Purge

 

Whooper Swans

A new bird for The Ross patch, that doesn't happen very often. Heard calling from a distance they eventually passed over our heads as we ventured out relatively early; Whooper Swans - 23, nice. 

I've had to remove a few records from my P-SL. Thus, purge; I do try to keep my lists as accurate as possible. Golden Scaly Male-fern, Dryopteris affinis which I originally thought was the only scaly male-fern, but there are three. These are very difficult to identify and so far I've only managed Dyopteris borreri of the three species; the other one is Dryopteris cambrensis. All three should be found here, quite commonly, but each one I look at is D. borreri.

A couple of water beetle mis-identifications, I don't do so many of these, and they are quite hard. Many thanks to GF for putting me right.

By rights I think everyone should be removing Forficula auricula Common Earwig from their lists as this is now considered to be a collection of micro-species only seperable by DNA. The UK species should be Forficula dentata but these are inseperable on any physical features. However, P-SL should be updated to deal with this, I think.

A very nice garden tick was Weasel which I found by torchlight, its blue eyes reflecting in the headlamp, no pictures at the moment, but I have a trail cam out...

My most important list is my site list for our community woodland, 46 acres, I currently have us at 818 species. I'm slowly, very slowly today as I spent hours on a Lasioglossum bee which was a most frustrating thing to ID, working through various trap samples, intercept and water.

Lasioglossum fratellum I think, a male.

A good way to blow the frustration of this sort of thing away is to get outside. I went and recovered and moved trail cams about. Getting home I found one of the cams had had a bit of a run in with an owl or two. I'm a bit confused about what went on, I think the first clip is of a Tawny Owl. The second clip, when the owl attacks the trail cam is later, it returned. I've had Great Tits hammer at the camera in the past, I suspect that these birds can hear it when it fires.

 

Yesterday in the garden there were two butterfly species, Red Admiral and Peacock and the hoverfly Eristalis tenax, it's November in Highland Scotland, this is a bit mad/scary.

 I had baited one of my trail cams with an egg.