Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 2 began in pouring rain, which fortunately abated as we approached the beginning of recording. We did manage to scoop some epiphytes from an obliging elder while it was still pouring, but in the end the weather opened up and rarely bothered us again aside from overheating in the sunshine! We really made the most of it on day two with a return to town after 8 o'clock. I have to confess that towards the end I was happy to leave any moss-bothering to the more eager members of the crew while I and others who shall not be named lazed on the grass thinking of dinner. We made our way up Selcoth Burn in the shadow of Brokenback
Mountain Hill before following the easier ridge down back to the cars.
This was another cracking recording day with the tally up over 130, and we were undoubtedly rewarded for pushing on to the summit with a trio of
Tetraplodon and
Splachna. The efforts along the scree slope were not so abundantly rewarded but they did turn up some alpina - at least
Polytrichastrum alpinum and
Andrea alpina and I found some
Tritomaria quinquedentata, which was a nice one for me. I also started to develop my camera-handlens technique during this day and I'm sure I'll make a lot more use of it in future. It was very helpful when trying to work out
Gymnomitrion concinnatum, another of the species which we found above 500m. I had thought until I was writing this that the
Tetraplodon was a sheep poo species like the
Splachnums we found, but apparently it's a carnivore dung specialist, making it an even more intriguing and fulfilling trio to grab.
The story in pictures:
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| Food? Are you bringing food? |
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| A wet start |
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| Palustriella falcata |
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| Ctinidium |
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| A new Metgeria for me - conjugata |
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| Beautiful scenery all day |
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| Pogonatum aloides |
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| Preissia quadrata |
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| Jungermania sp. |
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| There were some splendid spreads, including this Philonotis |
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| We all screem for nice scree |
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| Polytrichastrum alpinum |
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| Stag's horn club moss |
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| More nice scenery |
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| Gymnomitrion concinnatum |
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| Tetraplodon mnioides |
Aside from bryophytes there was a healthy population of frogs up on the hill, and some interesting beetle action
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| One of the bigger ones |
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| Spectacular Dung beetle Geotrupes stercorarius |
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| Large click beetle - Ctenciera cuprea |
Also on Meadwsweet we found the rust
Triphragmium ulmariae
The Click Beetle's almost certainly Ctenciera cuprea
ReplyDeleteI figured it might be identifiable! Cheers. There was another of the same size which was a uniform purple. Any ideas?
DeleteAh - same species!
Delete