After my visit to Teesside, I set off again in a Westerly direction on Thursday.
Plan A was to catch up with the fritillaries at Mabie Forest near Dumfries as I had done last year at about this time last year with some success.
Unfortunately the good weather had already broken in South West Scotland to be replaced by dull and windy conditions so that not a single fritillary was seen. In fact there were hardly any pollinators at all and the only one that appeared regularly was the speckled yellow moth.
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| Speckled Yellow |
We encountered exactly 15 of them all told.
The only other two items of note seen were harder to identify and I was initially only able to find suggested genera.
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The only UK representative of the latter genus is the dusky marble moth. which can however be confused with the dark strawberry tortrix so you can take your pick...
However Oedemara Virescens, the false blister beetle, is common in the South of Scotland and so seems a good bet. Anything rather than another 'impossible to say' verdict!
On Friday I returned to England in rather better weather to take part in a course on conducting survey counts near Hadrian's Wall with the Butterfly Conservation "Making Peatlands Work for Lepidoptera" project.
The practical session was a bit of a mixed bag in that we only saw one of our target species - a total of five green hairstreak - in a one hour session. But we did see some interesting things including two bees I was pleased to have definite sightings of.
Unfortunately I was busy changing my hearing aid and only got a quick glimpse of the first one - a moss carder bee, which was thought to be a queen starting a nest on the edge of our marked walk. I may have seen this on a couple of previous occasions but have not been able to confirm.
In terms of butterflies there were a few small heath (first for me this year) on the borders of the site we were surveying but I was supposed to be counting large heath and duly registered a nil return! A few large butterflies were seen in flight but were thought to be painted ladies. Otherwise we only saw whites in flight and the only one I saw close up was a green-veined white.
On the other hand we did find a couple of caterpillars.
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Also seen was a nice example of the Silver Y Moth which was captured in a bug box.
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| Silver Y Moth |
However the best for me was the last - a heath bumble bee, which I definitely have never seen before:
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| Heath Bumble Bee |
It was also good to see that numerous peatland flower species were doing well including hare's tail cotton grass, common cotton grass and cross-leaved heath. There were probably others but plants were not for me a priority for the day.
