House of Carders

A recent repair job took me to the island of North Ronaldsay, a fifteen minute flight from the Orkney mainland aboard a small eight-seater plane. For our landing in North Ronaldsay, there was a bit of a crosswind, but nothing too severe or requiring the pilot to hold the aircraft at right angles to our direction of travel as he approached the runway.

Once the repair, at the north end of the island, was successfully completed, there were a few hours to wile away before the return journey, so wildlife-watching mode was engaged. We bumped into one of the staff from the Bird Observatory and he suggested trying a sea-watch for Sooty and Manx Shearwaters, and pointed in the direction of the Old Beacon on Dennis Head as a good vantage point. 

En route to the Beacon, we scored a bonus Hen Harrier hunting over the small fields

The Old Beacon

Tucked down out of the wind, on the shore below the Beacon, binoculars were steadied and trained on a patch of sea about halfway to the horizon. It took a while to get my eye in, but eventually shearwaters were seen, with their different plumages distinguishing one species from the other. Whilst staring towards the horizon, I realised that the low dark shape at the limit of vision was actually Fair Isle, twenty seven miles away. This shouldn't have been a surprise, but what happened next was. A pair of Grey Herons laboured in off the sea, struggling into the southerly breeze. I could only presume that they had flown from Fair Isle!

Grey Herons

In the midst of all this sea-watching, behind us we heard the soft clopping sound of many tiny hooves cantering over rock and stone. When we downed bins to have a picnic lunch, we could see a small flock of the local sheep nearby, unconcernedly munching on seaweed.

Heading back to the airfield into the wind, it was difficult to train binoculars on distant birds as I just couldn't keep them steady. For an easier time of it, I decided to look at stuff closer at hand.

A Raven atop a ruined dyke. If challenged to a game of Noughts and Crosses by one of these birds, I am not at all confident I would win.

Along the road verges, there were still plenty of flowers of Dandelion, Autumn Hawkbit (or perhaps Common Catsear) and Perennial Sow-thistle. Many of these blooms were the temporary residences of insects, taking shelter and finding sustenance in the face of a cold breeze. I guess it's a bit like us nipping into a coffee shop for a hot brew and a cake when it starts to rain (actually, any weather condition, including warm sunshine).

When it comes to identifying carder bees, those small beigey bumblebees, I have a poor track record. We only have two species in Orkney, that's how hopeless I am. In an ideal world, Common Carders are a uniform beige all over, whilst Moss Carders are similar but have a zingy ginger/orange thorax. The trouble is this is not an ideal world. For many reasons, most of them tragic, but also including a continuum of colour variation of carders. Anything not completely beige, I always wonder if it's a Moss Carder. It never is.

So imagine my usual frisson of cautious excitement when I came across this specimen...

Given that I have absolutely no credibility left in the hymenopteran world, and reasoning that even by the law of averages I will eventually find one, I tentatively post these images onto the local Insect group on Facebook, with the whiny sub-text "Possible Moss Carder". The county recorder for bees, wasps and ants, long-suffering chap that he is, then positively makes my day by saying "Yes".

Woohoo! Go me! I reply excitedly, telling him that we saw a few other species of bumblebees too: White-tailed and Common Carder. He replies by telling me that the carders in North Ronaldsay are all Moss Carders, there are no Commons on the island. So all the Commons I saw, and significantly did not photograph, were actually old and faded Moss Carders. Aaarrrgghh!

Dragons are so much easier.