Gooseberry sawfly

A few weeks ago, when I photographed these little hymenopterans - each about five millimetres long - I knew the pattern of events that was about to unfold in our garden.

These are gooseberry sawflies that were busy mating and looking for somewhere to lay their eggs.

 They're attractive little insects, but when they hatch their larvae....

  

... have a phenomenal ability to defoliate gooseberry bushes. These six bare leaf stalks were fine healthy leaves the day before this photo was taken...... 

 ....before the gooseberry sawfly larvae got to work.

Last year I posted on the Solomon's seal sawflies that breed in the garden and lay their eggs on their host plant in early May. They're back this year and here are their larvae at work. They are highly organised defoliators, perhaps sticking together for mutual safety. When they are tiny they just strip layers of tissue from the understide of leaves and so pass unnoticed, but when they get to this size you can almost see the leaves disappear as you watch.

 This is insect teamwork in action.

I could, I suppose, follow the advice in gardening books and take drastic measures to wipe them out but the Solomon's seal sawfly population has been established in the garden for about a decade or so and the larvae only make serious inroads into the plants long after they have finished flowering. They haven't prevented the Solomon's seal from thriving and spreading a little further every year. As for the gooseberry sawfly, well that only gets into its stride once the fruits are well on the way to ripening - and there are only so many gooseberries that it's wise for a human to eat anyway. And as the old saying goes, 'it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good' - the sawfly larvae provide a food source for many of the garden birds.

Portpatrick and the Southern Uplands Way

The little harbour of Portpatrick on the Galloway coast is the starting point for the Southern Upland Way, but before climbing the steps to the cliff top at start of the route it's worth taking a look around the harbour because....

.... there are usually black guillemots fishing there, and if you're lucky .....

.... they'll be posing for a photograph on the harbour wall.

...... where there is often a vigorous exchange with others ...

..... that nest in cavities between the building blocks of the harbour wall. These are birds with a startlingly simple colour scheme - sooty black and pure white plumage and wonderful crimson feet with matching interior colour scheme in their bills.

Very approachable birds - although there didn't seem to be as many as when we first visited, in 2006.

There's also a well established herring gull breeding colony on the cliffs as you leave the town, with some vulnerable chicks on narrow ledges ........

.........protected by fierce-looking adults

The first mile or so further on the path skirts a series of sandy bays and in one - Lairds bay , marked as Port Mora/Port Kale on the Ordnance Survey map - lies this fascinating telegraph station, built at the landfall of the first submerged telegraph cable to Donaghadee in Northern Ireland, across what is now known as the North Channel but was then the Irish Channel, in 1853. More recently the building has been a visitor centre but now seems disused. You can still see the frayed cable partially buried in the shingle on the beach: an interesting fragment of telecommunications archaeology.

There's a fine cliff-top flora along this stretch of coast that includes the almost hemispherical umbels of wild carrot. Once these begin to set seed the stalks of the outer clusters of florets elongate and curl inwards, so the ripe seed head resembles a clenched fist.

The cliffs here are festooned with honeysuckle and as you climb the path up from the beach the scent is glorious on a fine summer evening.

Slender St. John's wort, with red undersides to its petals, is also a feature of the cliffs here, as is ...

... the sea spleenwort fern with its leathery fronds, that grows in rock crevices close to the beach, well within reach of salt spray. Fresh water trickling down the cliffs is probably the antidote to this saline assault.

Pink Pyramids

Port Logan, on the Rhins of Galloway peninsula, is sandy bay backed by a stony beach and sand dunes, that takes the full force of the wind and weather sweeping in from the North Channel and Atlantic beyond.

Not, maybe, the kind of place you'd choose to stop on a wet and windy day, but we noticed some interesting-looking flowers in the dunes as we drove by, so stopped to investigate - and we were glad that we did.

When we reached the beach this ringed plover flew off and settled a few yards away, obviously trying to distract our attention....

... and we soon discovered why ..... this wonderfully camouflaged clutch of eggs, laid in a depression in the sand.

But it was the pyramidal orchids - dozens of them - that had first attracted our attention....

Most were the typical deep pink-flowered form but ....

... this one stood out - a much paler pink-flowered plant.

On this coast the weather changes rapidly and within a few minutes the sun broke through, coaxing out the bumblebees to feed on the sea bindweed blooms.

Unlike the climbing bindweed species that plague gardens, this species stays close to the ground, sheltered from the drying wind and conserving water in its succulent, heart-shaped  leaves.