The toughest day of 2010: Phratora polaris
24th June 2010: day three of my Scottish fieldwork campaign was to be a change from surveying for saproxylic beetles in woodland. I was headed to the summit plateau of Ruadh-stac Mòr, Beinn Eighe where Mike Morris (1970) discovered the leaf-beetle Phratora polaris new to Britain in 1966. Ruadh-stac Mòr lies within the massive (5,800 hectares) Torridon Forest SSSI.
male Phratora polaris
I had picked a day with a dry forecast but normal weather forecasts don’t apply in the mountains. I set off walking at 07.35 and it started raining 10 minutes later. Within another 40 minutes, I was out of mobile signal for the rest of the day. After a couple of hours of slog, I entered the fearsome Coire Mhic Fhearchair and picked my way across to the steep scree fan in the far corner, passing a few mangled bits of plane wreckage where some poor aviator met his doom. The scree was treacherous underfoot and I was ascending into cloud, with worsening rain and an increasingly strong wind. At the top of the scree, the route steepens into a narrow chute of shattered rocks, exposed and channelling a wicked gusting wind. No place to miss your footing. Step by careful step I got to the top. But there was no relief there – I found myself on a knife-edge ridge in ferocious gusting wind and driving rain. On hands and knees I found a cleft in a boulder and wedged myself half in. Put some dry layers on and decided I’d better abandon the survey and descend. But actually couldn’t face the chute again straight away so I decided to stroll up towards the summit plateau for a bit of respite before beginning my descent. Conditions had worsened further and I was soon reduced to lying full-stretch on the ridge-top path, clinging to the ground and holding my rain-spattered specs on to my face. I realised the ridge had broadened out and I could safely drop off the path to the leeward side, where I could get about in a crouch rather than a crawl.
The chute.
I soon realised I was treading on quality turf: dolomitic limestone grassland with Racomitrium moss, Sibbaldia Sibbaldia procumbens, Dwarf Cudweed Gnaphalium supinum and, more importantly, some patches of Dwarf Willow Salix herbacea, the foodplant of Phratora polaris. I found fragments of a dead Phratora polaris under the first stone I lifted, and a live one under the third stone. Flushed with success I carried out a standard 30-minute timed search but didn’t see any more of the leaf-beetles. All I saw were three Oreostiba tibialis (Staphylinidae), a common species of montane habitats, and one Patrobus septentrionis (Carabidae), found feeding on a pill-beetle Byrrhus fasciatus (Byrrhidae).
Habitat of Phratora polaris.
Phratora polaris was added to the British list (under the former generic name Phyllodecta) by Morris (1970) on the basis of specimens he found near the summit of Ruadh-stac Mòr, Beinn Eighe in 1966 and 1967. Morris (1970) also reported a specimen collected by A.M. Easton near the summit of Tom a’ Chòinich, Inverness-shire in 1968. Owen (1983) added two further sites in 1981: Sgurr Mor and An Teallach, both Wester Ross. Lyszkowski (1988) found the species in 1984 some 60 miles to the south of these sites near the summit of Beinn Achaladair, Argyllshire. Cox (2007) was able to map the species from 9 Scottish 10-km squares of the national grid and commented that the species is “probably under-recorded”. Quite frankly, it’s no wonder!
Once I’d made it down to the bottom of the scree, I found some shelter from the dreadful weather and took a break. Astonishingly, a Mountain Bumblebee Bombus monticola flew past my nook as though it were just a normal summer’s day. I was also filled with respect for the elderly Munro-bagger I passed on my way down – he was heading up in shorts!
Acknowledgement
These observations were made during SSSI condition monitoring work for Scottish Natural Heritage.
References
Cox, M.L. (2007). Atlas of the seed and leaf beetles of Britain and Ireland (Coleoptera: Bruchidae, Chrysomelidae, Megalopodidae and Orsodacnidae). Pisces, Newbury.
Lyszkowski, R.M. (1988). Phyllodecta polaris Schneider (Col., Chrysomelidae) in Argyllshire. Entomologist’s monthly magazine, 124, 71.
Morris, M.G. (1970). Phyllodecta polaris Schneider (Col., Chrysomelidae) new to the British Isles from Wester Ross and Inverness-shire, Scotland. Entomologist’s monthly magazine, 106, 48 – 53.
Owen, J.A. (1983). More about Phyllodecta polaris Schneider (Col., Chrysomelidae) in Britain. Entomologist’s monthly magazine, 119, 191.
Owen, J.A. (1988). A note on the life history of Phyllodecta polaris Schneider (Col.: Chrysomelidae). Entomologist’s record and journal of variation, 100, 91 – 92.
Counting sheep and lack of sleep
Just back from four days on Lundy Island (4 – 7 May) as part of a team of 13 carrying out the National Trust’s annual mammal monitoring; counting Soay Sheep, Feral Goats and Sika Deer, and estimating Rabbit numbers by counting droppings in quadrats. This was my fourth visit to Lundy but the first since about 1990.
In the twenty years since, my attitude to alien or feral wildlife has changed. I have no recollection of seeing Soays or goats on any previous visit and I think I just regarded them as beneath contempt. But I was pleased to see them on this visit and admired them for getting on with their lives, thanks to and in spite of humans.
Soay Sheep ewe and lamb
Billy Goat
We had easterly or south-easterly winds throughout which held the promise of some good migrant birds. There wasn’t much time for actual birding but we saw three Pied Flycatchers, 1 Spotted Fly and a Tree Pipit on the first day (Wednesday), as well as a few Willow Warblers, Chiff-chaffs, Whitethroats and a Sedge Warbler. Cloud cover and showers on Thursday morning brought a few more migrants in: a Collared Dove looking lost on the barren north of the island, a couple of Swifts, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 1 White Wagtail and two Cuckoo’s including this exhausted female.
Female Cuckoo sheltering
On Friday in fair weather, there was a smart male Black Redstart at the north end, and pushing up through the tussock sedges in South Combe revealed several warblers: 1 Sedge, 2 Chiff, 2 Whitethroat, 1 Blackcap and a Grasshopper. This is birding Shetland-style! Pausing to shed a layer at the top of the combe I realised I was standing on some Small Adder’s-tongue Ophioglossum azoricum, only the second time I have seen this plant (17+ plants at SS 13320 47236).
Small Adder's-tongue
By mid-afternoon, I’d also seen 1 Whimbrel, a fly-over Hawfinch, 1 Yellow Wagtail, 1 White Wagtail and heard 2 Tree Pipits. And having finished all my mammal monitoring duties, I headed to Millcombe Valley with high expectations. I found nothing unusual in Millcombe but conditions were beautifully calm and sunny and I could see the sea was starting to glass over inshore, so headed to the clifftops near the Castle for a seawatch.
Seawatching was a good move. I concentrated on checking through the assembling rafts of Manx Shearwaters. I was quite impressed to see over 200 birds by 17.00 though up to 700 had been seen recently: still a tiny fraction of the estimated 5,000 breeding pairs that rat-free Lundy now supports. Also a distant Great Northern Diver and at least 5 Porpoises racing along the tidal rip. And then … a big whale, side on. It surfaced three times and each time I saw the arch of its body first, which then flattened out a bit and eventually the sickle-shaped dorsal fin followed through. Now I was half-expecting to see a Minke Whale but with Minkes you don’t have to wait that long for the dorsal fin to roll through. This was a big whale and, despite my own incredulity, it must have been a Fin Whale! I have seen dozens in Biscay and several off California but never expected to see one in British waters. Fin Whale is Britain’s (and the world’s) second largest mammal (after Blue Whale) and from my perch on the clifftops I could also hear Britain’s smallest squeaking in the grass: Pygmy Shrew!
Fin Whale
I dedicated the last day (Saturday 7th) to entomology, sampling the endemic Lundy Cabbage in Millcombe Valley and looking for its specialist beetles. A Wood Warbler sang from the trees all day but I didn’t go and look for it (if I had, I might have seen the male Golden Oriole which I only heard about once we were on the boat!).
And finally, yes I did hear the Little Shearwater (see the June 2010 Lundy bird sightings). It called for about 15 minutes on the night of Wednesday 4th from 23.04. With the easterlies, the background noise from the wind and surf was very loud and, having been up since 02.00, I hit the sack soon after. Sadly, on the following night, the weather was no better and I didn’t hear the Little Shearwater at all from c. 23.30 to about midnight. And on the last night when I would have been able to stay out into the early hours, the beautiful weather that I’d been whale-watching in earlier broke down into a dramatic thunder storm. I took a drenching for the best part of an hour: the Manxies were still calling but I didn’t hear the Little. I had hoped that with three nights on the island I might be able to repeat Johnny Allan’s lucky sighting. But I’m lucky to have even heard it. Anyway, the experience of listening to the Manxies and seeing the occasional bird flap past in the starlight was really magical.
