First Blue Winged Olive of the season

Whitelee Windfarm Countryside Rangers Rennie Mason and Maree Morrison may have spotted the first Blue Winged Olive (BWO) mayfly of the season. Rennie and Maree joined CRIMP last month and have begun surveying the burns that run through the Whitelee Windfarm. They have chosen the Ardoch Burn and the Dunwan Burn that runs downstream of the Dunwan Dam – it was here they found the tiniest BWO that we’ve ever seen, just 3mm in length! We normally expect to see BWO from May to September, so we were very pleased to see they had hatched from their eggs right when nature intends. The diversity in both samples was pretty impressive, make sure you check out some of the photos our photo gallery. Good luck with the sampling, perhaps there will be more and bigger BWO’s next month – watch this space!