A Tenuous Case

I made use of a couple of free hours this afternoon. First off, I headed to Swithland Reservoir in glorious sunshine. I'd only just got out of the car when I noticed a few ducks close to the dam by the overflow, including two of my favourite species beginning with G ....

Gadwalls were preening and having a drink in between bouts of courtship ...

No such luck for this lone drake Goldeneye.

After grabbing a few snaps, I set about my main purpose. Staring at walls. It didn't take long to find the expected Psychidae.

Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella

Dahlica sp. - found a good number of cases in a slightly different section of the boundary wall to where I usually look. All looked to be D. lichenella, no potential D. triquetrella.

I noticed one moving about, surprisingly. They overwinter as full-fed larvae and should be pupating by now. When I got my hand lens out to have a good look at this one I noticed something else very close by .....

Bristly Millipede - never ceases to amaze me how these are invisible when you are actually looking for them.

Whilst I was enjoying these wall-dwellers, they were not what I was actually looking for. News came through during the week that Keith Tailby and Mark Hammond had found putative silk-tube cases of Infurcitinea argentimaculella. The photos seemed compelling, if a little inconspicuous. They'd been found at Ulverscroft and along the Swithland Res walls, but I was seeing nothing. After a quick call to Keith, I decided to head over to Ulverscoft and try there.

I was soon looking at a much more promising habitat, with the dry stone wall covered in a powdery blue-grey lichen (Lepraria sp.). If you think looking for larval cases of Psychidae is tenuous, you ought to try this .....

This is likely to overwinter as a small larva, but should be starting to become active again in spring, so it seems likely that bigger cases are old and vacated. I've collected a couple to have a look at, but definitely this is one to make an effort to return to in a couple of months. With lichens generally doing better now, and with eg the spread of lichen-feeding footmen spp., seems likely that this has also done well in the last decade or so and could well be wide-spread. After all, even when it's on your radar (which it wasn't) it is not exactly jumping out at you!

Just before getting back in the car, I had a quick look at the outer wall and quickly found more Psychids.

Narycia duplicella

Half-arsed Bird Spotting

I needed to nip into work this afternoon for a couple of hours, and thought I'd precede this with a bit of light birding. I had it all planned out - Swithland Wood for a relaxing hour catching up with typical woodland birds and grabbing a few shots. When I got there, the car park was bedlam and every man and his dog, bike and horse seemed to have converged there. Bollocks. So, I resorted to a quick and very half-arsed stop at Swithland Reservoir. There were probably some interesting birds there, but I couldn't be arsed to look. The one bird I did watch was Goldeneye - there was a small group off the dam comprising 5 drakes all displaying and trying to get the attention of a lone female. I like Goldeneyes, and their display is definitely worth making the effort to see. Non-displaying Goldeneye Coot making use of the biggest bird-bath for miles around Before I went into the office, and had another quick look on the adjacent Braunstone estate for Waxwings. For the third time in two days I saw fuck all. On the way out of work at 16:30ish I had another quick look, and this time found 49 perched in a Lombardy Poplar on Hockley Farm Road, just around the corner from the lone berry laden Rowan tree in Avery Hill. Braunstone estate is not the sort of place to park up and get your optics and camera out! 49 Waxwings - trust me High up Waxwing