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