Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Dalgety Bay - What's up doc?

Easterly winds forced me to seek the shelter of a woodland clearing yesterday and thank goodness they did! There's a small area where the local countryside trust (dog toilet maintenance dept.) have removed a Rhodedendron bush and a couple of dead trees and left a sunny open space covered with woodchip. It is a dipteran paradise! Shame they removed the logs, but whatever. I could have spent many happy hours in there but sadly only got a lunchtime this time around. However, it was plenty time to bag a few goodies and spend some quality time watching fly interactions through close focus binoculars.

Probably my favourite of the day was the extraordinary dolichopodid Rhaphium monotrichum. As an aside I came across a great Russian site for Dolis here

In other news yesterday photos of a wasp which I had reared from a spider were passed on to a wasp expert who returned an ID within minutes (if not seconds). Fantastic. The specimen will go to live in NMS where the ID will be 100% confirmed.

Now I just need to take a week off and we can wrap this thing up in May ;)

The Clearing of Wonder

Meeeeeh, what's up doc? Rhaphium

Polysphincta tuberosa - spider killing waspiness

Numbers:
811 flowering plant Vicia hirsuta Hairy Tare
812 lep-butterfly Lycaena phlaeas Small Copper
813 hemiptera Philaenus spumarius Cuckoo-Spit Insect
814 diptera Limonia phragmitidis Tipuloidea
815 diptera Graphomya maculata A muscid fly
816 * hymenoptera Polysphincta tuberosa A wasp
817 diptera Calliphora vomitoria Calliphoridae
818 * flowering plant Carex canescens White Sedge
819 spider Microlinyphia pusilla A Linyphiid spider
820 lep-moth Epiblema cirsiana A micro moth
821 * diptera Raphium monotrichum A long-legged fly
822 diptera Dolichopus popularis A long-legged fly
823 * hemiptera Macustus grisescens A leaf hopper
824 * hymenoptera Cynips quercusfolii A gall wasp
825 gall mite Aceria cephaloneus A gall mite

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like a nice bit of habitat there Ali. I have to do quite a bit of my sweeping rather surreptitiously, would be nice to have an area where you could be comfortable doing it!

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  2. It's busier than my previous square but I pretty much have spoken to all the regular dog walkers and runners and such by now and I'm not that shy about looking weird any more. People do wonder what you're doing but it takes them various amounts of time to pluck up the courage to ask!

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