Back to the Brook

I've had a productive and busy weekend. Doing work. I've got next week off, or most of it at least, and I needed to get ahead on a few things for month-end reporting. Otherwise I've enjoyed a day over at my Mum's. I've done virtually nowt on the natural history side, except that on looking at a few snaps from the garden moth trap, and a very brief detour on the way home this evening, I've picked up a couple of new species. Well one certainly, the other is probably a case of actually looking at something and putting a name to it instead of ignoring it as I may well have done for 40+ years.

I'll start with the garden-trap bonus. I ran two traps on Friday night - nothing too exciting on the moths front but the MV trap in particular had attracted a range of 'intruders' including a number of beetles. I pointed the camera at one that was clearly a Sitona weevil ....

.... and noted that it clearly wasn't the expected Sitona lineatus. It didn't take long working it through the Mark Gurney guide to Sitona spp. to come out to Sitona obsoletus, new for me and the garden.

Other intruders included ....

Dromius quadrimaculatus

Miridis quadrivirgatus how I normally see it - tucked into an egg-box

And so to this evening. On my way home, I briefly stopped and looked at Bushby Brook that flows through the Thurnby Lodge estate. It is one of the brooks I used to play in (literally) as a kid; well away from home, back in the days when kids could be out playing all day before computer games were invented and when kids playing unaccompanied in potentially dangerous situations was nothing to get excited about.

There is a small accessible pond in an open playing field on one side of the road. I don't remember the brook or ponds being in any way interesting for plant life, as I was in no way interested in plant life.

And in truth the plant I was looking for is not particularly interesting; it's just a common plant of waterways that I'd never bothered looking for / at, however it was one that I had on my radar for my recent visit to Cosby but couldn't see. So when checking for possible sites I noticed this and today brought a perfect opportunity.

Water-plantain

My list of 'plants what I ought to have seen if I ever bothered looking' list is, very gradually, getting smaller. Must be just a few hundred left to go ....