Post-covid

Having managed to avoid this very unpleasant, and sometimes tragically serious, illness for all these years I seem now to be in the recovery phase of a bout. Whilst whatever variant we are now dealing with is unpleasant it is fortunately not as serious an illness as it once was. I'm not very good at being unwell though and a large dose of grumpiness has accompanied the fever. Activity has been considerably reduced. Follows a set of substandard images from the light traps as I can't be bothered to edit them properly, and they'll do for iRecord.

Angle Shades.

Barred Red

Brussels Lace

Buff-tip

Coxcomb Prominent

Foxglove Pug

Light Emerald

Mottled Beauty

Peacock

Scalloped Shell

Small Clouded Brindle (NFM)

Tawny Barred Angle (NFM)

The one light trapping session produced more than 40 moth species. There are a few micro and macro dissections to do to complete the list. A Bryotropha, a Coleophora and a Dicrorampha being the micros needing dissection. A couple of "Minors" require dissection for the macro list.

 A late Northern Cockchafer headed the beetle list.

Showing the tooth on the 3rd antennal segment.

Northern Cockchafer Melolontha hippocastani just prior to take off,.

Male appendage.

I thought this was probably quite a late record for this species. There have been a few other beetles, a good few awaiting my attentions as I haven't much felt like setting up the photos and doing fiddly dissections.`

Orange Ladybird Halzia sedecimguttata.

The weevil Otiorhynchus singularis

 The Orchid Beetle turned up in the garden.

Orchid Beetle Dascillus cervinus

There were some water beetles in the light traps, which I need to tackle, Ceutorhynchus typhi was on the kitchen window ledge and I came across a Malthodes in a nearby verge. I did have a go at this that keyed to Malthodes flavoguttatus, but it was a female so the outcome is I believe slightly in doubt.

Malthodes, female, feasibly flavoguttatus.

I've been working on the plant list within the garden, not the cultivars, the plants that can reasonably be considered to be wild. So far the list is 46 but there are a couple or three grasses that I'm struggling with.

Recovering from covid I've sat about in the garden a fair bit. Spotted Flycatcher sat briefly on the gate and the behaviour of the Robins was interesting. Every-now-and-then taking a break from feeding the offspring by sunbathing and preening.

Robin

Not wishing to pass the covid on I didn't go to the pre-meeting for the hustings which are taking place here on Monday. I would like to vote Labour, and maybe I will, but the important job in this constituency is to keep the Tories out so I may have to vote SNP, just to be sure. It would be nice if we can have no Tory MPs at Westminster for Scotland. For various reasons, including not supporting independence, I'm not a great fan of the SNP. However, I have voted for them in the past. In our elections, where there is proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament, it is worth voting Green (despite Scottish Greens being a pro-independence party), but for Westminster, "Kick out the Tories" is the order of the day. The whole Reform situation is very concerning in England, they won't get many votes here, thankfully. There are some useful comments on the various manifestos on the Wild Justice website - https://wildjustice.org.uk/general/our-general-election-guest-blogs-an-introduction-index-and-reference-point/