A couple of months ago I picked up a copy of the RES's The Adult Trichoptera (Caddisflies) of Britain and Ireland, as I get a fair few caddis to light each year and I reckoned I should probably start having a crack at IDing some of the less easy species and put some dots on the map.
It arrived, I flicked through it and then on the shelf it went. However, last week I decided to have a crack at one of the low hanging fruit and look a little more closely at the all dark Mystacides species. These turn up in numbers to my garden light traps in August but are less numerous than M. longicornis. There are two possible species M. azurea and M. nigra, best distinguished by looking at the rear end.
A quick comparison with the book showed that I had a female M. azurea wich was always going to be the most likely candidate as I think it's the most widespread and common of the two species.
Other recent species of interest to the MV trap were a new species for the garden in the form of a Crescent Helotropha leucostigma, which feeds on marshland plants such as yellow flag. A few have turned up locally recently so possibly a species having a good year round here.
A Hypera zoilus also appeared at the trap and seems to appear around this time each year to light. Usually only see it once by this method and then nothing until the following year so assuming these must fly in and aren't actually present in the garden as I never find them by sweeping or suction sampling.
Crikey. It's easy to lose track of time. You take a deep breath and then suddenly 3 weeks have passed since your last post. To be fair things have been busy with trying to entertain holidaying kids in between work plus the weather here has been mostly 'Meh'. It now looks like one of those hot summer evenings with its accompanying beetles is off the menu for this year.
I've also been pondering why I post stuff on here. It's certainly not for the views or comments (and of both there are very few). I think it is more of a record for myself of the the stuff I get up to and see whilst exploring my little corner of natural history. For me it takes the place of the traditional notebook. I have a love/hate relationship with notebooks. Few things excite me more than a brand, spanking new quality notebook (Alwych are my brand of choice), as I plan all the amazingly detailed notes that I will take. But I very soon descend into scrappy, scruffy, short form and eventually just an incomplete list of stuff. The self loathing then kicks in. I usually get through about half a notebook before giving up, getting a new one and starting the whole process again. In 40 years of notebooks I never seem to learn.
It's probably something to do with a very short attention span. I think that's why I quite like this medium as a matter of record. Suits my brain. I can post something short and sometimes sweet. It's recorded and then I can move on.
Anyway, that being said I will do 2 or 3 quick short posts catching up on some of the natural history highlights of the past few weeks, then it's there and I can look back at it at some point as my digital semi-notebook.
Last week I was visiting ageing relatives in East Yorkshire and whilst there the Black-browed Albatross that had been gracing RSPB Bempton with its presence decided to return. I haven't really ever done much twitching, however as it was only 30 mins away a last minute decision on my final morning found me cliff side only to be told that it had left 20 minutes before. Luckily, after an hour it was refound sitting immediately below us and viewable about 150 metres from the main gannet colony.
Here it is in all its glory!
It is in there. Honest!
I could see it well enough to ID it (although not enough to separate it from a Campbell's Albatross) through my bins and one of the other birders let me have a squizz through his scope. It was a UK tick for me (my second avian one of the year), having seen them before in Australia and South America.
Here's an only slightly better pic of one from the Beagle Channel in 2006 whilst on my honeymoon!
Giddy with my success I went a bit further south along the coast to meet up with family for a spot of fossil hunting at the soft cliffs of Mappleton. The clay here is a glacial erratic, dumped here during previous ice ages and containing thousands of small Devonian fossils that were originally formed elsewhere and have ended up embedded in clay in East Yorkshire. Each high tide erodes more cliff and it frequently falls revealing more fossils as the tide retreats. We found a few interesting bits including a small ammonite partially covered in Fool's Gold.
East Yorkshire or the opening sequence of the film Inception.
I hadn't visited for a while and had been hopeful of a few beetles but there is a distinct lack of water seeps on this section of coast and so beetles were confined to a thin section of vegetated sand around the protected area of beach.
There wasn't too much to write home about but I did record Calathus mollis for the second time and looking at the maps it seems to be the first time it's been recorded between Bridlington and Spurn.
At 7mm this was a small individual and I initially thought it might be another species.
However, the pronotum shape was pretty typical and more transverse than similar species.
The keys don't always convey the extent of the hook on the right paramere, compared with C. micropterus
...but the aedeagus is more elongate in mollis
The post title link is to this classic from Iron Maiden. Never a big metal or indeed Maiden fan I am however a fan of the album, Live after Death which I was bought on a whim for Christmas 1985 and have remained fond of ever since. Although Bruce D's Brexit championing and subsequent realisation of the effects for live music has somewhat dulled that fondness...
