Rain

Rain, a Beatles song I like, covered in an exemplary manner by Todd Rundgren, and a different song by Martin Stephenson and the Daintees, which Martin and the band played the other week when I went to see them. (The gig full of old men!)

To get to the point it has been raining here quite a bit and our village floods. Thus the £45m flood prevention scheme that is being constructed. Our house has never flooded, but with the ground so saturated we are having a few water issues. Hopefully we will be able to resolve them, although as long as things don't worsen a bit of awareness and management is what is required.

Here's the River Earn doing its thing.

The issue for the village, down stream from here, is that the Earn is joined by the Ruchill and the Lednock in the village. As I've previously mentioned the Ruchill can become a raging torrent in moments due to the deforestation and erosion upstream. 

Just to follow up on a bit of a rant from an earlier post on Glen Lednock and its imminent destruction by a proposed wind turbine development, it appears that sense has prevailed. The UK Government has done something excellent. The NESO website is a bit difficult to comprehend but expert advice indicates that this scheme will not be built before 2035 and quite likely will never be built. https://www.neso.energy/industry-information/connections-reform/connections-reform-results?

Rationalising wind energy demands and distribution is a very sensible step and will have positive impacts for wildlife. In another positive outcome in Scotland the most damaging section of the Natural Environment Scotland Bill was defeated. Many thanks to Mark Ruskell for working to make this change to the Bill and other MSPs for voting against this terrible piece of legislation which would have given future Scottish Governments free reign to destroy some of our most important wild places. Mark also managed to get the "Swift bricks" amendment through, despite an initial hiccup!

In a dry moment the other day I took some bird pics in the garden. 

Redpoll Acanthis flammea, this bird would have previously been called Lesser Redpoll Acanthis caberet

Yes, the AviBase bird list has been adopted by BOU and those three species are now one. Goodbye Acanthis hornemanni and Acanthis caberet, Arctic and Lesser Redpoll are no more. Hooded Crow has also gone, not surprisingly in my view, however the ridiculous notion of Scottish Crossbill Loxia scotica remains. This so-called species is unidentifiable in the field, even on call so I understand - see here https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0798/2235/6763/files/sbrc-position-on-scottish-crossbill.pdf?v=1706189991. I have seen a lot of crossbills in Scotland, I've never had a single one that gave me "different" vibes, well ok one but I was not convinced. They've either been Common Crossbill Loxia curvirostra or rarely, Parrot Crossbill Loxia pytyopsittacus. How anyone can still have this species on their list, other than by geographical assumption (and given Parrot and Common Crossbill distribution that's a dodgy call) I do not know. The alternative position is that there are 6.2 million micro-species of crossbill, so Loxia scotica does exist somewhere in that melange, equally it would be unidentifiable in the field. Bit of a rant, and to be fair, some of my fungi "identifications" probably fall into the same fold, but I am blissfully unaware of the taxonomic ebb and flow in fungi-world, other than knowing that possibly only 75% of UK species have actually been determined (15,000 species), with 2,000 of those recorded but once and an estimate of 20,000 UK species being quite probably somewhat conservative. For more info on what now constitutes a British bird species look here - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ibi.70009  - although personally I find this report pretty confusing. Perhaps the saddest species loss for me is the lumping of Teal and Green-winged Teal, now all Anas crecca, but with the vernacular of Green-winged Teal. 

 

Fortunately all of the above are untouched by taxonomic changes. Note the Blue Tit enjoying the "squirrel" feeder and the Coal Tits, of which I counted 26 around one feeder the other day. 

A trip out to the community woodland the other day added a few species to that list, which is becoming my list of most interest. There are two additions to make, botanical information received about two species, although without dates unfortunately. So Grass of Parnassus and Alder Alnus glutinosa may be added to bring the list to 450 species. A focus on botany, some more light trapping and actually accepting the spider challenge might make 1,000 species possible by the end of next year (that's a pretty big ask, 600 might be more realistic).

Chelicerae of Drassodes cupreus, the position and size of the teeth are diagnostic.

Drassodes cupreus, a common species but tricky to get to species.

 

Thanks to IA for helping me with yet another tricky dipteran.  Interestingly, AI nearly got this correctly initially. However, because I knew it was wrong, antennae colour, I went off at a tangent looking at other families. I should have stuck with Scathophaga. IA got me back on track and then Stuart Ball's very handy key and Steven Falk's images supported the suggested ID.

Scathophaga furcata

I also managed to add a couple of beetles, one of which was found dead and in pieces in a moss sample but I managed the jigsaw to identify it. And here's a favourite, which is tiny and hard to see.

Megabunus diadema

A bit of an exchange with a P-SLer the other day who was close to outraged that I use AI. I am aware there are serious issues with AI, world economy issues may soon become apparent with AI gobbling available investment - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy7vrd8k4eo

If we all removed the clutter of data we have backed up in the cloud, that would go some way to relieving the carbon pollution issues of AI. I have started the long job of deleting unnecessary files, photos in particular which are very data hungry. 

The garden list is a bit stagnant, but I've decided to add species that are blown in, sometimes in bits - Norway Maple leaves and seeds and the lichen Evernia prunastri. A bit skinny maybe....

On the full P-SL list I'm not making much progress at the moment, and have slid out of the top 100. The rain has kept me out of the field and I'm busy entering data not creating it.

To finish here are some photos from around the patch, on a rare nice day.

 

 

Feeder

 I made a Red Squirrel feeder (may also double as a Pine Marten lure, the mammal that lives all around us but I've never seen). The Red Squirrels that come in to our garden every morning don't like my feeder much. Skip along the back wall, past the feeder, shin up the Wych Hazel, decide they don't like Nyjer seed having had a peek at that feeder. Down the Wych Hazel, past the squirrel feeder, rummage around in the grass.

 It's all a bit disappointing....

The addition of the camera trap, some jam sandwiches (at night only, apparently Pine Martens love them) and some bits of carrot and sweetcorn might help, anyway the birds enjoy the peanuts etc.

Moth lights are out, despite the rain. It's not supposed to be raining, just as earlier it was supposed to be raining and wasn't, but forecasting here will be confused by the hills for sure. (This was written some days ago, subsequently Storm Bram has provided some entertainment water-wise.)

December Moth, there were seven between the two traps, again more in the LED.

Winter Moth, this one on the kitchen window but there were five around the synergetic trap.

Spruce Carpet

There were also two crane flies, a Tipula rufina and, new for the garden Trichocera major, with a wing length of 8.5mm out of the range of the other species in this genus, and the cerci shape looks good too.

Trichocera major

 I've been working on compiling the species list for the community woodland. https://www.cultybraggancamp.uk/community-woodland The site is 18 hectares and was MoD land, connected to the Cultybraggan prisoner of war camp. Once the MoD pulled out, but still owned the land, it was apparently used as rough grazing for sheep for many years with little or no use of chemicals. The site is a north facing bank near the lower end of Glen Artney, it sits above the Ruchill, a river that due to the lack of trees, through over-grazing and land management for "sporting" purposes can turn into a dangerous torrent in just a few moments. 

Anyway, prior to my turning up here there had been no great efforts to find out that much about the wild species present, except for birds which have been monitored and more obvious and larger insects like butterflies. A few botanical visits had discovered butterfly orchid, fragrant orchid and various Dactylhoriza species, without getting fully accurate determinations to species. Quite a few common plants had been identified though and a few less obvious insects had been photographed and identified. There is a sightings board, and I still need to obtain the lists from that board. Anyway to cut a long story somewhat short, with compiling other folks' sightings and with my own moseying about I've now got the list to 442 species. (This link might get you there... https://panspecieslisting.com/my-lists.html ) - initial target 1,000 species for the site. Currently the list doesn't include Pine Marten, which I know has occurred but I've not seen a record, Short-tailed Field Vole and Slow Worm likewise.

Here are the photos of one of the fallen but still alive Goat Willow Salix caprea on the site, photos I meant to put in the previous post.

Goat Willow Salix caprea - I bet a litter sample here would reveal a few interesting things...

Next year's project is to  get to grips properly with the botany of the site. And run light traps more often. I'm making a start this winter working on bryophytes and lichens. In the last week or so I've added a few of these.

I've identified this as Cephalozia bicuspidata, but I might need to review that ID, I'm not entirely convinced I've got this correctly.

I'm a more convinced by this, Lophocolia bidentata, another liverwort.

 

It's a slow job finding these, often hidden in samples of moss and only revealed once under the microscope, and then identifying them. For a group of only 72 species liverworts are pretty tricky. I'm also working on mosses, rather a lot more species.... AI is no help with bryophytes I find, however, it is much more helpful with lichens.

Hypnogymium physodes

Phlyctis argena

However, these Cladonia species required a more traditional approach. I'm fairly happy with these identifications.

Cladonia coniocraea I think

Cladonia fibriata

Hopefully someone will put me right if I've got any of these incorrectly.

I'm being encouraged, and thinking I might enroll on a BSBI course next year to develop my botanical skills. I think it would help me improve my rather lacklustre skills. I used the BSBI botanical skills ladder and place myself on just their second step, oh dear! Improvement required I think.