I casually asked about vismig during an online chat with an old friend (I mean a friend for a long time... oh, but actually we are "getting on"! Sorry NC.) This led to some coincidences, the national co-ordinator for Trekellen used to live here, viewed this house to buy (I'm glad they didn't), and it seems I'm now taking over their vismig patch, which apparently can be rather good. Being a bit of a patch watcher, I'm keen to incorporate the vismig into patch activity, but this might mean not using the best vismig place in the glen. A couple of attempts, one from a walk up the road produced a good few hirundines, and from Comrie Community Woodland (my other patch), in rubbish conditions, indicated its potential. I will go and inspect the "best" place though as well, although I'm more keen to watch from the CCW and add to that patch totals. It produced some House Martins, Meadow Pipits and Grey Wagtail, it also has useful seating. Whilst not birding that much anymore, I'm surprisingly keen to do the vismig, not very good at early starts nowadays! However, I'm quite excited, and waiting for decent conditions to give it a go. Interesting really, as I didn't even go to look for waders at Tentsmuir the other day.
During the investigative vismig visit to CCW I did a bit of hunting around as well, my focus was on willow, Salix this time (Betula, last time). I found a few things.
It was a bit early and cool for most insects on a misty still morning but I found two nice caterpillars and the beating tray added a few things.
Drinker.
Iron Prominent.
Melanapion minimum, if correct will be the most northerly record in the UK. Actually, Perapioncurtirostre (thanks MG and CW). No tooth on the claws, and some differences with the stria and it looks more hairy. As the beast is 2mm long, seeing a tooth on the claw was "challenging", but I really believe there is not one.
I've been to Tentsmuir NNR just once before, in a February 18 months or so ago (see the blog post). At the time I was struck by what an interesting place it is. There was an opportunity this week to head back there, I didn't take much persuading.
As this is a National Nature Reserve I couldn't take specimens so this is all down to hunting with the camera. I was thinking that the plantations would be pretty good for fungi, and my previous experience suggested that the dunes would be good for all sorts of things. In the end I barely visited the trees as the dune system took up all my time.
I'd borrowed an extra powerpack to keep the phone charged, as Obsidentify can gobble the juice, I'm not capable of identifying fungi without the AI giving me a lead, at least, as I don't understand fungal taxonomy, except in the most basic sense.
When visiting a site of this quality I'm always struck by just how quickly interesting and varied things can be found. So a small willow, Salix sp gained my attention and within a few minutes I'd found a sawfly larva, some interesting looking craneflies and some leafmines.
Of course a few hours in the field always results in many hours back at the ranch sorting and processing the photographs and trying to get identifications for everything I'd photographed. Obsidentify is a great help with fungi, at least it gets me heading in the correct direction, and there were plenty of fungi in the dunes. However, the AI isn't always much good with larvae, identifying the sawfly larva as Emerald Damselfly!
This sawfly was one of two larvae I found during the day. Additionally, I tried to turn a Lepidoptera larva into a Symphyta. It was strange why this occurred, but I think I just expected the beast to be a sawfly. Fortunately I was put right online (slightly embarrassing) but a reminder to take my time and check and recheck identifications, even at the earliest stage, assigning the beast to the correct Order (sub-order) will help the ID process magically!!
In the first couple of hours, before lunch, I managed five new fungi ticks, four vascular plants, a spider, two caddis and two sawflies. Additionally, there was an interesting hoverfly, three species of moth, via larvae, and an opportunity to look at and photograph a number of other things of interest.
Tentsmuir is a very civilised place to visit, there are toilets and a food takeaway of some quality. I do wish people would respect the place a wee bit better, there's a lot of dog shit, and quite a bit of small rubbish. However, the school party who were visiting, it looked like an ecology field trip, were exemplary. And thank you to the students who recovered Louise's fleece top and ran after her to return it.
There's a lot to do after a trip like that. The spider turned out to be a very interesting species - Arctosa perita, and one of the sawflies is potentially new to Scotland, (potentially, 2nd UK record), however, it would be a long journey to prove that and get the record fully verified I suspect.
What do I do after a full day like that? Put the light traps out of course! The lights went out the following evening, and today has been spent photographing and identifying all of those species. After a bit of a slow run with moths things picked up with the temperature rising and two new species for me were trapped, Brindled Green and a very nice Devon Carpet, which I think is new for VC88. There's also at least one new bug Scobpostethus decoratus, and another I need to look at, a sawfly adult, some caddis and some beetles.
This evening I added Cormorant to the patch and garden list as we were eating tea, it flew over the house. Then younger daughter and I were distracted by bats. I think that the high flying small bats are the Soprano Pipistrelles, which I have recorded here. This evening they were much too high for the detector, there must have been at least fifteen in view from the garden. Common Pips were also wizzing around. But at tree top height there was something larger and slower flying, unfortunately it was too far away for the detector. We then walked down to the bridge to see and hear the Daubenton's Bats, always entertaining. On the way back we heard Tawny Owls, and then had very good views of the Barn Owl that was also added to the patch list recently. A Roe buck crossed the road and jumped the wall in front of us.
A recent addition to the garden list has been another mammal. Brief inconclusive views led to deployment of the camera trap, and Bank Vole was proven.
Ignore the data strip on the video, the date, time and temperature are well off.
