Friday, January 4, 2013

Guernsey

Making the most of my holidays, and determined to get to 100 species before the end of the day, I spent a bit more time searching the garden and adjacent roadside for more species yesterday afternoon. I had flyover Little Egret and Grey Wagtail, plus I cleared up on all possible reptiles with a Slow Worm hibernating in its usual spot. I scoured the internet and identified a few lifers for me including the Ragwort Flea Beetle. I think I have identified my first ever moss (Wall Screw Moss) and, most exciting of all, the rather beautiful Alexanders Rust Fungus!

possibly a Ragwort Flea Beetle

There were a few of these flies amongst the grass of the lawn which I think are Geomyza tripunctata as they are similar to ones that iSpot identified last summer.

4 comments:

  1. Mark, I'm really impressed with your pics. What set up are you using and is it affordable or stupid crazy 'spensive??? Cheers mate, Seth.

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  2. Thanks Seth. Stupid crazy 'spensive is not in my vocabulary. My gear isn't that pricey at all and I am really chuffed with what it can do without hardley ever changing any settings. I have little knowledge on the intricacies of photography, I just want to take nice record shots that I can put on my website. My camera is a Panasonic Lumix FZ45 which is great for birding due to its impressive zoom, but disappointingly I found that it wasn't great for macro. So last summer I bought a pretty cheap clip-on Raynox macro lens (I think this was from reading about it on Mark Skev's website if I remember) which is tricky to get used to but gets decent record shots. At the moment I am using the flash and sticking the shutter speed to 1/2000 and it's working nicely.

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  3. Mark, There are a couple of big Ragwort Longitarsus species in Britain which require dissection of males. Maybe you only have one of them on Guernsey, I don't know. Could chop one up for you if you want. Also, I think Geomyza is quite a big genus and again I think you often need males to be sure but flies are not my thing.

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  4. Hi Mark. Yes, looking it up, there are a few Ragwort Longitarsus species on the Guernsey list - I should have labelled it as a possible. I am just learning about beetles.

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