The Soul Inside

I've had a couple of busy days at work, too late home to get out and do anything. In the meantime the most skanky-looking immature Lammergier is soaring around the Peak District. I don't do much twitching these days (years more like!), and when I do it's usually something that's been around for a few days. I was sorely tempted to head up to Bempton for the Black-browed Albatross a couple of weeks ago, as that would have been absolutely mega, but it did the decent thing and fecked off before I could have gone. The Desert Warbler would have been a yeartick so not arsed with that, and the weird shearwater down south was of no interest at all to me. The Brown Booby is in another Country so may as well be on Antigua for all I care. But I'm hoping this vulture goes too, as I think otherwise I may be drawn to go and have a 12km?? round hike to gawp at it. I hope it goes of its own accord though, not because some fuckwitted gamekeeper has shot or poisoned it.

I'm much more likely though to head out locally and try and grab some more leafmines to gaze at in clueless wonder. Remember I said about looking at oak, but don't hold your breath - here's why ....

Two gallery mines, egg on underside of leaf, one with frass filling the mine until the latter part, one with the frass in a neat line until the latter part. One around the lobe, one pretty much central in the leaf. If these were on any other tree I reckon there would be enough to diagnose the culprit. But these are on oak. I know that they are both Stigmella spp., but there are at least six potential species and whilst I can narrow it down, ultimately I have no record. The missing ingredient is that the soul inside has vacated the mine; larval head colouration would help to confirm one way or another.

The following are also from Croft Hill on Friday 10th - the day when I picked up quite a few new species one way or another. One of them was this ....

What you can't see in this photo is the tiny spider I ignored and brushed away before looking at the structures that I found on the underside of a Sycamore leaf and wondered WTF they were. It didn't take long though to work out that these are the egg cases of the aforementioned tiny spider Paidiscura pallens, also known as the Sputnik Spider - and you can see why.

Whilst looking around some Aspen saplings, I was very pleased and lucky to find this ....

A superb first instar Puss Moth and the egg it came from. I'm going to rear through to final instar, and I've already managed to transition it to 'sallow' - whatever that is.