I've done a bit of clumping in the past, it's always productive and it always produces something of interest. What is clumping? Place of interest (in my case the community woodland), you'll need a sharp knife, a pooter, some plastic bags, some tubes, a sorting tray (I use a white umbrella, compact to carry and works well as a beating tray as well (not always easy to get one that is white inside these days).
So along to the community woodland where I am trying to build a comprehensive species list. Find some Juncus clumps on the bank of the burn. Open the umbrella, get the pooter ready and the macro camera. A head torch is handy late in the afternoon. Cut a bit of a Juncus clump from as low down in the clump as I can get and beat and bash over the umbrella. Start pooting!
The clump was full of beetles, mostly Stenus, the alien looking Staphylinid beetles that I like to identify, but they are tricky.
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| Stenus bimaculatus, only a few species have pale dots on the elytra, so this is a relatively easy one to ID. |
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| Stenus nitidiusculus, less easy, but it has dents in the elytra that are helpful. |
In the end I had six Stenus species in the clump, they took me a good few hours to sort out, and that included mis-identifications that I corrected. I often find it helpful with tricky things like these to take another look at them and check the IDs again the next day, or some hours later. Two of these species were new to me, so that was a bonus.
I also cut a second clump and put it in a plastic bag. I brought this home and it is currently in the fridge. The inhabitants will stay alive in the fridge until I get around to sorting through the clump. One way to sort this material is to use sieves and a bowl, but I prefer to use the pooter method. I might sieve the retained clump after I've looked through it. There's usually something extra revealed. However, we don't have a conservatory or a greenhouse here in Perthshire. (Main purpose of a greenhouse is as a large insect trap or for sorting catches, plant growing.... Well ok, my collected seeds for wilding the lawn go well in a greenhouse.)
There was also Tachyporus atriceps and Bradycellus verbasci in the beetles collected, I ignored a few tiny Aleocharines.
A new bug for me was Drymus ryei, I caught three.
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Drymus ryei, no long hairs erect on the tibia, all black thorax dorsally. |
Ichneumons have a weird fascination for me. They are so hard to identify, but if you can get them to species there is a real sense of achievement. There are hardly any records on the NBN so it is a good route to a new species for the vice county, if not for Scotland.
My approach with Ichneumons is to first run them through Observation.org. Whilst it might not give the correct answer, it can be a short cut to getting to family. In this case it initially came up with something feasible, but wrong. There is a fabulous web resource for Ichneumons, just google the species name followed by bioimages and you come to Malcolm Storey's brilliant images. In this case MS's images helped to rule out the "wrong" species, but then helped with Obsi's second idea which was family Phaeogenini. I looked through a lot of images and compared them with my own. I was on the right track I was sure but which genus? At this point I put my images on FB with various measurements and antennae segment counts. MS quickly suggested a genus and then I found the appropriate keys. On this occasion it was a choice between two species, and my existing images gave a strong clue, but I took a few more pictures to confirm the identification.
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| This image of the propedeum nails the ID, this being a female, Colpognathus divisus. Data - Forewing 4.4mm, body 7.5mm and antennae 20 (22). |
There are just two accepted Scottish records on NBN. One of these records is a bit anonymous, but the other has been verified by a well known expert. Hopefully, when I put mine on iRecord it will be positively verified. I'm intending to take some specimens along to the National Museum of Scotland in the next few months, I will include this specimen. It is a bit of a palaver giving material to the museum, but very worthwhile as the collected specimens then have a longer term value. I don't do this enough to be honest (in fact barely at all, once previously, a situation I intend to correct). Although I have sent specimens for research and for reference to others.
Overnight on 1st February I put a light trap out. When I got home from the community woodland the temperature on the car thermometer said 6C and when I went to the garage later, wearing a head torch, a small moth flapped around my face. Out went the Heath trap with an LED.
Although there was some rain overnight, it stayed relatively warm and this resulted in ten Pale Brindled Beauty and a couple of Winter Moths.
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| Pale Brindled Beauty, this last one rather plain. |
