Mid week moths and stuff

I ran a Heath trap with a synergetic mid week and caught quite a bit, the first Udea olivalis for the year and plenty of different caddis which I will have to work through. Best though was a Small Phoenix which I've not caught here before. This species is reported more often locally though and seems to be on the increase.

Udea olivalis

Small Phoenix, underside and upper.

I found a few things in the horse water, as usual, this Phyllobius viridicollis was nice.

Phyllobius viridicollis.

The Sycamore in the back garden was full of insects feeding on the flowers, there were a lot of hovers and bees and Red Admiral as well.

Sycamore in the sun.

Red Admiral on the Hebe.

In the Hebe, along with the Painted Lady and Red Admiral were an unprecedented 50 or so Honeybee.

Green-veined White.

I photographed the orchids which we're delighted have finally colonised the garden, hard to know if it is the mowing regime, we're cutting much higher the last two or three years, or that I scattered a lot of seed last year. There are eight plants altogether. All are Northern Marsh Orchid (yes I know they're not supposed to have spots on their leaves but here lots of them do).

We've not cut this patch now, we have quite a few of these patches dotted around, as well as the mostly uncut Orkney Vole reserve.

Seeing lots no time to write...

Sunday was a good day.

I rarely twitch anything but a Rosy Starling not too far away seemed worthy. It turned out to be the dullest pink one (perhaps a 2cy I need to look at the ageing guide) but good enough.

 Rose-coloured Starling.

I'd not noticed before how long winged this species looks in flight and a much slower wing beat than Sternus vulgaris.

I hummed and haaed and then headed north. Painted Lady flew by. Lots of Diamond-backed Moths in the grass. Sea was flat calm and grey, perfect for a bit of a seawatch. Harbour Porpoise - nice. Hundreds and hundreds of auks feeding on the sea distantly to the south. Big fins, big bodies, four Orca. Fairly decent views through the scope. They went underwater. More scanning, a couple of Harbour Porpoise. A Manx or two went by and a pile of Bonxies, with some Arctic Skuas. Scanned back and forth and kept checking the auks, sure enough, much further out this time the Orcas again. More scanning, more fins, slightly confused as these were not Orca fins I was seeing, then I realised I was looking at much closer and smaller animals, maybe eight animals, still a way off but three turned and were heading in. I lost them. Next thing I knew the Risso's Dolphins were just in front of me.

Risso's Dolphins

Risso's (very bad movie!)

Later on, someone had a very nice adult Long-tailed Skua, but that would have been spoiling me.

At home - wasp.

Tree Wasp Dolichovespula sylvestris - a very nice animal, getting wood to make a nest.

Woodchat

Wandered out late morning and headed for Loch of Bosquoy. Lingered by The Shunan, the Coot all seem to have failed. Walked along the hawthorn hedge. Birded Bosquoy, not much of note.

Back over the road, east end of hawthorn hedge, a very bright wheatear flew up to a fence post. Except it wasn't. Looked with the bins, ......££$$&&** not much more to say.

Woodchat

It's a long time since I've found anything really decent birdwise. The drake Lesser Scaup, which was a fair while ago now, so this was especially welcome.

It lingered for an hour before drifting off south along the fence line, so unfortunately it didn't make the "from the garden" list.

Don Letts currently playing Beautiful Freak, an exceptionally brilliant album.

Bioblitz and beyond.

So the 24 hours of the bioblitz - Orkney Garden Bioblitz 2020 at #orkneybioblitz2020 and at this FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/3765596993515726 was windy and quite cool, I didn't bother to put the moth traps out at all. The colour trays caught almost nothing because of the wind and I spent much of the time trying to identify other folks' stuff. I've just now shared the last hoverfly with the national scheme (I hope), bit of a epic but it did bring people in to looking more at the wildlife in their immediate vicinity. Over 100 folk took part so that has to be a success. For me the best creature, although there are still some to identify was a very tiny weevil that decided to fly into my beeting tray (white umbrella actually) whilst I was searching through it.

The numbered scale is mm. I think a  Ceutorhynchinae but then which one is a challenge.

Now identified as Ceutorhyncus typhae, thanks LJ.

Since I started this post I've been working on a few of the other things I caught, a very tiny Hemipteran is going to be a challenge, thanks to TB I've got as far as Delphacidae and a link to the RES key (1960). From my experience, even if there are only 76 possibilities this is going to be a challenge.

Delphacidae?

An Empid of the genus Rhamphomyia - possibly sulcata - was also in the colour trays, started to try and key this oout but I've surrendered, perhaps the CR will  do it for me? Nearly 90 species and the key is quite hard work, Diptera aren't really my thing.

However, then I found this in the tray, a Bibionidae. The keys are relatively straightforward(ish) and I think it is Bibio johannis.

Bibio johannis I think.

There were a few hoverflies in the garden and the first Episyrphus balteatus of the year put in an appearance.

Episyrphus balteatus.

Eristalis pertinax, Eristalis arbustorum, Neoscia podagrica, Eupeodes corollae, Platycheirus albimanus and Rhingia campestris were also seen on the day.

Cyanomya mortuorum.

Not a hover but a fine Dip was hanging around the dead Rook around which I have a couple of pitfall traps. These were still filling up with larvae, not sure what of, I'm waiting to see what emerges from the corpse later, not that there's much left of it. Currently catching a lot of Pterostichus melanarius in them. Previously lots of Thanatophilus rugosus and a few Nicrophorus humator.

I set a moth trap the night after the bioblitz. Grey/Dark Dagger, Spectacle, Silver Y, Lychnis were notable, no more Glaucous Shears though. (I have a missing blog post re those.) In the late afternoon there were lots of bees around the perennial cornflowers and I managed a Bombus distinguendus (Great Yellow) and new for me the cuckoo bee Bombus bohemicus. I have in the past been trying to ignore the yellow, black and white bumbles as they are swines to ID but I've made an effort of late, takes a lot of photos to get the ID nailed though.

Bombus distinguendus

Bombus bohemicus.

Bad beetle day

Every now and then I have those days when I can't seem to identify anything. I don't think it is just a product of age, getting older, although memory plays a part. So yesterday I had a bit of a crack at some beetles and managed to make a mess of a few things, including commenting incorrectly on an online id. Often this is educative though. So following the brief discussion online I will now put a wee note next to Leistus spinibarbis in the Carabid keys that appendage colours are not reliable and that pronotum shape is the criteria to focus on. I tend to presume all the Leistus here are fulvibarbis, because that's all I've ever found, but in future I will check just that bit more carefully, fortunately this can be done without killing the animal, just by getting a half decent photo.

My other mess up was with this tiny weevil. I recognised that I had found it before. Unfortunately I hadn't put it with my Flickr collection, I need to be a bit more conscientious about doing that. So, thinking the rather hidden antennae were straight I headed off down the Apion road. And then got stuck. Going through all of Mark Gurney's excellent photos on his Flickr site (what a brilliant resource, https://www.flickr.com/photos/84259756@N05/albums especially when used with his guides, here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B008cp9g-Pm8fmx2aE5JUXpkX0czQ2F1bWtJZWZJb1JxM2JLM0djMi1Ea2RWUzluMHNGVGc?fbclid=IwAR3-W0F4E7eSiFuvnwrgGL9lGJvoFrVzSpoJGuHWjW8qXz5kHiRllqOgpQY ) I became increasingly frustrated that although I knew this was a common species I couldn't find it. Eventually I posted on the FB page and of course, it wasn't an Apion (thanks MF). Looking more carefully at my photo I could eventually see that the antennae that I had tried to tease out from beneagth the beast were indeed not straight.

Leiosoma deflexum - not an Apion. The numbered intervals are mm, it is tiny.

A common and widespread weevil of Ranunculus species.

Following this sort of mess up its important to regain confidence. A bit of digging in the garden, moving a bit of carpet - weed suppresent - and out popped what may well be the third county record of Amara aenea, (oh no the day got worse, wrong again! However, I did then redeem the situation by getting it right ovata/similata, I favour similata but could be wrong, and bonus, not previously found in the county either) both the other records were found within 10m of this one.

Amara aenea, ovata/similata slightly tricky to id.

A lot of the Amara look superficially very similar and can be tricky but I think all the relevant criteria can be seen from this photo, size c7mm. So I could let it go (but I do have a previous specimen). Misread the below, it obviously has a scutellary pore but I understood it incorrectly for some weird reason.

Also under the carpet a common but welcome Pterostichus niger. A species that has occasionally confused me in the past, from P.melanarius, but pronotom shape is a very good guide.

Pterostichus niger.

Confidence a little restored - or not, it all gets worse, see below.. 

I am trying to get some focus stacking to work using my digital microscope. The Olympus T4 does this automatically, the three beetles above are all focus stacked images, it works fine with live beetles when they stay perfectly still as Carabids in a pot often do. However, sometimes the T4 isn't the right tool for the job, unfortunately the Celestron didn't come with focus stacking software and the depth of field is pretty shallow. Photoscape X is a free tool that includes this. I use Photoscape 3.y to process all my images but the jump to X looks like a bit of a learning curve. However, I think I need to do this as I'm really struggling to get good enough images. Below are stacked images of Geodromicus nigrita from the T4, demonstrating its (or my) limitations.

Geodromicus nigrita - new to Orkney.

This landed on me at the stables on Thursday evening and with a bit of dextrous manouvering I managed to get it off my cycling glove and into a pot without losing it. It is tiny and black, and the T4 struggles with that combination often. The image below is with the Celestron, unstacked. But it would be easy to produce the range of images just need the software glue. There are good Youtube guides from the Photoscape folk so hopefully I should be able to learn to do this.

Geodromicus nigrita - hopefully I can get this confirmed.

I look at other folks' images online, there are some especially brilliant photographers out there consistently producing amazing images, however, I think that a permanent studio type set up with lights and tripods etc is required, I am assembling and dissembling my kit all the time. Ideally the FugifilmT3 with a macro lens, extension tubes/revering rings and some lights and diffusers would be the business for me but I would need to have a permanent set up. The cost is a bit scary. So I think I will try to improve what I do with what I've got. I wonder if a decent close-up lens to put on the Canon might help a bit though (CanonGX3) with the field photos. One problem with the T4 is the dreaded purple spot, a known issue, and still is with the T6, you have to work around it but it is very annoying, the Leiosoma above doesn't show it, but last week's Otiorhynchus porcatus does. Yes, you can process this out, hopefully Photoscape X might help with this.

Slug problems, yes they have started on my corgettes but I don't really mean that. On one of the local FB groups some photos were posted suggesting an ID of Arion vulgaris, an uncommon beast nationally and not recorded here. I had also taken some photos that afternoon and they also led me in that direction. But that seemed a bit unlikely. I posted on a national FB page and was given help, dissection suggested. I had another look at the slugs in question and found that actually, although they don't want to rock (Arion ater usually rocks back and forth if you stroke it) these are most likely Arion ater. 

Arion ater individual 1

 Arion ater individual 1

 Arion ater individual 1

 Arion ater individual 2

Arion ater individual 2 on left.

I'm hoping this little guy is Arion intermedius. (But it isn't, wrong again.) Arion subfuscus I think.

Here's another at another location with Deroceras reticulatum in the background - feeding on squashed worm sp....

Lastly on my identification rambles another battle with bumblebees. You would think that these should be easy, wrong, complete swines to id here in Orkney. Anyway, these two are right.

 Top two Bombus terrestris queen, a species that has become common here in the last few years.

Because it was huge, I couldn't get a picture of the face unfortunately to nail it, Bombus hortorum queen.

Bombus lucorum s.l. have been emerging from our garage but I've only got rubbish pictures. They are an aggregate of three species with B. cryptarum believed to be the predominate species from the species aggregate prevalent here but laboratory analysis required maybe to be certain.

 More of these this year, management regime is slowly increasing the diveristy of wild flowers in our Orkney Vole reserve, Cardamine pratensis.

Finding a new species of tree on the patch seems unlikely but today I walked right into the corner of the patch and there at the end of the line of trees along the burn by the bridge was this.

I think it is Alder.

Leaves look like Alder anyway.

Garden bird race and Otiorhynchus porcatus

55 species from the garden today and missed some that I really should have got, like Hen Harrier. However, Merlin, Goldeneye, Osprey and Arctic Skuas were nice.

Blurry Osprey, with (presumed) Brown Trout, raising a commotion.

 Dog walk (exercise) Ice, off patch unfortunately.

Star of the day was a new beetle for the garden and NFM too. Otiorhynchus porcatus, 5mm of quite distinctive weevil in one of the garden pitfalls and to be released the morn.

Otiorhyinchus porcatus.