Thursday, August 06, 2020
A "mermaid's purse" was found wedged in a pool at low tide a little way up the Ullapool River.
It was about 7 centimetres long, and from research I've done online it appears to be the egg sac of a lesser spotted dogfish (Scyliorhinus canicula) also known as small spotted catshark. The curled tendrils at one end are for attaching the sac to seaweeds or rocks. This sac is torn on both sides, and there's no knowing whether the baby shark actually thrived and emerged successfully or not.
Yesterday we crossed the country to Cromarty. The osprey was at Udale Bay; to the right are some redshanks (foreground) and some Sandwich terns (background). The cow doesn't seem bothered. Everything was very distant!
Looking out the back one morning a few days ago with bleary sinusitis eyes, I saw something orange fluttering about among the buddleia flowers. I grabbed the camera but couldn't manage to get a picture in focus before the insect disappeared. (The window was also bleary!)
The orange wings suggested hummingbird hawkmoth, but it didn't seem large enough. What bodywork can be made out looks more like narrow-winged bee hawkmoth (assyntwildlife has a picture of one) but I'll never know for sure.
Which reminds me: Back in July 2014, Greger spotted some bees mating in the dunes at Achnahaird, and I identified them as northern colletes (Colletes floralis). But the assyntwildlife site has photos of another species of this genus (Colletes succinctus) and now I'm not so sure. The two species look very much alike, so I won't feel too bad if I've got this wrong; but according to other websites the northern colletes is more likely to be found on the Western Isles than on the mainland of Scotland - although the habitat (sandy dunes and machair) was just right.
// posted by Christine @ 11:24 AM 
