More drains and a new liverwort

This drain runs roughly north to south along the retaining wall back terrace and turns at a right angle round the corner below.

I've removed most of the ferns so I can clear the drain

Making the water that seeps almost continuously down the hill run round the terrace edge rather than straight across it and into the wash-house means we have a dry(ish) threshold. It also turns out that maintaining drains is fun because you find stuff. I found more Trailing St.John's-wort (Hypericum humifusum) and more Toad Rushes (Juncus bufonius). See left; a Toad Rush is 'bridging' the ditch at the right-hand side of the pic. Most importantly though, I found a new species of liverwort, one of the Riccia genus. I'm sending a sample off to be identified and recorded properly.

It's quite tricky, I found, to photograph a small liverwort in situ when its 'situ' is a more or less vertical piece of ditch bank on the ditch side farther from a retaining wall. The exercise requires an old camping mat to prevent one from getting soaked lying on wet ground for a start. I suppose I could have just got soaked, being so close to home but I probably would have given up sooner in that case.

I found an old stone painting of Toadlet's and used it to mark opposite the spot of my discovery. As it happens I found more of the same Riccia as I cleared out the ditch further.

Some animal wildlife kept me company: this tiny moth decided to flutter about in the wheelbarrow into which I was chucking ditch dirt.

A caterpillar on the wall was charging around (in caterpillar terms) for quite a while among the hornwort,

Caterpillar and hornwort

and a rather weary looking Angle-shades moth  decided to walk up my arm at one point. I repositioned him on a lungwort leaf where he stayed for the remainder of my ditch digging time.

An old bridge over Kinglas Water

On the way home from Inverary we stopped to take a closer look at the old bridge over Kinglas Water. It was built by Redcoats and formed part of the old military road through Argyll.

An elegant old bridge

Water under the bridge ;)

Underbridge view

Bridge stonework

Old bridge, elegant

Modern bridge, not elegant

View from the old bridge – still a spot or two of snow in the hill gulleys

Another Drinker Moth caterpillar by the old bridge

Euthrix potatoria and Dichodontium palustre

I found a caterpillar. I think it is the caterpillar of the Drinker moth (Euthrix potatoria).

And I found another moss, which I think is Marsh Forklet-moss (Dichodontium palustre). Its light, translucent stars were very clear in amongst other mosses on the front terrace when I wandered out with my mug of tea this morning.