Birds, no birds

 Of course there are birds, just not the ones I would especially like to see. 

Blackbird.

Redwing.

Redwing, Blackbird and Song Thrush have arrived in force, and quickly stripped the berries from the Swedish Whitebeam. Some Goldcrest arrived too. No Yellow-browed Warbler though, but perhaps a Blackcap yesterday. The YBW will be in the trees somewhere. Anyway, whilst I was looking for it I was distracted by these raspberry leaves with a tell-tale skeletal look.

Skeletal raspberry leaves.

This is the tell-tale sign of sawfly larval activity. So I started looking on the undersides and as well as a lot of orange rust I found these...

Cladius brullei, blackberry sawfly (most likely).

There is a bit of a problem with the ID as there is at least one congener which is not identifiable from these as an adult, Cladius compressicornis, however, its larvae don't tend to eat raspberry leaves so I am hoping this is an ID to species level. One other Scottish record on NBN but reassuringly north of Inverness. I would suspect these have been helped northwards by the movement by plant nurseries of raspberry plants because they are really a SE England distributed beast. Interestingly they are an introduced pest in New Zealand and Australia of raspberry growing and can be found in Hawaii where they were introduced to control wild blackberry.

Dark Sword-grass.

Moth traps out on Friday night where the Dark Sword-grass was the best of a meagre catch. Probably a migrant it was accompanied by a Diamond-backed Moth, although that could have come from the small local colony in our greenhouse. Otherwise we are coming to the end of Large Yellow Underwings, Rosy Rustics, Depressaria radiella and Acleris sparsana.

Mooching about in the dark I did find an Opilione which is likely Oligolphus hansenii, need to have a careful look at it. Also this rather spectacular pupa of Large White.

Large White.

I don't think I would have noticed this during the day, using the headlamp at night often reveals creatures that you would just miss in the daylight.

Here's the main quarry of the night time perambulations - 

Oligolophus hanseni.

I found this here two years ago when it was a first for the county so nice to know they're still present.

Lastly, a bird story. I was standing looking rather forlornly at the Sycamores yesterday afternoon when a Peregrine appeared overhead. It hung in the air above the rookery and eventually the Woodpigeons panicked and about 20 broke cover. The Peregrine stooped, missed, chased, singled one out and stooped again, missing but driving the pigeon virtually into the ground. The Peregrine peeled away to the Wee Wood flushed another Woodpigeon which also escaped fairly easily. The Peregrine levelled out, throttled back and released a pile of feathers from its tallons; close call Woodpigeon.