Snow

There had been little here, except on the hill tops until today when, just as we were heading out to Monzievaird a fair bit came down. We went out anyway and Monzievaird was a changed landscape. The loch was mostly frozen, just a small patch of open water where amongst 70 or so Mallard, 17 Little Grebes, 4 Moorhen, 2 Canada Geese and 4 Mute Swans were a pair of (new for me at this site) Gadwall. A Carrion Crow was tearing at some dead and dismembered thing in the middle of the ice. Being somewhat concerned about how good the roads would be to get home, we didn't linger long.

Photos from around Loch Monzievaird.

Overnight and during the morning I'd been trying my new camera trap. I've been using a Browning trap over the last few years and whilst I have got some decent results and it has found some interesting things, principally Water Rail and Jack Snipe in Orkney, it is a frustrating thing to use. One main problem is setting the trap in the dark, which is almost impossible because the screen is located on the front of the camera requiring a certain amount of contortion and trial and error to get it to focus on the correct area. The tripod mount has broken, which makes positioning it a pain as well. I had bought a solar panel to try to reduce battery use, but in the winter and at night it tended to be unreliable. Probably its worst feature from my point of view was the lack of decent close focus necessitating taping a close up lens to the front of it if I wanted to get images of small mammals. Browsing the Nature Spy site the other day I saw they had an interesting new camera available, and at not an extortionate price.

The Helarctos Solar trap has a wide angle lens, that focuses much closer. It also connects to my mobile phone so it is not hard to position much more accurately, even at night. I've also found that it fits really well on the Z tripod fitting I have, and used with this, and no tripod, it will sit on the ground in a stable position, ideal for small mammals and for small birds.  I've put some of my first efforts below. One position is a little too ambitious with the close focus, I should have put it a few cms further back, but otherwise the video output is pretty good. Photos are passable, but that's not how I tend to use a camera trap, although it will take one still image with a video.

 Red Squirrel, feeding finches.

How many bird species can you see?

Leucistic Chaffinch

Wood Mouse 

Bank Vole at night.

 Three Bank Voles under the feeders.

Robin

 

Bank Vole, the camera a fraction too close I think.

The Brambling is only the fourth or so in the garden, the third this autumn/winter. And the leucistic Chaffinch is the third, I didn't get images of the previous two. Today, out in The Ross there was a smart male Stonechat which is only the third record for the patch I think.

I'm currently writing up various things from 2025, and earlier; and trying to get all my records in to iRecord. The Community Woodland species total is also being worked on, currently 461 with a few mammals, reptiles and amphibians known about, but I have no dates, yet.

I attended a Biological Recording Company beginners' session on bryophytes earlier this week. I'm keen to improve my skills,and although I knew most of what was presented it was still worth attending. A new bryophyte book should be turning up shortly and I now better understand the morphology of these plants.

Happy New Year

The more confiding of our Red Squirrel visitors, the dark tailed individual, plucked up courage on Christmas morn to find their Christmas breakfast in the now, quite popular home made squirrel feeder.

Red Squirrel

Indeed this squirrel has been visiting the feeder regularly, sometimes on stealth mode it seems, as the camera trap only caught it leaving, I'd seen it sitting on the feeder platform from the house but the trap was slow to fire for some reason.

 It worked ok for these Wood Mice though.

And the Bullfinch also returned today (not camera trap).

Bullfinch female.

A Christmas gift that was most well received was Volume 1 of Beetles of Britain and Ireland recently republished by the Field Studies Council. Andrew Duff is working on a revision of this first volume I believe, but this reprint is most welcome. I am hopeful that Volume 4 may also get the reprint treatment, although, again I believe AD is also working on a revision of that episode. I have originals of Volumes 2 & 3 but these other volumes had become impossible to obtain (and Volume 3 was tricky to get when I managed to obtain a copy).

To go with my Volume 1 my working through unidentified samples produced an excellent Harpalus laevipes from the back garden. This is a really quite rare beetle and a very good discovery. 

Harpalus laevipes

 

I've also been working on some diptera from 2024, Muscidae and the blow fly families. The excellent key to the blow flies by Olga Sivell is a such a useful book for learning about diptera morphology. The blow flies themselves are tricky to ID. I may have found Bellardia bayeri in the garden, but as good as the key is, it is easy to make mistakes and I need to re-key this before submitting to iRecord. I also need to re-photograph some important bits.

A wander around the patch yesterday included a visit to the fish farm where there were 22 Teal, three Mutes and a Moorhen. On the river nearby there was a pair of Goosander with the resident Mallard.

Mute Swan and Teal (now Green-winged Teal, but Anas crecca ref AviBase).