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.