Advance, onward.

The season seems to be moving on apace. After the gales a period of calm and warm, sometimes gloriously sunny weather. Then grey. Grey for the huge aurora. We could see it through the clouds, the night was bright, but that was all, a kind of brighter grey; hope all of you south (where the sky was clear) enjoyed it!

Flowering Marsh Marigold, very early, Dandelion, then Coltsfoot and Lesser Celandine,  spring is advancing.

Dandelion Taraxacum sp. (No, I'm not getting into taking these further...).

On the bird front there's a constant trickle of Redwings and Fieldfares heading back north and the Pink-feet are restless. For two days there were at least 16 Goldfinch on and around the feeders, the garden was full of birds. Woodpigeons increased to more than 30 for a couple of days, migration in action.

Goldfinch.

I managed my WeBS and was rewarded with a fly-by ringtail. These are probably my best Hen Harrier photos. Other folk here seem to photograph them often but as I mostly bird on foot or bike they give me a wide berth. The kitchen fly-bys are usually sudden, unexpected events, no camera to hand, by the time I'd fired it up it would have gone in any case.

Hen Harrier, female, taken from the car.

Part of the reason I've got behind with the blog is that I've been compiling an overview of the county Ichneumon records, the Ichneumonidae and the Braconidae. This will be published in the Orkney Field Club Bulletin. It was more work than I expected, even though there are relatively few species recorded for the islands. I went through the social media and chased those records, then the OWIARC database, to which I was kindly given a working link to the maps (it's no longer supposed to be up and running but BH had found a URL that worked). I then went through all the county iRecord entries for Hymenoptera, I didn't know how to filter it more narrowly so scrolled through nearly a thousand entries to pick out the species I was interested in. A few additional records appeared whilst I was in the process. I am very much a beginner with this Super Family, but interested, it was a job that needed doing, there's now a county list of accepted records and a list of additional species pairs, aggs, and genera. It's a start. 

Zele albiditarsis, a Braconidae that comes to light. Note the white hind tarsi. Thanks to JB for all the identifications. The first was in 2018 I then had two in 2019.

I must find time to go back through photographs and see if I've any that might be identifiable, some are from field images.

I managed to identify one of the two small beetles I found at Tentsmuir. Pleasingly it keyed out as a new one for me, and quite an uncommon thing.

Omalium rugulipenne, just 2.8mm, a wee beast.

BH popped round for a morning of looking for things. I think he was quite pleased with the Hawthorn Hedge and found a couple of lichens of interest.

Lichen species, hopefully BH will sort it out! (He has Evernia prunastri, thanks BH.)

Whilst we were rummaging about in the hedge the hound flushed a Water Rail and then when we headed up the burn BH flushed a Woodcock. A female Sparrowhawk put in an appearance.

A moss, actually a few species here I think. I took a few samples which I'll try and ID, help will be on hand if I can't do them (BH???!!!). Bryum capillare is the one with the capsules here, thanks BH, I should really know that species.

A stonefly was the only insect of interest, so far, I did take a couple of vegetation samples. I'll see if I can run this down at some point.

Stonefly to be identified.