Feral

For my birthday, which is a while ago now, I was given a copy of George Monbiot's book, Feral. As I've mentioned previously I'm no longer much of a reader, but this is a fascinating book. Whilst ostensibly being about rewilding the book is about much more than that, hard to describe really, but very readable and very well researched and referenced. Of course, I wouldn't agree with everything George suggests, however, with thorough referencing you can be assured of the accuracy of what is written. Feral was first published in 2013, but is still very relevant. In contrast, I bought The Treeline by Ben Rawlence on a whim, a more recent book, 2022. This book is not well referenced, not written by a biologist and contains nonsense IMHO. It suggests Dotterel live in amongst trees, if I recall correctly, and states that Great Spotted Woodpecker only nest in dead Scots Pine. That does not instill confidence in anything else written.

Much recommended, since beginning reading this I've found it much admired by several folk I've mentioned it to.

Not much to report on the bird front. Hirundines still around and the odd Willow Warbler, Whitethroat and Spotted Flycatcher. A swaithe of Swifts passed through the village the other evening as I was enjoying a pint in the pub garden.

However, following a tip off, excellent views of Beaver not far from home one evening. Not far from the spot I first saw one. And then on Sunday, whilst at the CCW I was struggling through vegetation at the back of the reservoir when I came across a scene of destruction.

Evidence File 1.

General felling.

They don't usually go for Alder. It doesn't taste nice so they don't eat it. However, Beaver will use Alder to build their dams and they've been busy at the reservoir increasing the height of the dam. A few months ago I was sat on the dam photographing water creatures, I'd be getting quite wet if I tried that now. A welcome addition to my CCW species list. A situation to be monitored, if they keep going we won't need to pipe water down to the ponds, which are now dry, it will just overflow the reservoir banks and make its own way down there. I was dead chuffed recently to be asked to join the steering group for the CCW.

Today the builders arrived to further investigate, and hopefully remedy, our problems with Serpula lacrymans, that's the dry rot fungi. The house was treated for this wood gobbling fungi some years back, but unfortunately the appropriate maintenance was not carried out, and, some additional guttering work should have been done at that time, but was not. As I think I mentioned a few weeks back eagle-eyed Louise spotted the paprika-like dust of the spores by the front door and further investigation found fruiting bodies behind the plaster.

A PSL tick I perhaps did not want to find in our house! Serpula lacrymans

 

Anyway, today further investigation today has found that although the fungi is in some of the stone and brick work it is in just the end of one ground floor joist, and so should be fairly simple to remedy. The guttering work is due shortly, once we get the place dry, sprayed with fungicide and then put back together again, we should have no further issues. We'll be watchful though!

Last year the kitchen acted as one large flying insect trap, but we've had fewer interesting things this year. I did manage to identify a German Wasp Vespula germanica the other day which was new for me and there was the spectacular Ant Beetle Thanasimus formicarius earlier in the year, but otherwise not much else. Last night I found Twenty-plume Moth just as I went to bed.

Twenty Plume Moth

 However, today there was a picture winged fly displaying on the inside of the kitchen window, so as usual I potted it. I took a few pictures of this and then ran it through Obsidentify. 100% Rhagoletis meigenii was what came back. Looking at NBN there are just seven records of this species for the UK and none within 100s of miles of Scotland. It seemed unlikely to be correct and with a bit more investigation I found that R. alternata was a somewhat more likely alternative. However, I posted it on the Diptera UK FB Group and it was confirmed as R. meigenii. In the meantime I'd found the key, which I'd previously downloaded a couple of years ago (Clements 2022), and a quick run through that also confirmed the identification. 

Rhagoletis meigenii, on the kitchen window. Many thanks to LC for confirming the identification.

This may be new for Scotland. I never thought I'd find anything new for a country, but so far I've got a moth and a beetle, and I was pipped at the post by a few hours for another moth, so a fly would be an excellent addition.

I light trap about once a week. I've been a bit knackered of late as I've had to do some long distance driving which I do find quite tiring these days, the motorways around Glasgow are very busy and somewhat chaotic I find. However, a couple of nice things have turned up in the traps and there are a few micros which I'm currently investigating further. Shuttle-shaped Dart and Anomolous have been the best of the macros.

Anomolous

 

I'm making a big effort to get my PSL list up-to-date. The target species option is very useful for this, although coming up with dates etc for things seen long in the past can be tricky. In doing this I'm finding various birds that have been missed off my bird lists, like Snow Goose. In particular, there are a lot of plants which I'm pretty sure I've seen, but I'm not 100% and certainly do not know where and when.  If in doubt I don't add them,I'll refind them sooner or later. Broad-leaved Helleborine was added the other day, lurking in amongst the Bracken at the CCW, I'm not sure if I've seen this before.

Epipactis helleborine.

A few other nice things from Sunday at the CCW.

Pretty certainly Arge ustulata, a sawfly

Balclutha punctata

 

Dasysyrphus albostriatus, new for me.