Clumping

I've done a bit of clumping in the past, it's always productive and it always produces something of interest. What is clumping? Place of interest (in my case the community woodland), you'll need a sharp knife, a pooter, some plastic bags, some tubes, a sorting tray (I use a white umbrella, compact to carry and works well as a beating tray as well (not always easy to get one that is white inside these days).

So along to the community woodland where I am trying to build a comprehensive species list. Find some Juncus clumps on the bank of the burn. Open the umbrella, get the pooter ready and the macro camera. A head torch is handy late in the afternoon. Cut a bit of a Juncus clump from as low down in the clump as I can get and beat and bash over the umbrella. Start pooting!

The clump was full of beetles, mostly Stenus, the alien looking Staphylinid beetles that I like to identify, but they are tricky.

Stenus bimaculatus, only a few species have pale dots on the elytra, so this is a relatively easy one to ID.

 

Stenus nitidiusculus, less easy, but it has dents in the elytra that are helpful.

In the end I had six Stenus species in the clump, they took me a good few hours to sort out, and that included mis-identifications that I corrected. I often find it helpful with tricky things like these to take another look at them and check the IDs again the next day, or some hours later. Two of these species were new to me, so that was a bonus. 

I also cut a second clump and put it in a plastic bag. I brought this home and it is currently in the fridge. The inhabitants will stay alive in the fridge until I get around to sorting through the clump. One way to sort this material is to use sieves and a bowl, but I prefer to use the pooter method. I might sieve the retained clump after I've looked through it. There's usually something extra revealed. However, we don't have a conservatory or a greenhouse here in Perthshire. (Main purpose of a greenhouse is as a large insect trap or for sorting catches, plant growing.... Well ok, my collected seeds for wilding the lawn go well in a greenhouse.)

There was also Tachyporus atriceps and Bradycellus verbasci in the beetles collected, I ignored a few tiny Aleocharines. 

A new bug for me was Drymus ryei, I caught three. 

I also caught a spider that was NFM and identifiable, Neriene clathrata, two opiliones, a collembola (I ignored the tiny ones), another bug species and perhaps star of the show an Ichneumon that was identifiable.

Drymus ryei, no long hairs erect on the tibia, all black thorax dorsally.

 Ichneumons have a weird fascination for me. They are so hard to identify, but if you can get them to species there is a real sense of achievement. There are hardly any records on the NBN so it is a good route to a new species for the vice county, if not for Scotland.

My approach with Ichneumons is to first run them through Observation.org. Whilst it might not give the correct answer, it can be a short cut to getting to family. In this case it initially came up with something feasible, but wrong. There is a fabulous web resource for Ichneumons, just google the species name followed by bioimages and you come to Malcolm Storey's brilliant images. In this case MS's images helped to rule out the "wrong" species, but then helped with Obsi's second idea which was family Phaeogenini. I looked through a lot of images and compared them with my own. I was on the right track I was sure but which genus? At this point I put my images on FB with various measurements and antennae segment counts. MS quickly suggested a genus and then I found the appropriate keys. On this occasion it was a choice between two species, and my existing images gave a strong clue, but I took a few more pictures to confirm the identification.

 

This image of the propedeum nails the ID, this being a female, Colpognathus divisus. Data - Forewing 4.4mm, body 7.5mm and antennae 20 (22).

There are just two accepted Scottish records on NBN. One of these records is a bit anonymous, but the other has been verified by a well known expert. Hopefully, when I put mine on iRecord it will be positively verified. I'm intending to take some specimens along to the National Museum of Scotland in the next few months, I will include this specimen. It is a bit of a palaver giving material to the museum, but very worthwhile as the collected specimens then have a longer term value. I don't do this enough to be honest (in fact barely at all, once previously, a situation I intend to correct). Although I have sent specimens for research and for reference to others.

Overnight on 1st February I put a light trap out. When I got home from the community woodland the temperature on the car thermometer said 6C and when I went to the garage later, wearing a head torch, a small moth flapped around my face.  Out went the Heath trap with an LED.

Although there was some rain overnight, it stayed relatively warm and this resulted in ten Pale Brindled Beauty and a couple of Winter Moths.

 

 

Pale Brindled Beauty, this last one rather plain.

  

Redpoll numbers in the garden reached 22 yesterday. Chaffinch numbers hover around the 30 mark but there has been a marked decline in Coal Tits, the black sunflower seed feeder is taking much longer to empty.

 

A quick wander around the fish farm produced only the second ever Goldeneye, a 1st winter drake, and 20 Teal. 

 

The rain continues. 

Rain

It is raining. It rained all night. It might stop tomorrow afternoon, for a bit... As I write the rescue helicopter is clattering over the house, and there are a lot of sirens in the distance apparently. Fortunately our bit of the village is quieter.

It's a good chance to catch up with records, I'm a bit behind. I always find when I've not put data into iRecord there and then that there will be some missing photographs or info and I'll have to scrap a few things. I always tell myself I'll get everything entered at the time, but somehow I never do. 

I put a moth trap out the other evening, Monday, just a single Heath trap with an LED. No moths but two diptera. I'm really not very good at diptera but Obsidentify is surprisingly excellent at them, sometimes! Anyway on this occasion it came up with two 100% identifications. One was of Scathophaga furcata, a species I saw for the first time quite recently and managed, with a little help to identify from field photos. This time I took the specimen and ran it through Stuart Ball's key. It keyed out nicely confirming the Obsidentify 100%

Scathophaga furcata, a male.

The photos show the pale antenna with an arista that has very fine short hairs. Thorax has fine acrostichal hairs, and the humerus is the same colour as the rest of the thorax. The wings have fairly discrete smudges on the cross veins. 

The other fly was a Heleomyzidae. Tephrochlamys rufiventris was the species that Obsidentify came up with. At the time I thought I hadn't seen this before so I was keen to prove it. There's a new key to this family available online by Sivell, Stubbs and Andrews (Jan 2025).

Anterior bristle in the middle of the mid femur, tiny but fairly easy to see.

Sub-costal cell clear and of uniform colour (the pale orange cell here).

 When I tried to add the species to my life list the website told me I'd already added it, and sure enough I had found one in Orkney previously. However, both Tephrochlamys rufiventris and Scathophaga furcata are new for the garden, so well worth taking the time to identify them.

I set both my camera traps at the community woodland on Saturday afternoon. There are no actual records of Field Vole Microtus agrestis, despite there being evidence of their activity everywhere so I decided I would obtain a record. A bit of baiting for a couple of days with carrot, apple and sunflower seeds,  a feast for a Field Vole, at a couple of spots where they were obviously busy. The other trap was set on a path, hoping for Pine Marten.

 

The first fires of the trap captured Wood Mouse, a half expected bonus species which also had not been recorded previously.

Field Vole.

The Browning trap was set for bigger game on a footpath. It captured an early walker with their dog, but also a brief clip of Brown Hare which I've not seen on the site directly, although there are previous records from the sightings board.

 Brown Hare

 The other mammal recorded on the day was Mole, of which there was considerable evidence.

Mole hill.

A few days before Louise and I had looked at this poo. I photographed it and compared online. I'm pretty sure it's Pine Marten scat. I really would love to see one - instead of just its poo.

Pine Marten scat, Martes martes

Whilst I tick moths on seeing their leaf mines, I really don't want to tick Pine Marten from its poo. Inconsistent criteria...

Other than a few trips to the community woodland, where I also managed to add Herring Gull to the list as one was with the Common Gulls as they went to roost, and they all circled over the CCW I've not being doing that much. Walks around the patch, one visit to the White Church graveyard and watching birds from the warm kitchen have really been the limit of my field expeditions.

I'm hopeful this is the moss Brachythecium rutabulum, which would be NFM.

Cladonia fimbriata

The springtail Entomobrya nivalis.

The River Earn today. Flooded pony fields in the foreground, then the river, then a new river, the A road, so full of water that it's broken the stone dyke so that the water can into the Earn.

The Ruchill looking very bad tempered.

The River Lednock was also seriously fierce.

I almost forgot that I'd photographed these Bank Voles Clethrionomys glareolus in the garden the other day. There is a small colony that live in the wall by our bird feeders, we can watch them from the kitchen window.

 So despite the weather a bit of a mammal watching week.

Snow

There had been little here, except on the hill tops until today when, just as we were heading out to Monzievaird a fair bit came down. We went out anyway and Monzievaird was a changed landscape. The loch was mostly frozen, just a small patch of open water where amongst 70 or so Mallard, 17 Little Grebes, 4 Moorhen, 2 Canada Geese and 4 Mute Swans were a pair of (new for me at this site) Gadwall. A Carrion Crow was tearing at some dead and dismembered thing in the middle of the ice. Being somewhat concerned about how good the roads would be to get home, we didn't linger long.

Photos from around Loch Monzievaird.

Overnight and during the morning I'd been trying my new camera trap. I've been using a Browning trap over the last few years and whilst I have got some decent results and it has found some interesting things, principally Water Rail and Jack Snipe in Orkney, it is a frustrating thing to use. One main problem is setting the trap in the dark, which is almost impossible because the screen is located on the front of the camera requiring a certain amount of contortion and trial and error to get it to focus on the correct area. The tripod mount has broken, which makes positioning it a pain as well. I had bought a solar panel to try to reduce battery use, but in the winter and at night it tended to be unreliable. Probably its worst feature from my point of view was the lack of decent close focus necessitating taping a close up lens to the front of it if I wanted to get images of small mammals. Browsing the Nature Spy site the other day I saw they had an interesting new camera available, and at not an extortionate price.

The Helarctos Solar trap has a wide angle lens, that focuses much closer. It also connects to my mobile phone so it is not hard to position much more accurately, even at night. I've also found that it fits really well on the Z tripod fitting I have, and used with this, and no tripod, it will sit on the ground in a stable position, ideal for small mammals and for small birds.  I've put some of my first efforts below. One position is a little too ambitious with the close focus, I should have put it a few cms further back, but otherwise the video output is pretty good. Photos are passable, but that's not how I tend to use a camera trap, although it will take one still image with a video.

 Red Squirrel, feeding finches.

How many bird species can you see?

Leucistic Chaffinch

Wood Mouse 

Bank Vole at night.

 Three Bank Voles under the feeders.

Robin

 

Bank Vole, the camera a fraction too close I think.

The Brambling is only the fourth or so in the garden, the third this autumn/winter. And the leucistic Chaffinch is the third, I didn't get images of the previous two. Today, out in The Ross there was a smart male Stonechat which is only the third record for the patch I think.

I'm currently writing up various things from 2025, and earlier; and trying to get all my records in to iRecord. The Community Woodland species total is also being worked on, currently 461 with a few mammals, reptiles and amphibians known about, but I have no dates, yet.

I attended a Biological Recording Company beginners' session on bryophytes earlier this week. I'm keen to improve my skills,and although I knew most of what was presented it was still worth attending. A new bryophyte book should be turning up shortly and I now better understand the morphology of these plants.

Happy New Year

The more confiding of our Red Squirrel visitors, the dark tailed individual, plucked up courage on Christmas morn to find their Christmas breakfast in the now, quite popular home made squirrel feeder.

Red Squirrel

Indeed this squirrel has been visiting the feeder regularly, sometimes on stealth mode it seems, as the camera trap only caught it leaving, I'd seen it sitting on the feeder platform from the house but the trap was slow to fire for some reason.

 It worked ok for these Wood Mice though.

And the Bullfinch also returned today (not camera trap).

Bullfinch female.

A Christmas gift that was most well received was Volume 1 of Beetles of Britain and Ireland recently republished by the Field Studies Council. Andrew Duff is working on a revision of this first volume I believe, but this reprint is most welcome. I am hopeful that Volume 4 may also get the reprint treatment, although, again I believe AD is also working on a revision of that episode. I have originals of Volumes 2 & 3 but these other volumes had become impossible to obtain (and Volume 3 was tricky to get when I managed to obtain a copy).

To go with my Volume 1 my working through unidentified samples produced an excellent Harpalus laevipes from the back garden. This is a really quite rare beetle and a very good discovery. 

Harpalus laevipes

 

I've also been working on some diptera from 2024, Muscidae and the blow fly families. The excellent key to the blow flies by Olga Sivell is a such a useful book for learning about diptera morphology. The blow flies themselves are tricky to ID. I may have found Bellardia bayeri in the garden, but as good as the key is, it is easy to make mistakes and I need to re-key this before submitting to iRecord. I also need to re-photograph some important bits.

A wander around the patch yesterday included a visit to the fish farm where there were 22 Teal, three Mutes and a Moorhen. On the river nearby there was a pair of Goosander with the resident Mallard.

Mute Swan and Teal (now Green-winged Teal, but Anas crecca ref AviBase).

  

Christmas 2025

 Happy Christmas readers!

Photographed a couple of days ago through the front window as I was identifying a few diptera specimens and glanced out. The Himalyan Honeysuckle Leycesteria formosa is very popular with all sorts of species and this Bullfinch was tucking in. 

Bullfinch

Leycesteria formosa can be invasive I believe, but doesn't seem to be a problem here in Perthshire, I have only found it wild once, growing in the wall of a cemetery.

 

A wee early Christmas present was finding an Ichneumon corpse in the bottom of a tube in which I had a couple of Coleophora larvae. The Coleophora were either alticolella or glaucicolella, I hadn't got around to investigating them, but the wasp was NFM Scambus brevicornis, a known parasitoid of these two species.

 

Scambus brevicornis

 

It was a community  woodland day yesterday. I managed to add a few species to the CCW list and two to my own.

 

Heteromyza commixta, common enough but under recorded and NFM

 

Byssomerulius corium, the white fungi here, also NFM

The Heteromyza was hard to identify, despite the excellent key by Sivell, Stubbs and Andrews. Hopefully, I have got it correctly. I might need to take some of the photos again. And the fungi was very striking as I wandered around the CCW reservoir.

 

I went up to the reservoir after working with others on one of the butterfly orchid sites on the CCW. A place where both species occur but was getting overcome with rank vegetation. Unfortunately trees had been planted on this spot also. I dug up and moved some Scots Pine to a more suitable spot, and others scythed and raked. There's still a bit more tree work to do.

 

The wander around the reservoir also added Alder, the only place on the site where it naturally occurs, I must have walked right by it many times. The same with the single Norway Spruce, close by. I also added Sylvicola fenestralis, several were taking advantage of the pastries left on the bench for the volunteers.

 

Flamminula velutipes s.l. a fungi that I've seen here several times before.

Norway Spruce

Writing this late in the evening with a snoring dog at my feet and both Barn Owl and Tawny Owl audible from the kitchen. Season's Greetings!