Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Thursday 13 February 2020

Floodland

A late posting, because I've been busy with pots full of inverts in front of the PC / microscope / camera. Late this afternoon, after leaving work early today, I managed to grab an hour or so at Huncote Embankment. I was hoping to sieve out some beetles from flood debris. I wasn't expecting that the floods would have resurged, but the writing was on the wall when I noticed the sheep in the now-narrow field alongside the entrance track ......


Sure enough, when I got the pond and boardwalk it was flooded.


Or so it seemed. In fact, on the far side of the pool - ironically between the pool and the river - there was enough dry(ish) land to have a mooch about.



I had a good root around and sieved dead grasses / tussocks, steadily filling a few pots along the way. I then headed up to the top of the embankment to walk back along the gorse-lined track overlooking the quarry.



Whilst up there I tapped the gorse as I walked along, gradually filling up more pots. 'So where is the evidence of all this pot filling?' I hear you ask. Well that'll wait as I've got more to work through and, actually, getting photos of tiny stuff in the evening is not viable unless it is deceased - and I think I've sniffed too much ethyl acetate for one night.

One I will share now though is a new for me weevil tapped from gorse .....

Andrion regensteinense - look at the spiky bristles on that!

I've been listening to a lot of the Sisters lately, including Floodland appropriately:


4 comments:

martinf said...

Love a bit of flood debris. Had 5 bembidion spp in 5 mins last week. Great record too, still think Nine while nine is their greatest song though.

Gibster said...

Ribbons, a masterpiece.

martinf said...

Ribbons is pretty much the only good thing about Vision thing :o
In other news I almost got away with having the final lines of Under the Gun as a reading at my wedding. Got rumbled though.

Gibster said...

How very dare you, it's a great album ha! As an aside, I was best man at my mate's wedding. I added Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird to the playlist. The look he gave me was rather telling but pissing off his new bride was absolutely priceless. Yup, that was a very good day indeed... :D