Monday 11 January 2021

Be inquisitive.

 Dire weekend weather and too many jobs to do. Ideally, I should have been down at Birsay looking for white-winged gulls this morning in good conditions for that malarky. Anyway, made up for the lack of white-wingers by working on iRecord and going back through photographs in the process. Sometimes you can just get lucky. I posted these photos on the Pan-listing FB pages not expecting much and got two responses. The first set me in the right direction but then Jaswinder Bopari responded. JB has identified a few of these things for me in the past, including Zele albiditarsus, another species with very few records in the UK.


Lissonota versicolor

 JB kindly gave me a bit of background info as well. This species was recorded from Arran in 2017 but as far as he is aware there are no other Scottish records. So another excellent find for 2020, more by luck than judgement really. I'm sure in amongst my photos and specimens there are probably a few other gems like this one. I think it is always worth taking the photograph and then at some point pursuing it with species like this. Hymenoptera are especially tricky but there are some very helpful experts, like Jaswinder. Often it will be a dead end, but sometimes it won't be. Anyway, dead chuffed.

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