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