Wednesday 5 August 2020

A day of four parts, or maybe five, or more.

 Results day. Fortunately younger daughter had elected to receive these electronically, rather than has occurred in the past, us tortuously watching the postie delivering to half of Harray as he headed towards our house. Despite all the furore around this year's results someone's were just fine and her university place to study Anatomical Science was secured. Actually it had been fine anyway as she had missed the email earlier in the week changing her offer to unconditional, but a boost to get the grades.

I went out for a walk with the camera to Birsay Links. There were gulls feeding on the seaweed and piles of Kittiwakes and Eider.




I spent some time identifying things, especially caddis. They are hard, it will be useful when the new book is published as I believe it has good images to aid identification from photos. Certainly there will be species that can't be identified that way but it will be a big help as the current main reference makes it a bit of a struggle. The Croft FSC book is much more friendly but doesn't take many to species.

Rhyacophila dorsalis, with a distinctive diamond shape on its back.

This may be Stenophylax pernistus but the genitalia don't match so I suspect it is the closely related Micropterix lateralis.

This little soldier fly is quite uncommon in much of the UK, I catch it frequently in my light traps Microchrysa cyaneiventris.

Dolichovespula sylvestris, Tree Wasp

There have been wasps in the garden all summer, unusually. Finally I located the nest, in the wall of our house. Pleased to have these around such interesting insects.

Short of some parts.... I think included in another post. I'm writing retrospectively having posted twice since starting this one, life in the holidays can become a bit of a blur...

Better get my act together shortly, back to work.

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