Saturday, 2 March 2019

More Spring

Song Thrush singing, a Water rail, only 2nd record here for me, flushed from a ditch and as of Thursday, and seen again today, Rooks are collecting sticks. Daffs are coming out, Lesser Celadine just breaking in to flower, Crocus in full flower from 16th of the month (see below).


Anthobium unicolor, 2nd county record if I'm right.

I'm not getting anywhere with this though. (Help via the Cranefly Recording Scheme - it isn't a cranefly, I thought it was - "It’s a window gnat Sylvicola cinctus or fenestralis." I need to head over to Steven Falk's Flickr pages to see if I can determine it to species.)

It’s a window gnat Sylvicola cinctus or fenestralis.
I was given a good tip with the Helophorus aequalis/grandis couplet problem, shove a bit of paper under the elytra, it works well, the teeth are instantly revealed.

Helophorus grandis, to light 21/02/2019.

Light trap, lots of slugs, Trichocera regelationis one Helephorus grandis, no moths.

Under the living room window 16/02/2019

3 comments:

Simon Douglas Thompson said...

Beautiful, but also worrying this early? Expecting a singing chiffchaff imminently here

Ali said...

Might need gen det on the Sylvicola. There's an online key somewhere

Alastair said...

Yes Ali you're correct, needs gen det so I've given up on it at that point and sent it to my Dip CR. That was a tad cowardly of me but never done a gen det on a Dipteran.