Rain

It is raining. It rained all night. It might stop tomorrow afternoon, for a bit... As I write the rescue helicopter is clattering over the house, and there are a lot of sirens in the distance apparently. Fortunately our bit of the village is quieter.

It's a good chance to catch up with records, I'm a bit behind. I always find when I've not put data into iRecord there and then that there will be some missing photographs or info and I'll have to scrap a few things. I always tell myself I'll get everything entered at the time, but somehow I never do. 

I put a moth trap out the other evening, Monday, just a single Heath trap with an LED. No moths but two diptera. I'm really not very good at diptera but Obsidentify is surprisingly excellent at them, sometimes! Anyway on this occasion it came up with two 100% identifications. One was of Scathophaga furcata, a species I saw for the first time quite recently and managed, with a little help to identify from field photos. This time I took the specimen and ran it through Stuart Ball's key. It keyed out nicely confirming the Obsidentify 100%

Scathophaga furcata, a male.

The photos show the pale antenna with an arista that has very fine short hairs. Thorax has fine acrostichal hairs, and the humerus is the same colour as the rest of the thorax. The wings have fairly discrete smudges on the cross veins. 

The other fly was a Heleomyzidae. Tephrochlamys rufiventris was the species that Obsidentify came up with. At the time I thought I hadn't seen this before so I was keen to prove it. There's a new key to this family available online by Sivell, Stubbs and Andrews (Jan 2025).

Anterior bristle in the middle of the mid femur, tiny but fairly easy to see.

Sub-costal cell clear and of uniform colour (the pale orange cell here).

 When I tried to add the species to my life list the website told me I'd already added it, and sure enough I had found one in Orkney previously. However, both Tephrochlamys rufiventris and Scathophaga furcata are new for the garden, so well worth taking the time to identify them.

I set both my camera traps at the community woodland on Saturday afternoon. There are no actual records of Field Vole Microtus agrestis, despite there being evidence of their activity everywhere so I decided I would obtain a record. A bit of baiting for a couple of days with carrot, apple and sunflower seeds,  a feast for a Field Vole, at a couple of spots where they were obviously busy. The other trap was set on a path, hoping for Pine Marten.

 

The first fires of the trap captured Wood Mouse, a half expected bonus species which also had not been recorded previously.

Field Vole.

The Browning trap was set for bigger game on a footpath. It captured an early walker with their dog, but also a brief clip of Brown Hare which I've not seen on the site directly, although there are previous records from the sightings board.

 Brown Hare

 The other mammal recorded on the day was Mole, of which there was considerable evidence.

Mole hill.

A few days before Louise and I had looked at this poo. I photographed it and compared online. I'm pretty sure it's Pine Marten scat. I really would love to see one - instead of just its poo.

Pine Marten scat, Martes martes

Whilst I tick moths on seeing their leaf mines, I really don't want to tick Pine Marten from its poo. Inconsistent criteria...

Other than a few trips to the community woodland, where I also managed to add Herring Gull to the list as one was with the Common Gulls as they went to roost, and they all circled over the CCW I've not being doing that much. Walks around the patch, one visit to the White Church graveyard and watching birds from the warm kitchen have really been the limit of my field expeditions.

I'm hopeful this is the moss Brachythecium rutabulum, which would be NFM.

Cladonia fimbriata

The springtail Entomobrya nivalis.

The River Earn today. Flooded pony fields in the foreground, then the river, then a new river, the A road, so full of water that it's broken the stone dyke so that the water can into the Earn.

The Ruchill looking very bad tempered.

The River Lednock was also seriously fierce.

I almost forgot that I'd photographed these Bank Voles Clethrionomys glareolus in the garden the other day. There is a small colony that live in the wall by our bird feeders, we can watch them from the kitchen window.

 So despite the weather a bit of a mammal watching week.