Magpie Moth

The Magpie

Abraxas grossulariata

A magpie moth caught my eye this afternoon resting on the leaves of a euonymous type bush in a neighbours garden in Fraserburgh.

The eye catching, butterfly like moth has black and white wings with an orange band, the head is orange with black markings.The wingspan is about 4cms.  The unusual wing markings make the moth conspicuous and act as a warning to predators that moth is poisonous. A night flier it is attracted to light so is easily caught in light traps. Victorian naturalists were given to collecting and breeding this moth in order to produce colour variations. 

The moth is short lived the adults emerge from over wintering as pupae in late spring and live for only three to four weeks.The caterpillars, as brightly coloured as the adults,  feed on bushes including gooseberry and currant  and were considered a pest until their numbers declined.

June flowers on the Wastart

By early June, the Rosehearty Wastart, that most familiar of wild places,  comes alive with wild flowers and there is huge satisfaction in finding each particular species growing in its favoured location.

Craig Ogston Gwyte

The sea really was this blue so that the lemon necks and snow white wings of the gannets making regular eastwards fly-pasts parallel to the shore gleamed against the water. There were also small flights of eiders, cormorants, a couple of fulmars and landward  constant larksong. There were  rafts of gulls well out to sea so we spent some time looking for the dolphins which often appear seeking the same shoal of fish as the gulls. None appeared but  later there were several off Phingask

Rufus sunbathing in a starry patch of tormentil

Cuckoo Flower or Lady's Smock grows in the damper places in the old lazy beds under Pitheughie which is Where we also found the first orchids of the year

Looking out for bunnies

Thrift grows in the most inhospitable places

Under better conditions such as here above the' Pots and Pans' it forms a tussocky mauve quilt

Always in early June one of the delights of the Wastart is coming upon  the colonies of Spring Squill growing in the drier places, often, as here, alongside tormentil.

The blue stars of Spring Squill, described as locally common, one of my favourite wild flowers.

 The rock above the squill patch was littered with crab body parts

Pitfour again

Pitfour: Bluebells and Pink Purslane under the trees by the canal 

The blue spikes of Bugle in  damp spot by the lake

Family outing: almost all of the 60 or so swans have recently left the lake leaving only a couple of possibly injured swans and this family of 9 cygnets and their parents.