I'd been working on identifying an awkward Diptera from the light trap, I'd spent most of the day at it, and in the end it proved impossible to get to species with certainty because it was a female. Most likely it was Hylemya valans, but it could be Hylemya nigrimana. So it will go into iRecord as either/or and as far as P-SL goes no tick.
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| Hylemya valans/nigrimana, female |
Anyway, just before tea my phone rang, an unusual event in itself. It was GF from the British and Irish Water Beetle Recording Scheme asking me about a record I'd submitted in 2019. It turns out I'd submitted the most northerly UK record of Rhanthus exsoletus from July 2018, did I have any more photos or even the specimen?
I'm pretty good at storing my photos as long as I know the date so I dug out the relevant drive and had a look through. Darn, no pix! Or at least they were not where they ought to be. I promised GF that I would shortly delve into my fridge/freezer and see if I still had the specimen though, quite possibly I do, we shall see.
Anyway, whilst going through the photos I had noticed an image of a beetle I did not recognise, and the photo had a query against it. I grabbed one image and quickly ran it through Obsidentify which came up with Cercyon unipunctatus, 100%. A quick check on Nature Spot and other sources confirmed the ID. Although tiny, at 2mm, this is a pretty distinctive beastie. I then ran the record through the NBN. Ah! This is not a common beetle either. Indeed my record of this would also, just, be the most northerly in the UK. The other Orkney record was from near Stromness in 1909. (There appears that there might be another Orkney record, but there is no data attached to it, and anyway I would still be to the north of that.) Well, that was a turn-up!
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| Cercyon unipunctatus from 10 July 2018, the previous record for Orkney was H.Locke, 22/11/1909. |
Very few Scottish records of this beetle, so I'm pretty chuffed.
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