Waterworks

Today I've been to work, which didn't matter much as this morning was dull and drizzly anyway so I wasn't planning on going anywhere. By the time I'd left it was drier, albeit with a strong biting wind making it feel bloody cold despite the sun poking through.

I mentioned a few days ago that Jubilee Park and the floodplain area over the road was almost constantly flooded, and that there was some work being done. During that time the area did drain enough to see that they had made some progress with a wide channel .. but this morning it was all under water again. So on the way home, I pulled over to grab a couple of shots on my phone although by then the sun was completely in the wrong place but you get the gist.

Somewhere to the right of the temporary fenceline that you can see is the River Soar, and on the left of that fence is a deep wide channel which is (so far) completely ineffective!

The machinery is sitting in water in a makeshift compound, though they have moved out the portacabin that has flooded several times whilst in situ.

I still have several gigabytes of photos to sort and archive, a job that I started last year and have made good progress, but it will take a fair while. And I'm still finding a few bits to put up here from periods when I wasn't making time to post anything.

Such as these, yet more retro beetles, these all from the last PSL meet-up I went to over at Holkham in June 2016.

Broscus cephalotes

Phylan gibbus

Tasgius ater

Agrypnus murinus

Calathus mollis

Retro Sussex Beetles

Some nostalgic photos that have never been aired for one reason or another. These relate way back to the first ever PSL meet-up down at Parham Park in Sussex in May 2012. They are also of questionable quality, I'd literally only had the Raynox for a short while before this trip and hadn't quite got the hang of it.

Probably the most unexpected and interesting beetle over the weekend was this lumpy weevil that Graeme Lyons swept from bracken ....

Syagrius intrudens

This genus is endemic to Eastern Australia, but so far this species is uknown from there and may be extinct in it's native range. It is assumed to be adventive, and as such has no conservation status, but the UK sites holding it are likely to be of critical importance.

Later in the evening after dark, this smart carabid tenebrionid was quite easy to find on oak trees ....

Helops caeruleus

And one from Heyshott Down the following day ....

Cryptocephalus aureolus

Fly Closer

This evening whilst browsing back for particular images to support some spider records for submission, I found a few shots of this fly from North Devon back in April 2014. It's one of the Anthomyia spp. I quite liked this one, and can't see that I've ever used it, so in lieu of anything else going on I'm sticking it up now.

Look at the halteres on that.

Xexan the Younger

Driving home from work this evening, in snow and sleet, it hardly feels like spring is going to be sprung any time soon. The moth trap has resolutely stayed in the shed, the garden is still sodden to the point that traversing it is precarious, and the floodplains around the Rivers Soar and Sence either side of the road near the roundabout at Jubilee Park have been perpetually flooded for a fair while now. The latter I ought to try and get some photos of as some Agency or other have started work there - it almost looks like they were trying to create some sort of channel or culvert to take up some of the excess but their works and base are, ironically, flooded.

Back on the 13th when sieving grasses at Huncote Embankment, I found a couple of early-instar noctiud larvae. I've retained them to try and rear through, and so far one has doubled in size whilst one has stayed about the same. I think they are both the same species, and I think they are Square-spot Rustic. The large one, which is more distincly marked, has some odd-looking damage to the rear end. I would not be surprised if both turned into bundles of parasitic cocoons but we'll see.

Square-spot Rustic = Xestia xanthographa - or 'xexan' as I enter it into MapMate for expediency.

I've been listening to a lot of Yes just lately. Yes, that's right - Yes. They were my Dad's favourite band and I think it must have seeped in; he's not here playing it loudly so I've felt the urge to do so.

A Spring in the Tale

Yet another weekend dominated by shite weather and dreadful VAR decisions. This morning I was hoping to get out and try more sieving for beetles, but the gloomy conditions with drizzle soon put and end to that. Later this afternoon though, the sun came out for a while and I headed out for what I knew would be a relatively brief jaunt. I didn't really have a plan, other than with all the rain we've had many sites that I might visit would be very wet. So I made a snap decision to head for some woodland, and made my way to Fox Covert on the edge of the Ulverscroft NR. Although this can be a wet woodland area, part of it is high up and I hoped that the rain would have run/drained down to the lower parts.

That at least worked out well, as the area I worked was reasonably dry. No such luck with finding lots of beetles though; no matter how much sieving, log poking or polypore bashing I did I was not really finding anything worth taking to scrutinise. I am not exactly blessed with lots of patience, and find that if there is no early success my effort and persistence wanes.

What I did find though were 1000s of tiny collembola. However there seemed to be a much greater range of species, sizes and shapes than I usually see, so in lieu of any beetle action I pointed the camera at a few bits that ended up in the sieving tray (which you may remember is a large plastic pot saucer in the typical 'terracotta' look colour). I recognised a couple of species, and tentatively identified another, but I've not collected any as I find they are usually dead and shrivelled in the pot before I get home.

First up, a couple of fat round 'globular' species:

Dicyrtomina saundersi

Dicyrtoma fusca

A couple of larger typical springtails:

Orchesella cincta

Pogonognathellus longicornis

If you look closely at the above, which I believe is the largest UK species, there is a very tiny springtail sp. just above it.

Here a few other smaller spp., one with a tentative ID:

Folsomia candida

(Note a bit of a tiny beetle)

Aside from collembola, I found what appeared to be a couple of beetle larvae and a very tiny (smaller than the globule springtails) but noticeably marked spider which I guess is likely to very immature.

And whilst poking dead wood I found what I think is one of the 'pin' slime moulds.

Whilst taking photos of this, I noticed some movement and tried to get a quick shot but the camera would not focus. However, despite the shockingly bad image the ID is not in question ...

Megabunus diadema

Spring Clean

When I'm out in the field looking for interesting insects / inverts, I generally pot everything up live as my preference is to photograph and release wherever possible - especially where the ID is readily supported by a photo. I do have and could use a pooter, but this is only really any good for small stuff, and generally only useful if you fully intend to despatch the whole lot. Using a pooter is also not much good when you are taking a range of specimens from across different orders - stuff that could eat each other .....

I've used glass tubes for years, because plastic tubes can build up static and detach a load of scales from potted up moths. The plastic also gets scratched and scuffed which makes checking potted individuals with a hand lens difficult. The glass tubes are not without issue though, as there is the obvious risk of breakage. In my experience this tends to be higher with the larger tubes where the diameter is c20mm or more, as the glass wall is then relatively thin versus the diameter. The smaller tubes at c12mm diameter or less seem to be more resiliant, and I have dropped more of these that have bounced than I have dropped and smashed. Out in the field in 20 or so years I've only broken a couple of tubes whilst in the process of removing or pushing in the cap, and whilst they are rattling around in my bag they are fine.

Regardless of what pots/tubes you use, there are some universal issues for anyone with a range of interests. Imagine:

• you've spent some time diligently sweeping/sieving/beating or generally thrashing the environment. You find what appears to be a really smart weevil that needs to be checked closely and that you want to try and photograph, so you bung it in a pot - only to then realise that the pot was last used for a moth that flapped itself stupid and shed lots of scales ....

• you're sat at the side of your mothing sheet deep in woodland, when a really smart-looking micro lands in front of you. You grab a pot and get it contained, only then realising that the pot was last used for a very industrious web-making spider ....

So nowadays I take out fresh clean tubes wherever I go, although I am not infallable when unprepared!

The good thing about glass tubes is that they can be easily washed out. This also means that labels/stickers that have been put on pots with retained specimens can be removed without leaving a residue. However washing the pots is a bit of a chore, so over time through a need for more pots and a lack of enthusiasm for washing them out, I've ended up with a ridiculous number of them. Which just makes washing them out an even longer task. Still, instead of washing 30 or so pots every month I wash c180 every spring.

Today was the day after another hospital check-up this morning (all good). I was thinking about getting out, but by the time I'd got home the conditions were not exactly inspiring so I thought I'd use the time productively getting ready for when things improve.

Pink drying-mat optional

Of course, having washed all these up, the balacing act is making sure they are properly dry. Aside from the aforemented hazards of potting up something in a pre-used pot, containing anything in a damp tube is just as bad. I usually leave them on the drying mat for a couple of days, and then give them a moderate 'tray-bake' just to be sure. The caps usually dry out okay if left long enough.

Roll on spring.

l'art pour l'art

Give me a pencil, pastel, paintbrush, pallete knife, and I'll give you something worthy of a three-year old scribbling. But I can piss about with the filters on Photoshop. I'm planning on getting a few photos printed to hang up in my 'study', but may go for something like this rather than straight-up images.

Scope for Improvement

I decided to go ahead and get a useful bit of plastic that would hold my phone against optics, using either the microscope or telescope. I decided to spend a few extra quid and get this model which had an adjustable ring to ensure a concentric fit to the eyepiece (though the camera positioning to the 'aperture' is still a manual by-eye affair):

I was keen to give it a quick test today on both fronts. First-up I tried it on the telescope in possibly the worst test conditions - blustery, dull and light showers. Nothing much on the res but some distant Black-headed Gulls were suitable to try it out. These really were quite far off, but zooming the phone camera through the vignette and grabbing a bit of vid shows the potential for nice still brighter days. I would never get close enough to anything this distant with my camera, and whilst the image quality is not exactly stunning it's good enough.

The advantage of gabbing a bit of vid is that I can easily grab a still shot on the phone afterwards ...

Award-winning, no. Serviceable record shot, absolutely.

I might even be inclined to go birding occasionally.

This evening I had a quick go with it on my microscope. More practice needed, and probably more lighting, but you get the gist.

I wanted to see if cropping an original x1 image was better than zooming through the vignette (camera was set to 1:1 aspect):

x1 image, no cropping

 

x1 image, cropped

 x2 image, cropped

Focussing is a bit hit and miss, as using the microscope will always be a very narrow field, though should be fine when trying to capture a particular feature rather than the whole animal. The phone camera has pretty much cleared the vignette at x2 anyway, so I'll work on using that for now.

Anyway enough of that nonsense. After the success with my indoor spider, and had another look at one that I'd collected from sieving at Huncote Embankment last week. I eventually worked out that it appeared to be Neriene clathrata.

Note the now-obligatory spider-wrangling spoon.

Another epigyne checked (but before the new phone adaptor), another record submitted and accepted, another spidery first for me.

Missing Sector

Last night I noticed another spider loitering on a ceiling, this time in the en suite. I felt compelled to pot it up and have a look. Once secured, I got the handlens on it and quickly ran though the decision-making flowchart that I carry around in my head where spiders are concerned. Essentially: is it a jumping spider - if not, it is marked/coloured - if so, is it big enough for me to study critical features. Any jumping spider is cool and automatically warrants scrutiny. Anything else simply has to be big enough or at least have some distinctive-looking feature for me to bother. Anything that is either unicolourous, or worse a properly tiny Linyphiid, then I will almost certainly ignore it.

Anyway, this spider was smallish but had easy to see markings with the handlens. With it being indoors, and me being in Leics., I decided there can't be that many options so I decided to have a quick squint through NatureSpot first. Quite quickly I noted a very similar and obvious candidate, which when compared to my Collins and WildGuides books seemed to be right: Zygiella x-notata (Missing Sector Orbweb Spider). Almost always associated with human habitation, very common and widespread.

[Note that I used the same disposible wooden spoon that has been loitering in the 'study' and is now a handy spider-wrangling implement for photography.]

There is a similar species which is normally found outdoors, Zygiella atrica, and this is equally common and widespread so I decided to check further just to be sure. Mine was a female, so I set about anaesthetising it enough to get a USB scope shot of the epigyne.

Quite pleased with that to be fair, and more importantly it seemed to match the description and illustration in Collins vs Z. atrica. Anyway, record submitted and duly accepted - nice, a new spider on my list.

Here's an eight-legged musical interlude ....

The Cherry on Top

Remember me saying how lame my botanical skills were, and how my vascular plant low-list had glaring omissions ....

Whilst at Huncote Embankment I noted that a few prunus were starting to bloom. Whereas in the past my complete ignorance/indifference meant that I would have blithely assumed Blackthorn, I was now aware that there was a strong chance that the very earliest flowering shrubs were actually something else. I also knew that the difference was revealed by checking the new growth and sepals. But beyond that I couldn't remember which way around made it which plant.

So, I grabbed some quick dodgy phone snaps and got on with sieving/beating for inverts. It wasn't until last night that I remember to check the photos/ID and gained a tick where before there was a glaring hole.

No sepals showing between petals, flower relatively wide ....

New growth green and glabrous ....

Sepals reflexed and rounded ....

So Cherry Plum (Prunus cerasifera) duly ticked. I can hear you laughing from here.

Microscopic Topic

Up until now I've got by with a binocular microscope. I've had it for a long while now, and it has no external branding - in fact it looks identical to this generic model that you can get for c£150ish.

I use it with 10x and 15x eyepieces, and the scope has an additional 2x / 4x on the objective lens. It has both incident and transmitted light sources. It is basic, but fine for me as up to now I've not got into dissecting anything that it already tiny. The only problem is not being able to get a photo using it.

To get over that I aquired a USB microscope to grab the odd image. Again it is basic, and has a low resolution image. It is a Veho VMS-001. The casing is some sort of weird 'soft-touch' plastic that over time has gone sticky and vulcanised. I've had to shroud it in cellotape. The collar for the stand also broke, so I have been using it handheld. It currently looks like this ....

So I wanted to get something new. Ideally I wanted something that I could get a photo through my binocular microscope. Whilst browsing Amazon (yes I know, the epitome of mass consumerism and capitalism) I found that there are now a range of USB cameras specifically intended to poke down the end of a microscope. Sounded ideal, and at £49.99 it seemed reasonable so I bought one. I got this one by Bresser.

It arrived next day, and with a few specimens still loitering from Thursday I had a chance to try it. Absolute wank. Couldn't get anything in focus, field of view (ironically) microscopic, unuseable. Back in box and returned to Amazon for full refund with no fuss.

I've then gone and bought this for £15 ....

I thought it would be just a newer version of what I had, just with higher mag and a higher resolution image. Well you get what you pay for, and this is also absolute shite.

So I'm back to square one. I think I'll just get one of these and try using my phone!

Ultimately I know I need to spend a fair whack on a more professional compound microscope with a proper photographic attachment, but whilst I'm working and juggling priorities it's just not worth the outlay for now.

In the meantime, using my cellotaped up crapstick, I got these images ...

This was tapped from gorse at Huncote Embankment on 13/02/2020. Using the Barkfly Recording Scheme key, it comes out as Trichopsocus brincki - which is apparently scarce, can found all year round 'in the south' and likely to be beaten from evergreens, like gorse. Sweet.