London calling

I had to go to London just before Xmas. So far south always offers an opportunity to add a few PSL ticks. The cemeteries in Orkney are manicured and really no place for wildlife, things are better in Perthshire, but in Lewisham there are two large and wild cemeteries at Nunhead and in Brockley. So an opportunity to contribute to Cemetery Wildlife Watch (an iRecord activity - https://irecord.org.uk/activities/summary?group_id=2043&implicit=f )

Nunhead Cemetery entrance.

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery, an area of good habitat.

Nunhead was first on the 17th and the star find was surprisingly a snail, Thames Door Snail Balea biplicata which is quite a rare beast, its range has been contracting in recent years.

Balea biplicata.

A new moth for me, a bagworm.

Psyche casta, larval case. I didn't check if the cases were occupied.

There were plenty of Harlequin pupal cases, and one adult.

Harlequin Ladybird Harmonia axyridis.

Both cemeteries were full of Ring-necked Parakeets of course. The best bird was quite a surprise, a Green Woodpecker in Brockley Cemetery afforded some close views.

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery also produced some good inverts. Highlight was probably 24-spot Ladybird, I found two pupae. To be honest I had no idea what these were, plant/animal/fungi??? But fortunately PTS did know these (thank you).

24-spot Ladybird Subcoccinella vigintiquattuorpunctata.

Other highlights from Brockley were this mirid.

Deraeocoris lutescens.

Another snail, but not such an uncommon one.

Hygromia cinctella.

There were a couple of barkfly species. One was identified for me Valenzuela flavidus (further thanks to PTS). The other keyed out to Ectopsocus petersi, but there is some doubt that the key gives a reliable result, and it may be that gendet is required to be certain of this species.

A male Ectopsocus petersi, maybe.

Valenzuela flavidus.

I've been a bit quick to tick E. petersi PSL-wise, and on recent infomation I should probably leave it as pending. We'll see what the verifiers on iRecord think.

The only botanical PSL tick was Cherry Plum, Prunus cerafisera, I found some young plants sprouting near a more mature tree of this species. I did find the moss Tortula muralis as well, I have seen it before, but it wasn't listed, so sort of a tick.

A last tick was a Collembula, Dicyrtoma fusca, which I haven't recorded before. These were common at both cemeteries along with the very common Dicyrtomina saundersi.

Dcyrtoma fusca.

Dicyrtomina saundersi.

Of course there were a number of unidentified/unidentifiable things that I photographed. This hymenopteran is a Cynipidae, a gall wasp (thanks BL). Which species though is an altogether more challenging, and impossible without a specimen, issue.

A gall wasp of some sort....

All beastie photos were taken with the Olympus Tough TG4. In the end I regretted not taking the EM-5 with the 30mm macro, I will next time. 

Some random cemetery views follow. Taken with the TG4 or Pixel 7.

A Nunhead grave.

Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery views.

Cute

 The cold weather and my adjusted feeding regime have led to a new regular visitor to the garden.

Red Squirrel, actually just out of the garden but a regular visitor in the last couple of weeks.

This species is undeniably cute. We usually have one, but occasionally two turn up. The Bank Voles continue to be active in the wall by the feeders, and pretty much everywhere else, I if I take the time to look. Less welcome are the mice in the garage. These are probably Wood Mouse, deployment of the camera trap may be required, indeed deployment of live traps to remove the wee beasties may have to be considered. Roe Deer have only once made it into the garden but are regular close by and Red Deer are a possibility, I'd probably need to leave a tempting snack on the grass.

More cold weather and an accidental spill of nyjer seed brought 49 Chaffinch into the garden. One new species for the patch has been Lapwing, Sparrowhawk sightings are more frequent and Redwing are a constant presence although the Fieldfares seem to have moved through. The kite roost probably continues to include upwards of 80 birds, but counting them is not the easiset. And Woodpigeon numbered a record day count, with a single flock of 350+ the highlight.

Bullfinch, these have been feeding around the garden in the cold.

More delving in the fridge produced some interesting and new moths. I'd caught a couple of ear moths in September. Despite being macros the dissections of these are not necessarily definitive. The four species can be paired and habitat and distribution are helpful. One of these was a male and certainly Large Ear Amphipoea luscens. The other was a female and somewhat confusing as a feature highlighted on Moth Dissection is said by Chris Lewis (British Lepidoptera) to be difficult and perhaps unreliable. In the end I decided that on the balance of characters, distribution and habitat it had also to be A. luscens but it was a useful lesson in figuring these out.

Female genitalia Amphipoea luscens.

Amphipoea luscens, female, I believe.

Male Amphipoea luscens Large Ear.

A. luscens, male gendet, no doubt about this one, although there could have been fewer bubbles in the prep'.

There were a couple of micros to work out as well. A somewhat worn, tiny white beast puzzled me, but the AI gave me a 100% certainty for Elachista maculicerusella. Checking in the books proved this to be correct so I didn't bother to dissect it. Reed Canary Grass Leafminer is, I think, the new colloquial name for this species.

Elachista maculicerusella.

The other micro proved to be more troublesome, I initially thought it was a Coleophora species but when I posted it with its dissection online I was helped to the correct family and fairly soon to an identification of Ypsolopha ustella (thanks BS). This would be the 7th VC record of this species, so well worth dissecting.

Male gendet Ypsolopha ustella.

Ypsolopha ustella male.

A couple of water beetles were identified, the best of which was the distinctive, but apparently not especially common Strictonectes lepidus.

Strictonectes lepidus.

In this period I also had a bit of a mooch around the White Church cemetery, and found a few fungi. It will be worth further exploration I suspect. At the moment the photos are evading me. So some pictures from around the patch instead.

Out of the fridge.

It's been fridge-like weather-wise, days and nights of clear skies and sub-zero temperatures, then a big fall of snow, and now back to the cold again. I had to go to Gleneagles station in the snow, someone had a train booked for London. Little problem getting there, but getting home again was an adventure with other vehicles stuck and skidding all over the place. Thankful for the RAV4s capabilities, I navigated the chaos (and managed to help one or two others on the way).

Garden with snow, not inclined to sit outside with a coffee and cake.

In the woods.

The snow did produce Brambling for the garden, and only the second patch record.

Online, Birdtrack has been down for a few days and Naturespot went missing (temporarily), as did UK Beetles (and that might be permanent). One hopes a new and affordable host can be found for UK Beetles as it is a site full of invaluable information. Unfortunately, when I checked, the Wayback Machine had saved only a small fraction of the site.

I've been pulling stuff out of my specimen fridge/freezer to identify, the weather not being conducive to insect finding.

First off this Staphy I found on the garage wall a few weeks ago. It looks like a small Ocypus olens, so I went to the key for Ocypus/Tasgius and got horribly confused. In the end I decided a dissection was required, to be certain. I remembered I'd found that bit of the key confusing in the past. Without UK Beetles to check with I headed over to the excellent Danish site, which fortunately had images of the aedaegus as well. Useful as for once the illustrations in Lott are not entirely definitive to my eye.

Tasgius melanarius, the commonest one, but I'd not found it before.

Good job it was a male, aedaegus image checked out against the Danish image. And when I posted it Harald S very quickly confirmed the ID (many thanks Harald).

Next up were a couple of Carabidae from a river gravel sample from back in May, just after we got here. These should have been straightforward, but that was only half true. And then there was some fascinating biology.

The first one was easy, Paranchus albipes is so distinctive, and I can only think I took a sample just to prove it for a new locality (for me). However, it turned out that was a very good decision.

Paranchus albipes, but what's that on the corner of the pronotum?

I usually ignore these fungi poking out of beetle elytra and elsewhere. However....

The other beetle turned out to be Ocys sp. A new genus for me. It keyed to Ocys harpaloides, but putting it into iRecord the species predictor suggested O. harpaloides agg. Mmmm, web search required, what's going on? The web search turned up an interesting issue, that until 2016 Ocys harpaloides was a straightforward identification, and then some researchers found we'd been getting it wrong and perhaps they were not O. harpaloides at all but a similar species Ocys tachysoides. Indeed, most identified since that publication have turned out to be the "new" species O. tachysoides and O. harpaloides is actually rather hard to find. I then remembered I'd stumbled across this before in my web meanderings on Beetles FB Group. Dissection required, see below. Most interesting and back to the Paranchus and its wee parasitic growth was a paper that popped out of the web search showing that these tiny fungal parasites of beetles are identifiable by identifying the beetle species. Each beetle species has been shown to generally only host one species of fungi, although the fungi may parasitise more than one beetle species. Only two beetle species have been found (so far) to host more than one species of fungi so identify your beetle and if the fungi is present there is a bonus species lurking there!

In the case of Paranchus albipes it is host to Laboulbenia flagellata.

Both Ocys species host the same fungus, Laboulbenia vulgaris, which was present on my specimen.

And as expected my Ocys specimen turned out to be the "new" species Ocys tachysoides, which should probably only be identified to species by dissection.

Smaller ones, less than maybe 5.8mm with this contrast between uniformly dark elytra and pale brown pronotum should usually be Ocys tachysoides (mine was 5.2mm). Same beetle just two different photographic techniques, top one down the microscope, bottom one stacked macro image.

Female genitalia, Ocys tachysoides.

In particular the shape of the spermatheca is distinctive.

And here are the parasitic growths of Laboulbenia vulgaris, not the best image in the world....

One more little episode to be added, perhaps in the next post..

Next out of the fridge was this beetle which I struggled with because the first tarsal segments are tiny, so I counted 4-4-4 when they were 5-5-5. After messing about in the Nitidulidae keys and failing to get anywhere I used Obsidentify which identified the beetle correctly immediately. I then worked it through the correct Dermestidae key and came out at the same answer, Attagenus pellio, Two-spotted Carpet Beetle.

Two-spotted is a bit of a misnomer as it has at least five spots, if not seven and three are quite obvious.

The species has no certain records for Scotland on the NBN, is an adventive, but is generally found outside on flowers. I did find it inside the house but this was a period when the kitchen window ledge was collecting quite a few insects as we were having the back door open a lot of the time. ID confirmed by Max B, thanks Max. I suspect the NBN is out of date, but I'll try to find out more.