Christine's walking & birds blog

We drove across to the east coast as the weather forecast was better, and enjoyed a walk along the lovely sandy beach at Dornoch. Several Sandwich terns, including a couple of juveniles, were lounging and preening with common gulls.


On the way home I requested (sounds formal!) a stop on Dornoch bridge to look for waders, but the tide had come in and swallowed up the mudflats. About to get back in the car, I spotted a small tortoiseshell butterfly, and as I watched it dance away over the splendid purple rosebay willowherb flowers I noticed a dark, pod-like shape on one of the plants. A slender black and yellow wasp (possibly an Amblyteles ichneumon wasp) was moving about on the stem just above it; and then I realised that the "pod" was a large caterpillar. It could be elephant hawk moth or small elephant hawk moth - but I think it's big enough for the former. Here, the wasp can be seen at the top of the picture.


It was difficult to photograph the caterpillar. I had to crawl under the crash-barrier, and stand on a slope which was littered with tissue paper (so probably a toilet stop), with a large patch of willow-herb waving in the breeze between me and the larva, and use full zoom on the camera. After a while, I realised it was slowly but surely moving down the stem, so I had to work quickly before it disappeared from view.

At one point, it had an orange soldier beetle crawling up it; but this probably simply mistook it for part of the plant. The question is, was the parasitic (or is it parasitoid?) wasp there for the caterpillar? It had no ovipositor so must have been a male; but a second parasitic wasp (unseen at the time but caught in flight in the photo below) clearly does have one. Does she have sinister intentions towards the caterpillar? Or is she waiting for it to pupate? I'm not sure at what stage they lay their eggs in the host that will feed their own young.


Researching at home, I discovered that willowherb is one of the host plants for elephant hawk moth, and that the horn towards the rear of its body is (possibly) diagnostic for this species rather than the smaller one. It wasn't easy to assess the size, as I couldn't get close to it.

This was the first time I've seen one of these creatures, and it made my day. Meanwhile, Greger had read the paper and was wondering whether we should take the "northern" route home, towards Lairg and via Oykel Bridge; but because there are long stretches of single-track road to negotiate, we decided against it - a decision we would later regret.

Because it wasn't until just after Contin that a road sign advised us that the A835 was closed west of Braemore Junction. Pulling into the cafe at Tarvie, Greger asked a lone police officer standing near his van with blue light flashing what the situation was, and got the reply that the road would probably not reopen until about 9 pm. There was nothing for it but to turn and retrace our journey back to Dingwall, and then drive the length of the Cromarty Firth and back to the Dornoch bridge. As we headed inland along the southern shore of the Dornoch Firth, I remarked that it was odd there seemed to be no-one else coming our way. A bit later, I commented that we would probably meet the odd car coming south from Ullapool. Ha!

It was along the stretches of single-track road just after this that we started to meet batches of traffic coming in the opposite direction - this was mostly from the Stornoway ferry. Then vehicles coming our way on the diversion started to catch us up; and a fine mess it all became.

Eventually we were on familiar ground, on the road (my favourite road) east of Ledmore Junction - but with more traffic than I've ever seen on it before! The traffic from the opposite direction had begun to thin out, while our "convoy" had grown; there was little opportunity to make way for a single oncoming vehicle with such a queue behind - and the unfortunate guy in the white van being passed by motorbikes had to wait in the passing-place for some time.


Later we would hear the sad news that a motorcyclist had died near Braemore Junction after a collision with a car, and that's why they'd closed the road. The ferry to Stornoway had delayed its sailing for two hours; and apparently those who also missed that were accommodated on the freight ferry at 3 am the following morning.