Just Looking

Yesterday morning I had another chance to add Ring Ouzel to the 5MR list, as Mark Andrews found another at the same area on Aylestone Meadows as the weekend bird. Seeing it was another matter, as just like the first it was quick to scuttle out of view and become lost in the scrub further back. But I did get views, not the best but good enough. You think the record shots from a couple of posts ago were shocking, what about this ....

Look at that full crop grainyness, but at least you can see it's a Blackbird with a white bib! Singing Cetti's and Sedge Warblers were good to pick up whilst there too. Whilst I'm at it, here's a couple of more obliging but less interesting grey birds from the site ....

Shortly afterwards I headed up to Kinchley Lane, Swithland Res to meet up with Adrian Russell and show him a couple of the recent larval finds that he'd not seen as yet. We soon found a few mines of Elachista regificella, and an obligatory wall search produced a few bits ....

Taleporia tubulosa

Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella

One of the whites. Probably.

It was a bit parky, overcast and didn't look like the sun would break through. We next headed to the site for Infurcitinea argentimaculella, and then on to Charnwood Lodge where we had a damned good but unsuccessful search for Dahlica inconspicuella. Whilst there, I managed to grab a couple of shots of a very active jumping spider, which looks absolutely right and fits the habitat for Pseudeuophrys erratica and gained some confirmatory comments on a British Spiders facebook group ....

Back at home, a couple of vegetative bits of note. We have a large flowering cherry on the front garden, with big blousy pink blossom. It's been here since the house was built before we moved in. It's grown pretty big over the years, and we had to have it cut back a bit in 2019, but I'd never noticed anything odd about the tree before. It throws up a lot of suckers from a couple of big exposed roots, which I usually trim back at some point, but this year something odd has sprouted ....

Here's the pink blossom that is just coming up to it's best all over the tree now ....

And here's a bit of blossom that has appeared from a root sucker ....

It is clearly a cultivated specimen grafted onto some sort of wild cherry root stock, but I honestly can't say that that has ever been evident before. There was no sign of grafting on the young tree, although we moved here in 1994 so it's a long while to think back.

Also, remember back in January when I was convinced that there was no Holly in the square, just before finding a bit. Well I found this sprouting the garden at the weekend!

We've never grown any Holly in the garden and none of the neighbours have any that I can see. This is right under the line where a bird could sit on the fence and drop a dump of undigested seed.

 

This evening I've been out for a walk along the lane wielding my sweep net. I had two particular species in mind, Brassica Shieldbug which I missed and Woundwort Shieldbug which I found. Eventually, after sweeping loads of White Dead-nettle. Pied Shieldbugs were much more numerous!

I've also ended up with a good range of Hemiptera and Coleoptera in pots to have a good look at and increase the square list a bit more.