Debris / Garbage

A few days ago, I posted a couple of shots from Jubilee Park and Seth suggested I should be sieving what appeared to be prime flood debris. Yesterday I nipped back there with a couple of large 6 litre ziplock bags; I'm not quite up to spending time constantly crouching/bending as yet but I figured that with a bit of effort I could get something bagged up to sieve at height at home.

Here's the photo that Seth mentioned with some arrows on it ....

The red arrow is pointing at what may appear to be a good place to start looking for some debris to bag up, but actually this is virtually all mud with a few bits of laying reed. The blue arrows pointing to the edges of shrubs and bushes further 'inland' from the river are actually still short of the where the flood line was, but the bushes act as a dam and catch all sorts of natural debris and man-made garbage. I searched out a couple of different types and got some bagged up .....

The first lot looks like wood chippings, but it's a pile of reed fragments and twigs. I dug below the top layer and bagged a load of wet mulch.

The second area was longer/larger fragments of reed held together by a load of mud and not so easy to bag up, but I grabbed some anyway ....

Whilst grabbing these, there was a bit of drizzle and it felt a bit nippy. I had a quick look around with bins but nothing unexpected - Little Egrets still lording it up around the place, and that drake Tufted still alone on the pit.

This afternoon I had a quick go at sieving some of the looser mulch. I've only done about a quarter of what I collected. As expected, there were some tiny collembola and some tiny Staphs. I've ignored these, I just haven't got the time and patience for tiny stuff at the moment. There were also lots of common Tachyporus / Tachinus spp. - none of which looked remotely interesting. What I was hoping for were Carabids, and although a modest result so far I got two - both of which are common, typical of this habitat and species I've not seen before.

I (just about) carded the larger beetle, Pterostichus vernalis. No scutellar striae, pitted single pronotal fovae and a furrow along the top of the tarsi. c6.5mm long

The smaller beetle was Bembidion biguttatum, which came out of the ethyl acetate fumes with it's legs wrapped up beneath it. Seven elytral striae, rounded pronotum sinuate at the base, pale elytral sub-apical spots, pale basal antennal segment and red/brown legs. Some of which you can just about discern from this rubbish shot.

I'll keep going through the bags and see what else pops up.

This evening, despite some potential for rain the temps looked great and I thought I'd get the trap out. although it was already dark by that point. But, on opening the door the mild temps are being moderated by a strong wind so I've not bothered, I'm unlikely to be missing anything that won't turn up on a better night in the next week or so. I did have a look along the fence with a torch though and found a couple of Walnut Orb Weavers, the first I've seen this year. So I grabbed the TG-6 and though I'd see what a hand-held stack with no other illumination than the LED light guide attached. Not too shabby considering. It's not been brightened or anything like that in editing.

Here's some more good garbage ....