Library business

A lack of posts is attributable to a community emergency, the county council, its elected representatives and its ALEO (Arms-Length External Organisation) have decided to close our village library, and those of six or seven other rural communities in Perthshire. Whilst the County Council have brayed about the information related to these closures being "in the public domain" since the decision was made back at the end of last year it appears that elected representatives have been somewhat circumspect in their duties to inform the communities via the community councils. The long and short of this is that the proposal to close the libraries only became public knowledge following the ALEO issuing a wonderfully obtuse survey to library users, not actually mentioning the intention to close the library. This is a situation occurring all across Scotland, in one form or another, and I believe across England, although perhaps not managed in such an apparently underhand manner. I've been writing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and then trawling through the outcomes to try to get at the details of the decision making process and the finances.

Save Comrie Library From Closure!

The creation of ALEOs, hiving off, "non-essential" services like libraries, museums, art galleries, sports centres and swimming pools, has become common practice amongst local authorities across the UK. In the case of Perth and Kinross Council these were created in 2016 and in my opinion the intention  was always to create a buffer between the council and the electorate to prepare for cutting these services. One reason for the creation of ALEOs is that they may then apply for external funding that is not available to local authorities. However, in reality this is truly a bit of a smokescreen given the monies involved and how difficult it is to obtain such external funding in the climate of the former slash and burn Westminster Tory government. Whilst the Scottish Government and the Barnett Formula might attempt to provide a buffer to try to protect some Scottish services, for this particular ALEO to somehow come up with nearly £1,000,000 (Bank of England inflation calculator) to hold its funding at 2016 levels is unrealistic. Initial budget funded by Perth and Kinross Council in 2016 c£3,400,000 (worth c£4,500,000 in today's money), latest service fee from the council to the ALEO in April 2024 was c£3,500,000. 

There is some interesting research by UEA carried out on Suffolk libraries demonstrating that for every £1 spent on library provision the economic benefit is about £6. I'm struggling to find the URL for this, but will post it here when I do. I have an electronic copy that I'm happy to share though if anyone would like one.

That was a bit of a long aside.... I must try to post more often but more briefly, it would be easier.

On the wildlife front species are still getting added to the various lists. I had a good fungi day on Saturday adding five species from Loch Monzievaird, near Crieff and from Glen Artney where I stumbled across three new waxcaps in just a few metres whilst out on a mountain bike excursion.

Both the above are Hygrocybe coccinea Scarlet Waxcap, just older (top) and more recent (lower).

Hygrocybe chlorophana Golden Waxcap.

Vermillion Waxcap Hydrocybe miniata. (Older ones had a rough surface to the cap, a useful pointer.)

There were also some quite spectacular funnels at the same site which I'm pretty sure are Trooping Funnel Clitocybe geotrupa.

Clitocybe geotropa Trooping Funnel. 

The whole issue with identifying fungi is a bit fraught, I'm doing the best I can with them but I feel the identifications are less rigorous than with other taxa. I'm thinking I should go back through iRecord and put most as "Likely" rather than "Certain" as without some exacting spore examination I'm not sure how certain any identification can be, and even then.... At Loch Monzievaird I found both Stereum rugosum and Stereum hirsutum, both of which can be quite variable. Interestingly, I also found Yellow Brain Tremella mesenterica there, growing on Oak, I'd thought it was exclusive to Gorse, but apparently not.

I thought I'd not do much birding in Perthshire, but I'm just as interested, although there is considerably less expectation of finding anything rare. My local list continues to grow and local specialities are of interest. There is a Red Kite roost a short walk from the house and it's quite impressive. My best total so far is 114 all in the air at the same time and counts of over 80 are not infrequent.

Red Kites soaring pre-roost.

Counting the kites is not easy. Groups tend to drift off in one direction, and then maybe they drift back again, or maybe it is a a quite different group. It is a spectacular sight in any case.

My main birding mysteries are the species I haven't recorded as yet. No crossbill of any species, no redpoll of any species(ish). 

Moths are still being trapped, I trapped two nights ago before the cold snap began, and caught six moths. On 2nd November I caught well over 100, and on 8th November about 70, most of these were Spruce Carpet, but those are still good numbers for November. When the temperature goes up after this cold period I'll be out looking for winter moths with Operophtera fagata Northern Winter Moth my target species, as I've never seen one.

Moth highlights have been three species of Epirrita, Scarce Umber, which I failed to photograph, Red Sword-grass and December Moth. The Epirrita species were all new and of the other three I've seen very few of in the past.

December Moth Poecilocampa populi

With a bit of a lull with moths I've been looking more carefully at the caddis I've been catching and have identified a few. Most pleasing was Chaetopteryx villosa which I'd not seen before and I found in the field at the Community Woodland in some numbers. This is a fairly distinctive species, but I dissected to be certain.

Pair of Chaetopteryx villosa in cop.

Female gendet.

Male gendet.

Male, note the long wing hairs, dimples from which the hairs protrude, and short, very broad wings.

View back from a wee way up Glen Artney.

Evening sky near the kite roost.

Another evening, more sky.

The Epirrita problem.

 Of the four Epirrita moth species I'd only come across Small Autumnal Epirrita filigrammaria before moving to Perthshire. (E. filigrammaria is identifiable by flight time, earlier than E. autumnana, and habitat, it is a moorland moth.) Autumnal Moth Epirrita autumnana has occurred a few times in Orkney, but not on my trap sites. In the last few weeks I've started catching Epirrita moths at my new Perthshire garden.

A male Epirrita.

Epirrita species, probably also a male.

In all the identification books there are complex instructions about how to identify these from the wing markings, I don't really understand what they mean as I can't find labelled photographs that make these differences clear. The descriptions all talk about the shape of various lines on the wing around the discal spot. In this case even Leverton and Cubitt is not helpful, although they do suggest that the criteria, once learned are reliable. I need some lessons!

There being no handy teacher I've decided to go down the dissection route. As usual Chris Lewis at his brilliant website makes the dissection criteria very clear. Have a look here - https://britishlepidoptera.weebly.com/operophterini.html Interestingly Chris suggests that the external characters are not reliable.

I know some moth folk are not keen on killing moths to ascertain identification, and would likely just leave these things as Epirrita sp. I like to get stuff to species. To get useful photographs of moths prior to dissection takes some organisation. Indeed, to make sure the whole process is worthwhile takes some quite fastidious work including labelling the moths at an early stage and making sure each photo is directly attributable to a particular individual. Moths are best photographed alive, and I haven't in the (even recent) past always managed to ensure that the live photo can be attributed to a particular dissection. I'm on the case with Epirrita, after a few mis-starts.

Here's one I certainly tracked accurately through.

Epirrita christyi Pale November Moth, a male, 17/10/2024, live photo.

The 8th sternite, the shape is very distinctive.

8th sternite showing the octaval gap measured, = just a tad more than 0.2mm

A not especially good full dissection, it needed longer in the KOH, but the octavals on the 8th sternite can be seen to be close together and with a bit of imagination the dentate process on the ventral margin of the valvae can be seen. All these images are of the live moth pictured above.

Pale November Moth, Epirrita christyi was not the expected outcome, chuffed.

I dissected three more moths from 07/10/2024, unfortunately I did not associate the live photos directly with the specimens, thus only wings of dead specimens are photographed, and they are not especially good images. One moth was a female, the dissection does not differentiate the species reliably.

A better dissection, showing the valvae clearly. The octavals prove the identification. The photograph of the forewing is not especially useful.

Dissection proving November Moth, Epirrita diluta. Note the shape of the 8th sternite, top image, as well as the gap between the octavals. A perhaps more useful forewing image.

So two Epirrita species are occurring in the garden. I will carry out a few more dissections to try to understand the proportions of each species better. And I will shortly add some labelled photos of live moths to this post.

Off now to sort the trap from last night. But here's a cheeky predator caught on camera trap in our garden yesterday.

It's a Stoat by the way.

By the feeders

 Yesterday, early afternoon, and I drew a deck chair up by our bird feeders and sat there. Cup of coffee (yes, I've started drinking coffee again, but decaff') by my side, Em-5 Mk11 with the generally maligned, but I think it is a fabulous lens, Olympus 75-300 attached. The mission was to photograph Bank Vole Myodes glareolus, a very small mammal.

I'm an opportunist photographer usually. I rarely plan what I'm going to shoot, just have the gear with me most of the time and photograph what I come across. But getting pix of small mammals nearly always does require some planning. In this case the planning has been easy. The Bank Voles have been very active by the bird feeders for at least the last week and the bird feeders are in view from the kitchen table. Observations have taken place every lunch time. Initially the voles were running across from the other side of the gate to grab the sunflower seeds. More recently they have established a base on the feeder side of the gate and are stashing seeds away inside the wall. Through watching over several lunchtimes I'd discovered which were their favoured stashing places and their routes too and fro.

I hoped my presence much closer to the wall, with the inevitably accompanying hound, would not put the voles off, after all Louise mowing the lawn the other day had not seemed to bother them. I need not have worried. 

It was relatively easy to get shots of the voles leaving the hole in the wall, much more tricky capturing them as they arrived.

Myodes glareolus Bank Vole.

 Whilst sat there the birds were relatively undisturbed as well and I took a few shots of a few species.

Wren

Greenfinch.

Coal Tit.

House Sparrow.

The Big List

I'm working away at my Big List, my Pan-species List. Birders famously have lists, for twitchers the target used to be 400, to join the 400 Club, I believe the stakes are higher these days. In my more birdy days my bird self-found list was the big deal, and the target was 300. My birding self-found list is 286, I must sort out the Bean Goose on the list, and Bubo listing is weird about Fea's Petrel which I've found twice (because it can't be split from two other species in the field, however, Bubo allows all sorts of crazy botanical hybrids and unidentifiable other stuff, but I'll get on to that later) - you can tell I'm kind of grumpy about the Fea's thing! The last addition to the list was Eye-browed Thrush which I found in our Orkney garden about a year ago now.

I do rather like a list. At our new home in Perthshire I have a patch and so a patch birding list, currently a quite respectable 76 since mid-May. I have a garden pan-species list, only things I categorise as wild are included, it stands at 376, but I've a few outstanding things to add, Pied Wagtail on the roof of the house the other day for instance (not bad for a tennis court sized garden). However, the big deal is my full UK (actually Scotland, Wales and England) pan-species list. I'm busy trying to get this list up-to-date,from past records on iRecord, as well as adding new stuff.

Dicranopalpus ramosus, on the wall of the house.

The above Opilione is nearly the latest find. You'll probably have seen these on the wall of your house, or garage. Pretty distinctive things, except they're not. In 2015 it was discovered that there are two quite similar looking Dicranopalpus species in the UK. There are no obvious ID criteria for this species online, (there is an otherwise excellent interactive Field Studies Council key to Opiliones here - https://harvestmen.fscbiodiversity.uk/ ) instead you have to search out the 2015 paper by Hay Wijnhoven & Carlos E. Prieto 2015 (DICRANOPALPUS CAUDATUS DRESCO, 1948: NOT A SYNONYM OF DICRANOPALPUS RAMOSUS SIMON, 1909 BUT A VALID SPECIES AFTER ALL and use the illustrations and information within to make the identification. This involves euthanising the specimen and dissecting it.

Dicranopalpus ramosus, close up of body, alive.

Apophysis of the pedipalp, in the female, which this is, Apophysis is just a tad shorter than the tibia.

Base of the femur of the pedipalp. This apophysis is longer and slightly curved in D. ramosus.

Pedipalp claw, the "teeth" are longer and more even in D. ramosus.

The text of the paper is a tad confusing, however, the illustrations are wonderfully clear. Personally, I suspect this is all a bit of a fuss, because in life D. caudatus is considerably smaller than D. ramosus I believe, and a bit of a different shape. Things are now slightly more confused as a third Dicranopalpus species has been found in the UK, however, apparently that does look distinctly different and it's not just down to size, it would be easily recognisable in the field. All three species are adventives, they've arrived in UK by some sort of human agency, spiders seem to be especially good at that trick.

I've just found Pseudeuophrys lanigera again this is a fairly recent arrival in the UK also, 1930s I think.

Pseudeuophrys lanigera, a spider that is identifiable in the field, unfortunately this one didn't survive capture.

The BBC 4 documentary, The Magic of Mushrooms is well worth a watch. There are a lot of fungi here in Perthshire. I've just added all my fungi so far to my P-S list.  I've been trying to identify the fungi I've found and not having a book I've used AI and web resources. The book arrived this week so I will go through and check anything I think is dodgy. The AI is a useful learning tool, I use Obsidentify initially, then check images online and with the Danish picture AI tool. I'm just beginning to get the hang of some families and genera. Fungi are a bit of a nightmare as regards what is and what is not a species and I'm sure I will need to adjust my list from these early ID attempts as I learn more about the pitfalls. In addition, I've had some somewhat "over-enthusiastic verification" occur, with some revision by an expert human of AI identifications. On further checking with other humans the AI got these correctly in the first place and they were not species new or very, very rare in the UK (this did not occur on iRecord, I hasten to add). 

Mucidula mucida, Porcelain Fungus, a very beautiful small thing when fresh.

Obsidentify thought these were Leotia lubrica Jellybaby, they were re-identified by a human as a species unknown in the UK, but further research suggests that these are probably better described as Leotia lubrica senso lato (a species complex, and therefore not tickable for PSL, although they are currently listed there as a single species.)

Anyway, I rather liked these Angel Wings.

Pleurocybella porrigens Angel Wings.

I've added all my fungi to my PSL list today, it's not a huge number, but I've probably doubled the total in the last month or so. The new book, I bought the Collins Fungi Guide will help sort a few things out, but a compound microscope is a tool I need if I'm going to do these properly.

Back to the PSL on Bubo https://panspecieslisting.com/

It is a great site for us listers, and I'm only a bit grumpy - I'm not allowed Feral Cat as well as Fea's Petrel by the list. You can make up your own rules really - I include dead things if I find them myself, but I don't include unoccupied leafmines and galls, I have to actually see the beastie, not just its signs. I try to be consistent across orders, so I would not include hybrid plants, as I don't include hybrid Tufted Duck as something separate, for example. I mostly don't include species groups, and do try to get to species senso stricto, but as noted above this is not always clear; taxonomy is never fixed. My current list total is 1,806 species, I've probably got a few hundred things to add from iRecord, maybe not that many. I suspect my actual list total is about 2,000 species, so a bit of a low lister really!

Water

Water is an issue in the community we've moved to. Much of the village, more than 180 homes and businesses, are susceptible to flooding from the combined force of three rivers, River Earn, Water of Ruchill and the River Lednock. Next month work will begin on a £27 million scheme to build barriers to protect the village. We are fortunate in that where we are we have a very small risk from standing water. In Scotland you can see the risk from the excellent SEPA flood maps. Whilst the scheme is not ideally what you would want, and perhaps a more natural environment for these rivers in their upland sources would mitigate the issues somewhat, the climate emergency appears to have brought a change in rainfall patterns, sudden very heavy inundations have become not infrequent at any time of year. When the Romans built their camp on the site, not far from where the majority of the houses in the village now stand, flooding would most likely have been a most unlikely event, now, for many houses in the village it is a 10% risk annually.

Much of the area to the south of the River Earn is at risk, that's most of the housing.

Anyway, online I found the EIA report and it makes quite interesting reading. Confirming my three bat identifications and indicating that there is certainly one other species present, as I've suspected, but most likely two.

I'm still exploring the patch, the small lochan behind the house, in the woods, is a bit tricky/sensitive to access apparently. It does rather feel as if you are in a neighbour's garden. However, recently, I found some more water. There's an abandoned fish farm and I've slowly realised there are a number of pools. Access is not especially easy, it's all rather over-grown. Anyway, I've added two species, Little Grebe and Mute Swan, and found Moorhen and Reed Bunting, species seen once and infrequently respectively elsewhere on the patch.

Mute Swan. The day I saw this I also added Pink-footed Goose to the patch list, over-flying migrants.

A bit of a poke around in the sunshine and I found four species of Odonata, there's potential for several more. Indeed, the occasional predatory beast has hurtled through the garden, but not stopped long enough for an ID.

Black Darter, above. Also present, Common Blue Damsel, Emerald Damsel, Common Darter.

I think the site will be most interesting in the spring, it has the potential for a decent inland find or two. Grasshopper Warbler, and Sedge and Reed Warblers will be on my watch list, but it is the most likely spot for something a tad more exciting. A Great Reed Warbler would be nice, a Marsh Warbler would be appreciated.

I went to a meeting about the flood protection scheme, a sort of roaming discussion. This occurred at the Community Woodland and we wandered about and talked water. We ended up just off the site at a Beaver dam. It was too dark to see by then but the this afternoon Louise and I went back. No Beaver seen but the dam is quite impressive.

The dam.

Leaves from a partly felled Aspen on the water.

The moth trapping went through a dead patch, warm days but clear nights with a large Moon. There were very few moths, both in numbers and species, however, I did continue to add at least one lifer a time. two of the new moths have been long sort and imagined; Frosted Orange and Merveille du Jour.

Frosted Orange.

Merveille du Jour

I've caught three Copper Underwing agg. The first one escaped before I could look at it properly and foolishly I took photos and let the next two go. I'd not really grasped the criteria for separating the two species and whilst I thought the photos would be good enough I suspect they will be inadequate. To be certain of the ID I need to dissect one I think. I've caught Copper Underwing before in Yorkshire, I dissected it. However, here in Perthshire I suspect these will be Svensson's Copper Underwing, however, I need to prove that. The next one is for the chop!

Copper Underwing agg, probably Svensson's, but not certainly.

And here's my attempt to differentiate... I can't see any orange in the underwing, let alone the extent of it.

Copper Underwing agg.

The colour of the palps is supposed to be an ok criteria on fresh specimens, unfortunately I didn't know that this morning.

I've been finding various other bits and bats of stuff. A fair number of larvae, particularly of sawflies, but the occasional caterpillar as well.

I thought this was Nematinus fuscipennis, but the thinking now is that it may be a Rhogogaster species. (thanks AG).

And here's a nice caterpillar, Scalloped Hazel.

Scalloped Hazel.

I've also been trying to identify fungi, but I'll save them for another post.