Earthquakes

There is a reason that The Earthquake House is in the field behind our house https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/comrie/earthquakehouse/index.html. And this may be the reason there are a few cracks in the plaster, although, to be honest that is of lower concern than some of our other maintenance issues.... (which species do you perhaps not want as a PSL tick in your own house, maybe Serpula lacrymans! Our house had been treated for this in the past, but essential maintenance was neglected unfortunately. Fortunately, it looks like we've caught this before it has become a serious issue.)

Anyway back to the earthquakes....

Actually folk in the village are used to earthquakes here, and why the village is known as "shaky toun" because it sits on the Highland Boundary Fault. There were three quakes, one on 13 June and two on 16 June, I slept through all three. One of them on 16th was 1.4 Mag and only 2km down, so apparently it caused quite a wobble. Here's the data - http://earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/earthquakes/recent_uk_events.html

A while since I posted, tied up with a load of stuff, the library campaign, helping develop a new campaign about Glen Lednock, supporting the verification of moth and butterfly records in Orkney, as well as trying to keep up with my own recording efforts on iRecord, and of course identifying stuff.

In Orkney first pugs and then the Crambidae issues have raised their seasonal heads. I've decided I really need to understand pugs better, so invested in the wee NW England guide and downloaded some resources from the web. The Scoparia/Eudonia issue is always a challenge, and it is clear that not all individuals can be identified, even with dissection, so until we have pocket barcoding kits... Some are best left undetermined. Here's one I'm currently pondering from the garden light traps 15th June.

Scoparia pyralella maybe

I'm thinking this ticks quite a few S. pyralella boxes. It's not a species I've necessarily come across previously (need to check, not often at most). I do see a lot of these moths, and at the moment most of them are either Scoparia ambigualis or Eudonia mercurella.

Otherwise on the moth front quite a few interesting things to pheromone lures, but I never found Large Red-belted Clearwing and so far have a blank for Welsh Clearwing, both of which are known from VC88 I think.

However, the big success was Lunar Hornet Moth to the lure in the garden.

Lunar Hornet Moth, a bit battered but it flew off strongly.

Grapholita janinthana, these love the JAN lure, a tiny 5mm FW tortrix.

I've caught a few tricky things as well, a very likely Dichrorampha senectana found in a puddle at the cemetery, currently out for expert opinion as my dissection was maybe not definitive. 

  

Dichrorampha senectana most likely.

And captured in the kitchen was Epinotia tendella. 

 

Epinotia tedella

 Perhaps the smartest moth of the recent finds has been this fabulous Lilac beauty, new for VC88 and potted outside of the trap around midnight on 19/20th June.

 

Lilac Beauty.

Not much on the bird front, other than Barn Owl being regularly heard around the garden, around midnight.

 

I've a few caddis and beetles to work on. I have eventually sorted out the Oedemera beetles, taking a few specimens in the end, all of which turned out to be Oedemera lurida, one of which handily saved me a dissection by exuding it's genitalia. 

 

 

Oedemera lurida.

Also from the Community Woodland some orchids.

 

Dactylorhiza sp, I need to sort these out.

More straightforward, Lesser Butterfly Orchid.

And finally a very nice spider hunting wasp, which I made a pig's ear of initially and thought it was an Ichneumon, doh! It's an aculate, look at the antennae.

 

Priocnemis perturbator
 

... and a year later

 

I've kept bumping in to large Cheilosia hoverflies at Comrie Community Woodland, but on each previous occasion they evaded capture.

 On the 2nd June I had a wander with the camera on Comrie Community Woodland where I've been trying to build a site species list. I first visited exactly a year previously, after we'd been living here in Perthshire just three weeks. The site was part of Cultybraggan Camp, a British PoW camp in WW11, it has a fascinating, although gruesome history, have a look here - https://www.cultybraggancamp.uk/ We have our (half) allotment on the Camp. The Community Woodland are fields across the road and up the way from the Camp, more information may be found here - https://www.cultybraggancamp.uk/community-woodland On the site is a (very) small reservoir which was, I think, the water supply for the camp. And a small burn flows through much of the site.

The bird list for Comrie Community Woodland is 75 species. There has been consistent monitoring of the birds over recent years, at least. I've managed to see 53 species in my first year, plus Moorhen and Rook, seen from the site. There is a plant list which I haven't seen (I must get hold of a copy), my main focus is invertebrate monitoring, of which some occurred previously, but included mostly just butterflies and the more obvious, larger species. But I've also been recording bryophytes, fungi and a few plants. So far I have a total of 221 species in iRecord for the site. This isn't that many, bearing in mind my list for our tennis court sized garden is 468 species, with a few to add. However, the garden list does include birds and wild plants. The Community Woodland is a really nice site to work on, although light trapping requires a bit of an effort, taking the kit up there and then staying up all night, or getting back to the site very early in the morning. There are many hundreds (or thousands) more species to record.

Anyway, here are some of the species from the wander with the camera. I took one specimen on this occasion which was of a hoverfly NFM (new for me) Cheilosia albitarsis, which is a bit of a tricky ID, and I got no field images (the image above was from a previous visit and the animal proved unidentifiable from photographs). Here's one of the key identification features, front tarsus showing the colour of the five tarsomeres, and, importantly, the shape of tarsomere five.

Cheilosia albitarsis, fore tarsus.

The following images are slightly more, er, populist.

Cantharis nigricans

Cantharis pellucida, the red/orange ventral colouration being the easy ID feature.

Pretty sure this is ok for Chrysopa perla, lacewings not really being my thing

Clouded Buff, a male. It required some dogged pursuit and stalking to finally get this image

Another "different" colour variation of Ctenicera cuprea, in Orkney I never saw anything other than the standard version.

Empis tessellata

Micropterix calthella

Nematinus sp, there are three similar species and I need to see the dorsal surface of the abdomen in order to get a specific identification. It didn't open its wings....

Oedemera virescens I think, the swollen hind femurs make it a male of this species, I'm finding these a wee bit confusing at the moment and should probably take a few specimens.

Xylota segnis Ooops, more carelessness, this is actually Brachypalpoides lentus which was not at all on my radar until I saw a post on FB; I meant to check this one but RM beat me to it and kindly re-identified this.

Panorpa communis a female Common Scorpionfly

Triphragmium ulmariae, NFM this rust on Meadowsweet

Away from the Community Woodland, the best effort of the week was to finally see a Beaver. A brief, but clear view was had on an evening when I wasn't really looking for the beasts, quite unexpected.