TQ2897 - an update

I’m well overdue in giving an update. March was horrendous. Until the changeover to BST I was only really get out to see TQ2897 on the weekends and it variously rained or snowed on most of those days, stymieing my efforts and, with the cold weather, also ruining the much hoped for early invertebrates season. It's ramped up tremendously since though and this week I've added a further 20 species.

 

Plants

Most of the square is acid grassland and woodland with a lot of disturbance and trampling, I really had to hunt around for some of these quite common species (I still haven't even found Red Dead-nettle within the square!):

• Crack Willow
• Common chickweed
• Garlic Mustard
• Charlock
• Honesty
• Hairy Bitter-cress
• Wavy Bitter-cress
• Creeping Buttercup
• Field Buttercup
• Common Groundsel
• Yarrow
• Coltsfoot
• Daisy
• Lesser Celandine
• Wood Anemone
• Wood Sorrel
• Ivy-leaved Speedwell
• Sweet Vernal Grass
• Field Wood-rush

I got working on mosses and liverworts some more in the meantime (nearly all lifers for me):

• Forked Veilwort, Metzgeria furcata
• Dilated Scalewort, Frullania dilatata
• Mueller’s Pouchwort, Calypogeia muelleriana
• Variable-leaved Crestwort, Lophocolea heterophylla
• Pellucid Four-tooth Moss, Tetraphis pellucida
• Common Pocket-moss, Fissidens taxifolius
• Heath Star-moss, Camypylopus introflexus
• Silky Forklet-moss, Dicranella heteromalla
• Wood Bristle-moss, Orthotrichum affine
• White-tipped Bristle-moss, Orthotrichum diaphanum
• Crisped Pincushion, Ulota crispa
• Grey-cushioned Grimmia, Grimmia pulvinata
• Great Hairy Screw-moss (what a name!), Syntrichia ruralis (ssp. ruralis)
• Wall Screw-moss, Tortula muralis
• Bank Haircap, Polytrichastrum formosum
• Juniper Haircap, Polytrichum juniperinum
• Capillary Thread-moss, Bryum capillare
• Cape Thread-moss, Orthodontium lineare
• Neat Feather-moss, Pseudoscleropodium purum
• Heath Plait-moss, Hypnum jutlandicum
• Pointed Spear-moss, Calliergonella cuspidata

I’m still hunting around for the Bonfire Moss, Funaria hygrometrica, which I’ve found elsewhere in the Park but not in my 1ksq yet.

Ulota crispa - cameraphone photo taken through hand-lens

Tetraphis pellucida - with gemmae receptacle

 

Fungi 

I’m fairly confident I have a fungal tick with Illosporiopsis christiansenii growing on a Physcia sp. I went back to take a second look at it after reading up on it and it definitely had a messy, grainy texture as opposed to the coralline shape of Marchandiomyces corallinus.

Insects

• Cerylon histeroides (small beetle from under pine bark) 
• Cerylon ferrugineus (another small beetle also under pine bark)
• A Histerid which I believe is Paromalus flavicornis (a ~2mm beetle found alongside the beetle above.) 
• Rhizophagus bipustulatus (a bark beetle and also found under pine bark)
• Harlequin ladybird (also under pine bark)
• Loricera pilicornis – a fairly common ground beetle; fell out of a tree and dropped right in front of me!  
• Abax parallelepipedus (a largeish ground beetle)
• Rhagium mordax - a longhorn beetle
• Oulema obscura - a leaf beetle
  
• Anthocoris nemorum  – a flower bug swept off of holly
• Common Shore Bug, Saldula saltatoria
• Balclutha punctata (a leafhopper)
  
• Eurysa lineata – planthopper nymph swept from grass
• Cacopsylla sp. - a psyllid and another annoying complex where the male is needed to ID
• A tachinid fly that I’m reasonably confident is Gonia picea.
• Eristalis pertinax
• Bibio johannis
• Dyseriocrania subpurpurella (micromoth)
• Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris
• Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lapidarius
• Common Carder Bee, Bombus pascuorum

Rhagium mordax

Arachnids

I’m really looking at these too early for most species but it’s a group I’m unfamiliar with so the practice of getting down to genus has been useful:

• Amaurobius fenestralis (under birch bark)
• Pardosa sp. – lots of these running around in the leaf litter right now. All I’ve found is immature males so far.
• Clubiona sp. – hiding in pine bark.
• Araniella sp. (with a lovely parasitoid wasp grub nestled between cephalothorax and abdomen right where the spider can’t do a thing about it. Probably Polysphincta tuberosa)

Nature at its cutest.

Also found Aceria ilicis (mite) galls on Quercus ilex nearby so will be hunting for that on the ornamental Holm Oak I’ve been ignoring up till now.

Vertebrates

The Mute Swans finally wandered over the square’s border in the lower lake and have popped onto the list. Also Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Song Thrush (finally), Skylark and Pied Wagtail were new for the patch and 4 buzzards circling within one binocular view were pleasant features of the last weekend’s walk.

And a non-feathered vertebrate! Grass snake, Natrix natrix - very torpid so I got a nice close shot.

Lacking a key to the group, I'll have to leave the death-wish millipede as Polydesmus sp.

I’m now on 193 species (with full species level ID).

Trent Park update

Woops, I’ve kept intending to write something and then not made the time for it. I’ve probably made the most gains in arthropods and mosses. So here’s what I’ve been looking at:

Vascular plants

• Common Polypody
• Broad Buckler Fern
• Broom
• Dovesfoot Cranesbill
• Goat Willow
• Bulrush

Non-vascular plants

• Bifid crestwort, Lophocolea bidentata
• Common Feather-moss, Kindbergia praelonga
• Rough-stalked Feather-moss, Brachythecium rutabulum
• Long-beaked Water Feather-moss, Platyhypnum riparioides – growing on the rocks in the stream between the two ponds
• Common Smoothcap, Atrichum undulatum – Really distinctive now I know what I’m looking for.
• Springy Turf-moss, Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus – Also very distinctive with a star-shaped tip to the shoots
• Cypress-leaved Plait-moss, Hypnum cupressiforme

Bifid Crestwort (the deeper green stuff on the left), I didn't ID the stuff on the right
but it looks like more Kindbergia praelonga

-Some sort of Marchantia but I wasn’t able to ID it in field and too small a piece to be happy taking a bit of it.

-What I think is Cape Thread-moss but will look for it again later in the spring when it should have capsules

Lichen

• Oakmoss, Evernia prunastri
• Physcia tenella

Fungi

• Exidia glandulosa
• Stereum hirsutum
• Bracken Map fungus, Rhopographus filicinus – I don’t think this species has been mentioned on this blog yet but it’s an incredibly easy tick if you have old bracken on your square. Check a few stems and you should come across a pretty pattern of black splotches like below:

Bracken Map fungus

Insects

• Hawthorn Shieldbug, Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale
• Anchomenus dorsalis (a very pretty ground beetle)

Yet to find occupied mines of Stigmella aurella or Phytomyza ilicis despite seeing lots of them.

Hawthorn Shieldbug

Other arthropods

• Pill millipede, Glomeris marginata
• A large-ish springtail – Pogonognathellus longicornis
• A distinctively banded springtail - Orchesella cincta

…and some other springtails I couldn’t work out but will have a bash next time now I know about the provisional key.

• Diaea dorsata (spider overwintering in birch stump)

A juvenile female Philodromus sp. which was probably P. dispar but I can’t be sure

Oribatid mites look interesting; mainly because of their neat protective pteromorphs (wing-like structures that curve around the sides of the body) which they pull their legs into when they drop out of mosses under my microscope. I’m not sure I have the light and magnification necessary to do them justice. Also the only literature I’ve found is from 1888(!) which is a shame.

Vertebrates

• Rabbit. Thanks to the dog presence and being too lazy for dawn-time visits it’s taken over a month for me to spot a rabbit on site despite the amount of droppings about.
• Pheasant
• Dunnock
• Mistlethrush
• Common Gull

All in all that's 113 species so far. I'm surprised at how much I'm getting into the mosses but I'm really looking forward to warmer weather and more arthropods.

More critters from TQ2897

I snuck out to the patch for the last 2 or 3 hours of daylight on Sunday 13th, hoping to catch a bit more bird movement and the possibility of tawny owl. It was pretty cold (it snowed that night) and there wasn’t an awful lot of movement going on. Bird-wise I added Tufted Duck, Kestrel, Redwing and Green Woodpecker to the list. Teasel, Cow Parsley and Birch Polypore were also added. I had a bash at IDing a couple of small ferns but the light was poor and the plants a bit ragged. I’ll come back to them in better light sometime. I mainly contented myself with rolling logs, picking bits of bark of old stumps and breaking up small amounts of rotten wood. The haul from this was as follows:

Pressed into a crevice on a larch was an Orange Ladybird. Under a fallen birch branch I found Porcellio scaber, Trichoniscus pusillus/provisorius and a geophilid centipede which I’ve not found online resources for. In various birch stumps I managed to find a darkling beetle, Nalassus laevioctostriatus; a bunch of small myrmicene ants, Temnothorax nylanderi; and a small species of wood-boring weevil: Pentarthrum huttoni (I'm guessing this species is just under-recorded as opposed to being particularly scarce?) Euophryum confine. From under an oak log came a common millipede with white legs, Tachypodoiulus niger, and a large-ish springtail, Orchesella villosa.

I didn't get up to much this weekend thanks to snow and man-flu but I did manage to add Buzzard to my square's list. We also had a woodcock in our apartment block's tiny garden; shame it's not within the square!

I'm currently on 77 species and wondering whether it's fair to tick practically impossible aggregates like T. pusillius/provisorius and Melanotus castanipes/villosus.

5th Jan in Trent Park - TQ2897

Saturday's patch walkabout filled in some gaps in the tree and bird species noted from New Year's day. I also added a couple of moss species that I'm fairly certain of (Dicranum scoparium and Mnium hornum); a woodlouse, Oscilus asellus; a lichen, Physcia adscendens; the Common Earwig; the Birch Catkin Bug, Kleidocerys resedae, found wedged in a rotten larch stump; and a ground beetle from under a birch log that keyed out to Nebria brevicollis. This brings me to 60 species so far.

I also found a click beetle under the bark on another birch log which keyed out to a fiddly species pair: Melanotus villosus/castanipes. What had previously been recorded as just M. villosus in the UK was found to actually be two species in 2004. Unfortunately I can't find the info on the details for distinguishing the two. I've read suggestions that it can be done on overall length or by pitting on the pronotum, or that only outlier specimens are distinctive enough to be ID’d visually and molecular methods are required. Anyone have any idea or access to the relevant paper? It’s about 17½mm long.