Pilning past half way too

The mainly warm and sunny June weather has helped get things going, with lots of new invertebrates on the wing and plants coming into flower. Since the last post, a good afternoon’s hunt with Andy Pym added 32 species on June 1^st including a life macro – Marsh Pug (also new to the Bristol District!) and a boost to the spider count. The pug was in a particularly flowery bit of waste ground that produced lots of nice invertebrates including Grapholita compositella and has since become a regular stomping ground. Other favourite areas include a ditch with some decent wetland plants including Potamogeton berchtoldii, and a nearby cycle path that has fragments of decent grassland with Lathyrus nissolia (Grass Vetchling). The garden moth trap, while not exactly busy (and still with a dearth of noctuids), has been a bit better with Chocolate-tip, Maiden’s Blush, Foxglove Pug (which I get most years – someone must cultivate foxgloves nearby, as it they appear to be absent from the square ‘in the wild’) and Tachystola acroxantha of note. My first ever adult Phyllonorycter leucographella in the trap, too, although I’d already seen the babbers in their mines nearby. New bird additions have of course been few, but a Sedge Warbler singing from the garden and a migrant Spotted Flycatcher (mega these days) have been welcome additions. Vascular plants are doing well with the list now on 251, although presumably with relatively few more to come. A very narrow but dense strip of Poa compressa along the coast road verge was one of several unexpected finds. Can’t find Oxford Ragwort though!

Passing half way made me wonder if it might actually be possible for me to make it to 1000, which I’d previously considered highly unlikely. I like the analyses some other bloggers have done with their projected totals by species groups.

So far my 548 species comprise the following (in no particular order) and a possible target to get to the 1000 might be:

	current	target
vascular plants	251	275
moths	107	300
birds	63	70
butterflies	11	20
hoverflies	19	25
other flies	8	30
bugs	9	20
beetle	9	25
odonata	4	12
orthopterans	2	8
mosses	9	25
liverworts	1	5
lichens	8	25
fungus	2	12
amphibians	2	4
mammals	4	8
fish	1	3
molluscs	8	15
ants	1	1
crustaceans	3	5
spiders	14	25
other invertebrates	12	90
	548	1003

 

In an ‘average year’ I would get about 300-350 moths in the garden so with more field work 350 should have been a given. This year it seems highly unlikely. In order to get the thousand I’ll have to see a lot more assorted invertebrates (maybe 200+), lots of autumn fungi and more lower plants. With that in mind – help! - can anyone identify these distinctive-looking picture-wing flies?