy to find here. Parmeliella thriptophylla was a new lichen for me, my 160th apparently and my first lifer of the year. Lots of work required if I ever want to reach two hundred lichens though.

I began slowly heading back towards the hotel. A quick call into Brookside added the fungus Phyllosticta cordylines to the tally, seen growing on the living leaves of a Cordyline Palm in someone's garden. No I'm not counting the palm itself, but yes I am counting the fungus growing on it. Go figure :) Other additions to the tally whilst there included Coal Tit, Treecreeper, Honeysuckle and Sorbaria sorbifolia amongst others. 

Edinbane was the next port of call where I made a point of visiting the sprawling patches of False Londonpride naturalised in woodland there. It's the only place I've ever seen it, though Londonpride itself occurs quite widely across parts of Skye. I suspect it may be overlooked, mistaken for it's near cousin. 

Finally I headed towards Dunvegan, stopping to explore the quarry there for an hour or so. Happily the quarry offered a degree of protection from the wind, though some of the icy scum I was walking over gave way and saw me plunge my foot into ankle-deep freezing cold water. Fab. The quarry itself can be a profitable hunting ground, it's been used as a dumping ground by the Dunvegan Estate. Lots of old appliances, rusty bed springs and falling apart machinery, but a weird selection of plants too. I scooped a few specialities, White-stemmed Bramble, a few Cotoneasters, another Chilean Hard-fern to complement yesterday's colony. I also spotted a lovely little clump of Polypodium interjectum, I've already done the microscopy to confirm my initial ID

Intermediate Polypody. Just too cute!

Back indoors I totted up the ol' yearlist, put it online and realised I was just 5 species short of 200. Ghostie was obviously paying attention for within minutes he messaged me in apocalyptic outrage, how the heck had I added so many yearticks when I was supposed to be indoors painting guestrooms. Aah well, the thing is...

I later nipped outside with my headtorch, hoping to secure the necessary five extra species. I jammed a couple of liverworts on a fallen log, plus some Turkeytail Fungus next to them. Then I wandered down to the rocks just above the shore where Sea Slater and Sea Bristletail quickly fell, along with English Stonecrop and Black Spleenwort. Boom, that's the 200 barrier smashed. An hour later I was itching for just a couple more species (PSL-addict that I am) and figured I could easily find a woodlouse or two. Yep, beneath a log were two Porcellio scaber and then I lifted a board of ply that has been laying in the grass for the past week or so. There were three small flies, which quickly ended up in a glass tube. Two were spear-winged flies of the genus Lonchoptera, but I had no idea what the third was. It looked quite leggy and had patterned wings, that's all I could tell for now. My fingers were cold, I headed inside and out of the wind. 

Popping the flies beneath my microscope, I realised one of the Lonchoptera was a male, the genital capsule is important in the ID process, so I hinged it out and pinned it in position to dry. One for tomorrow (edit: they were both Lonchoptera lutea). The mystery fly turned out to be a spectacular little thing, all 3.5mm or so of it. I thought it was a very tiny Dolichopodidae, but it turned out to be one of the Empididae, which maybe makes more sense. I didn't recognise it as anything I'd seen before, and merrily began keying it through to family, then genus and then to species. A rewarding time at the microscope, I really should make myself do this more often. Some keys are a complete pig to understand and navigate, others are vague and ambiguous, leaving you uncertain that you've chosen the correct route. The keys I used worked like an absolute dream, and this key was the one that got me straight to species, no messing around, no fuss, it just worked well. 

Neck joins head at a level halfway up the eyes - a feature in the keys

A distinct gap between the cheeks and the jowls - another feature in the keys

A few wispy hairs at the rear edge of the mesopleuron  - an important feature in the key

2 or 3 large spines at the base of the fore femora - check!

Wing clouds above the cross-veins, yep! 

All of these features, plus a whole lot more, all led me to a confident identification of Clinocera fontinalis, a small fly that is supposed to be active in the spring to autumn, yet has records for all months of the year according to the NBN charts. Mine was certainly active up until last week, because that's when the maintenance guy left the sheet of ply laying on the grass. Happily, there are several Skye records for the species too. I hate it when you key something only to discover that the nearest population is 500 miles to the south, time to key it again! 

So, a new lichen and a new fly. Two lifers in the first two days of the year. Not sure how long I'll be able to keep that average up for, but if the weather is good tomorrow, I think I'll maybe skip work once more. The boss did say to me "you're free to come and go as you like". Not sure how far I can push that.

This made me smile as I began inputting my yearlist onto the website. Help conservation huh? 

Phew, I nearly gave away Ghostie's real name there! He'd never have talked to me again

Hola 2026

As planned, I donned a headtorch and took a quick wander outside to kickstart my pan-species yearlist into action. Stepping outside, I saw a harvestman on the wall. Well that didn't take long to get the list started, all of about one second whilst still stood in the doorway!

Oligolophus hanseni - species number 1 of 2500+

A quick skirmish around the hotel walls, windows and doorframes added numerous Amaurobius similis and Zygiella x-notata, plus a couple of beefy Steatoda nobilis.  I still can't get over these being here, I keep finding new ones too. I think I must have counted about ten individuals by now. I'd turned my light trap on a few hours earlier and was keen to see what it had attracted. It didn't take long to confirm that nothing at all had been attracted, that'll be thanks to the rain and hail showers that had passed through. I potted a small nematoceran from a wall, probably a Trichocera. One to check later this evening. I eventually turned in sometime after 2am and woke up pretty late. A second check of the trap revealed an ongoing lack of anything inside or around it, then I hit the road.

Up at the crack of... erm... 9am!

I like to let my car idle for a couple of minutes when the temperatures are low. And I'm glad I did today, for all of a sudden a flock of Shags flew into view and pitched onto the sea right in front of the hotel. I think my previous high count was three. Ahead of me now sat a raft of forty six! Presumably taking shelter from the northerly winds which have whipped the open seas into a cauldron of waves.

Part of the raft of 46 Shags. Nice!

I didn't intend to go far today, I fancied a look out to sea near Dunvegan, then maybe loop down to Struan area and back up again. First up, I figured I'd check the mudflats below the main carpark in Dunvegan. A few gulls and ducks for the yearlist, then in flew a noisy flock of Greylag Geese. I gave them a quick scan and was pleased to note a pair of Pink-feet sat amongst them. Most Pink-feet passed through a few months back and there seem to be very few loitering on Skye this winter. Nice.

The light was not great...

I headed north a couple of miles and very quickly abandoned thoughts of scanning for whales, the sea was far too lumpy with white waves as far as the eye could see, plus the wind buffeting my scope would have made for difficult viewing. I actually had a message come through on the local cetacean WhatsApp group from a guy who was watching a Humpback. He said the sea was so rough he could only see it when it did full breaches! Fairplay to him for even trying. I'll try again in a few days when the sea state improves. 

Original and cropped versions

This big fella was soaring (as majestically as these things ever can...) northwards as I was driving southwards. I stopped the car in the middle of the road and simply hung out of the window, clicking away like a loon on the camera. White-tailed Eagles are often ponderous fliers, laborious even, but they can cover a good distance in a very short time when they want to and this individual was definitely not hanging around to have its picture taken. 

Back at Dunvegan, I had a quick stroll around a bit of woodland that is good for ferns, realised that I'd left my waterproofs indoors as the rain started, then sheltered behind a tree trunk as the rain suddenly became hail. I grabbed a frond of Polypodium, noting the spent sori on the underside, a bit of microscopy will (hopefully) confirm the species involved. Oh hey, maybe you should click on my brand new for 2026 Blog and read all about it there! 

Struan was a bit of a whitewash as numerous hail showers passed through in quick procession, but the count of 49 Lapwings on the mud was pretty good by Skye standards. 

Back indoors I did a quick tally of my nascent yearlist and discovered that it was already over a hundred species. I think I'll keep a Skye yearlist and a Patch yearlist too. No real idea of target numbers just yet. Well, clearly I'm aiming for 2500+ for the year in it's entirety as my Challenge with Ghostie. Maybe 1200 species for Skye and 500 for the Patch? No idea, I'll give it some thought.

Nice to know Moles survived the flooding. Of course, only the truly desperate would yeartick soil as a Mole

Right, I have a suspected Trichocera to look at (edit: it was a male Trichocera major) and a polypody frond to identify. Hope you've managed to get out and see some stuff for yourselves today. Here's hoping for a bit less wind and hail over the next few days!