Rain, wind, more rain... calm

Not great weather, it must be said. Indoors and continuing to sort through the Orkney moth list, progress, but slow.

Out in the field I did collect some more Knapweed Centurea sp seed heads. I'm not sure which species of Knapweed this is, it is in a birdcrop field and was sown about five years or so ago. A few weeks back I found some tiny orange larvae in a seed head when I dissected it. There are a range of species which may be found in the seed heads. These looked like Diptera larvae but they were very tiny. Anyway, I dissected these ones and found the bright orange larvae again. They are very tiny, 1.2mm.

Probably a Cecidomyiidae larva. These are predatory, so in the seed head, hunting.

It was suggested that this could be Aphidoletes, an aphid hunter (thanks LJ). Anyway, I have two rearing jars with these in now, with luck something will emerge that is identifiable.

Here's some video of it in the seed head.

 

On New Year's Day I picked up a beetle that I'd offered to identify.

I'm pretty sure this is Leiodes obesa, if so 2nd Orkney record.

Quite a small thing and this genus isn't especially easy, but there are three common species, of which this is one, and it fits pretty well. Hind tibia and antenna are important for ID.

Big, blunt tooth apically on the hind tibia, this side of the long spur, not easy to see.

11th antennal segment at least as wide as 9th and 10th.

Today was a very beautiful day. Here's what it looked like at dawn from the garden.

A relief after all the wind and rain we've had of late.

We went for a walk and on the way back, having my white umbrella and a mallet handle with me I beat a Gorse Ulex europaeus bush to an inch of its life....

And it kindly surrendered some denizens of its spikey interior.

Pupa.

Cydia ulicetana maybe.

I suspect the pupa and larva are from Cydia ulicetana, a moth I've never trapped, despite it perhaps being common. Anyway, the pupae and the one cat' are in a rearing pot now. I have another rearing pot, potentially of this species from a larva I collected in a seed pod at the end of last year.

 There were a couple of beetles in there as well, I suspect they will be hard to identify but I'll give them a go. Oh, and a crab spider, but it was most likely the common one, I cannot remember its name. 

The mallet handle is handy to carry to go with the umbrella beating tray. The mallet was, I think, my dad's which I inherited. It shattered into many pieces the other day when I was mending the For Sale sign at the end of our road. It must have been fifty years old, maybe older. Anyway, the handle lives on as a useful implement.

The evening was beautiful too so I headed down to Loch of Harray on a photographic mission.

Loch of Harray.

Photos taken and various birds noted I headed back to the car. Quite a few year ticks, Long-tailed Duck, Slavonian Grebe and something calling that I didn't immediately recognise, but probably Whooper Swans. A lot of Pink-feet yapping away. Put the kit safe in the car, seatbelt on, looked up, set off, something caught my eye, and standing in the burn a few metres from me was a Great White Egret. I managed to stick the iso on max and fired a few shots off.

Great White Egret, not quite in the dark.

A car in my rear view so I had to move, this being single track. A nice end to the day.