Dalgety Bay - end of month (ish)

Not many photographable or photogenic species added of late so here's a nice landscape looking east  from my autumn vismig spot. I may or may not squeak over the line to 550 before month end (I did - edited) but I'll be away from a PC until April.

Until then today's sunshine saw Coltsfoot in flower, flies all over, A jumping spider, and lots of spring feeling. Hoorah!

541		bird	Gallinula chloropus	Moorhen
542		flowering plant	Alliaria petiolata	Garlic mustard
543		flowering plant	Epilobium montanum	Broad-leaved Willowherb
544		diptera	Lasiomma seminitidum	A flower fly
545		diptera	Dasysyrphus venustus	A hoverfly
546		bird	Passer montanus	Tree Sparrow
547		collembola	Orchesella cincta	A springtail
548		bird	Buteo buteo	Common Buzzard
549		spider	Salticus scenicus	A spider
550		flowering plant	Cochlearia danica	Danish Scurvygrass

Dalgety Bay - spring!

A brief wander up the coast and a gardening session (with a net and sorting tray, naturally) kept the dials moving over the weekend. It was clear that a handful of pots will soon be replaced by a pooter or two. Inverts are go! I've already gone from having no "stock" material to a collection of pinned flies.

It was nice to see the garden start to pick up too, including an overhead Sparrowhawk which I half thought I'd already recorded.

Ceratophysella bengtssoni

Clouded Drab

Diplocephalus latifrons

Platycheirus albimanus

Muscina prolapsa

Not covered here so far was my first potential new-to-Scotland of the year, the anthomyiid Egle parva, which is covered here. You can see from the URL that I had given it the wrong ID to begin with.

Numbers:

528	*	diptera	Egle parva	A flower fly
529		collembola	Ceratophysella bengtssoni	A springtail
530		diptera	Ceratinostoma ostiorum	A Scathophagid fly
531		spider	Diplocephalus latifrons	A Linyphiid spider
532		fungus	Agaricus litoralis	A mushroom
533		lep-moth	Orthosia incerta	Clouded Drab
534		bird	Accipiter nisus	Sparrowhawk
535		diptera	Eudasyphora cyanella	A muscid fly
536		diptera	Platycheirus albimanus	A hoverfly

537		diptera	Muscina prolapsa	A muscid fly
538		diptera	Egle ciliata	A flower fly

Better than last year

Better that is in my terms - still way off the pace of the rest of you.
Thorne is now on 224 species whereas last year at the end of March I was only on 207 species.

Eype is still very slow going with the weather really holding things up. The highlight of the square is the nearly 1km length of soft cliffs but they are so wet and liable to slippage at the moment I havn't set foot on them yet this year. For the record Eype is now on 178 species.

Two Sandwich Terns at Eype this morning holds some hope that Spring is finally arriving.

Yellow Horned, Shoulder Stripe and Melinda viridicyanea

Picking up pace here a bit at the moment. However, nothing too unexpected. Nice to get my first Yellow Horned in the garden plus the first Shoulder Stripe of the year, one of my favorite moths. Also a Calliphorid that wasn't Calliphora vicina, namely Melinda viridicyanea.

431	Bembidion lunulatum	Coleoptera	Carabidae	22/03/2018
432	Xantholinus longiventris	Coleoptera	Staphylinidae	22/03/2018
433	Proteinus ovalis	Coleoptera	Staphylinidae	22/03/2018
434	Orthosia gothica	Lepidoptera:moths	Hebrew Character	21/03/2018
435	Gonatium rubens	Arachnids	Linyphiidae	22/03/2018
436	Dismodicus bifrons	Arachnids	Linyphiidae	22/03/2018
437	Xylocampa areola	Lepidoptera:moths	Early Grey	22/03/2018
438	Orthosia incerta	Lepidoptera:moths	Clouded Drab	22/03/2018
439	Orthosia cerasi	Lepidoptera:moths	Common Quaker	22/03/2018
440	Anticlea badiata	Lepidoptera:moths	Shoulder Stripe	22/03/2018
441	Melinda viridicyanea	Diptera	Calliphoridae	23/03/2018
442	Orthosia munda	Lepidoptera:moths	Twin-spotted Quaker	23/03/2018
443	Achlya flavicornis	Lepidoptera:moths	Yellow Horned	23/03/2018
444	Aegopodium podagraria	Vascular Plants	Ground Elder	24/03/2018
445	Alliaria petiolata	Vascular Plants	Garlic Mustard	24/03/2018
446	Centaurea nigra	Vascular Plants	Common Knapweed	24/03/2018
447	Epilobium montanum	Vascular Plants	Broad-leaved Willowherb	24/03/2018
448	Geranium lucidum	Vascular Plants	Shining Crane's-bill	24/03/2018
449	Geranium robertianum	Vascular Plants	Herb-Robert	24/03/2018
450	Ruscus aculeatus	Vascular Plants	Butcher's-broom	24/03/2018

The sun also rises ...

Lovely to get a sunny day yesterday, brought out a few hymenoptera and diptera, plus a couple of new moths and beetles for the year. Coleoptera remain the most speciose group in my square so far, with 83 species. Given that 82 have been from my garden, I think there's scope for a lot more elsewhere in the square, but can't get to most of it.

So on we go, now up to 430. Won't be much of the microscopic algae/fungi stuff in this persons blog this year, though.

420	Andrena nigroaenea	Hymenoptera	Buffish Mining Bee	20/03/2018
421	Lasiomma seminitidum	Diptera	Anthomyiidae	21/03/2018
422	Bombus lapidarius	Hymenoptera	Red-tailed Bumblebee	21/03/2018
423	Vespula vulgaris	Hymenoptera	Common Wasp	21/03/2018
424	Pollenia labialis	Diptera	Calliphoridae	21/03/2018
425	Helina evecta	Diptera	Muscidae	21/03/2018
426	Andrena bicolor	Hymenoptera	Gwynne's Mining Bee	21/03/2018
427	Cerastis rubricosa	Lepidoptera:moths	Red Chestnut	21/03/2018
428	Lithophane ornitopus	Lepidoptera:moths	Grey Shoulder-knot	21/03/2018
429	Glischrochilus hortensis	Coleoptera	Nitidulidae	22/03/2018
430	Psylliodes chrysocephala	Coleoptera	Chrysomelidae	22/03/2018

Red Chestnut (Cerastis rubricosa)

Dalgety Bay - wind in the willows

The wind yesterday precluded any fly catching so I re-investigated the barely-touched area of willows, and not without success. This is the kind of area that I have in my local nature reserve in abundance so I know what it can be good for. Can't believe I found no Peltigera, but a couple of additional bryophytes were added and a fungus I've wanted to see for ages. I'm not joking, though you may soon think I am!

Frullania dilitata

Frullania

Trimmatostroma salicis - yes!!

No, really!!!

The moth trap was out too

Rhigognostis incarnatella

Common Quaker

Then there was a beetle with backstory. The other day I found a plastic discarded chinese takeaway tub. Since I had a bottle of soapy water in my bag for this sort of thing I re-purposed it as a water trap and it came up with this first-for-county Vincenzellus ruficollis. I'll be carrying more soapy water from now on.

Vincenzellus ruficollis

NBN map Vincenzellus ruficollis

Numbers:

518		liverwort	Frullania dilitata	A liverwort
519		flowering plant	Lamium album	White Dead-nettle
520		moss	Dicranella heteromalla	A moss
521		fungus	Trimmatostroma salicis	A fungus
522		lep-moth	Orthosia cerasi	Common Quaker
523	*	lep-moth	Rhigognostis incarnatella	A micromoth
524		diptera	Pollenia rudis	A cluster fly
525	*	coleoptera	Vincenzellus ruficollis	A beetle

Dalgety Bay - Desmid Island Discs

Nothing could be more fun that taking a drop of water and sticking it under the microscope. If it's from an algal mat then all the better. This beauty is Closterium monoliferum, which is one of the few things I managed to identify from the myriad species present (actually so far it's the only one!)

The granules in the tip dance about, and the following link says of them that ... "vacuolar granules in Closterium moniliferum have been analyzed to consist mainly of barium sulphate crystals". See the link below. Also the further link from that link which talks about how this little guy could clean up nuclear material!

Fascinating page on the species

Also leaving this here for future reference - superb desmid galleries

Closterium in Desmid Gallery

Besides that the inverts have started to kick off with some muscoid flies starting to appear on sunny surfaces. Soon I'll have a box full of undetermined flies! Part of the reason I wanted to get off to a flier this year is because up to the point I decided to do this daft thing again I was intending to dedicate more time to the calypterate flies. Pretty sure I've banked enough species now to allow for some time outside the square though.

Numbers:

511		bird	Fulmarus glacialis	Fulmar
512	*	insect-other	Riccardoella oudemansi	Slug Mite
513		diptera	Phaonia tuguriorum	A muscid fly
514		lep-moth	Hofmannophila pseudospretella	Brown House Moth
515		flowering plant	Tussilago farfara	Coltsfoot
516		hemiptera	Anthocoris nemoralis	A plant bug
517	*	alga	Closterium moniliferum	A desmid

Another freeze up in TG4523

Wind, frost and snow has resulted in no additions to the square for the last six days. All getting a bit tedious. For the sake of completeness here are the last 10 additions, so now up to 419 for the square, including 340 from the garden:

410	Harpalus tardus	Coleoptera	Carabidae	12/03/2018
411	Veronica hederifolia	Vascular Plants	Ivy-leaved Speedwell	12/03/2018
412	Notiophilus rufipes	Coleoptera	Carabidae	12/03/2018
413	Eurysa lineata	Hemipteroids	Delphacidae (Planthopper)	12/03/2018
414	Drusilla canaliculata	Coleoptera	Staphylinidae - Aleocharinae	13/03/2018
415	Lispocephala brachialis	Diptera	Muscidae: Coenosiinae	14/03/2018
416	Arion distinctus	Molluscs	Common Garden Slug	14/03/2018
417	Aleochara bipustulata	Coleoptera	Staphylinidae	14/03/2018
418	Scydmaenus tarsatus	Coleoptera	Scydmaeninae (Staphylinidae)	14/03/2018
419	Luffia ferchaultella	Lepidoptera:moths	Virgin Bagworm	15/02/2018

One side benefit has been a bit of extra time to clear my backlog of sawflies. I also attended a very useful BENHS sawfly workshop with Andy Musgrove on Saturday. The additional sawfly species have pushed my 1 km square list to 2196 species, including 1788 from the garden.

Looks like it's going to get a bit milder, so hope to start getting a few more insects and birds soon.

Dalgety Bay ... new species loading ... please wait ...

A weekend of bad weather and domestic activity means not much happening. I did do this leaf section of the moss Campylopus introflexus, though. Pretty pleased with it. Shame it's already on the list!

Easterly winds continue. Lots of nice Kittiwakes and finally a Fulmar. Anther roll of the dice at lunchtime. Let's see. Everybody all together ... Gannet, LT Duck, Scoter ....

Skye - Seashore Fun

Took myself down to the beach today (stayed well away from The Ravine of Death, see my blog detailing yesterday's antics here) and managed to pick up a handful of additions for the tally. 

Drinker Moth caterpillar - waiting for some sunshine

Ruby Tiger caterpillar - off in search of some sunshine

Collemopsidium foveolatum - a lichen found on barnacle plates, would you believe!

Talking of barnacles....

Throw in a couple more lichens and bryophytes and my running tally stands at 440 species. I have samples in pots awaiting inspection, maybe I could bump it up a bit nearer to 450 by tomorrow. This time last year I'd just hit 400. 

Here's one from last week that I inadvertently missed off the list

Water Cricket Velia caprai in a pool by the river