Garden Life

The moth trap went out again, with no higher expection but actually a better return: x5 Hebrew Characters, x3 Common Quakers, x1 Clouded Drab, x1 Twin-spotted Quaker, x1 Early Grey, x1 Double-striped Pug and x2 Diurnea fagella. I made an effort to grab some shots late this afternoon, the first moths I've photographed at home for months. I then remembered that I'd cleared out all of my photographic props, so had to make do with a bit of broken fence panel which worked out okay.

Double-striped Pug

Twin-spotted Quaker ab. immaculata

Really pleased to pick this one up; not annual and never in numbers in my garden, so seeing one this year with the crappy wet early spring was unexpected.

Early Grey

Perhaps the best behaved individual I've ever pointed a camera at.

Common Quaker

What you can't see from this shot is that it was tiny; I actually potted it up thinking it was Small Quaker, and only looked at it properly when preparing the camera.

Today has been another lovely sunny day with a bit of warmth, so I made a point of loitering in the garden for ten mins or so every time I grabbed a coffee and rested my eyes from the PC whilst working. It really did feel like things were stepping up, with more new for year insects including Peacock butterflies, Tree and Buff-tailed Bumblebees, Tawny Mining Bee, and a few of these ..

Dark-edged Bee Fly (Bombylius major)

Eristalis pertinax

I also listened and looked out for any bird activity whilst out there, seeing and/or hearing House Sparrow, Chiffchaff, Wren, Pied Wagtail, Common Crow, Feral Pigeon, Common Buzzard, Sparrowhawk and Herring Gull as well as the usual ten or so species I get in the garden. I ought to join in the 'lockdown listing' challenges, but I haven't got literally all day to peer hopefully into the airspace I can see from my house and garden.

My garden itself has nothing attractive to a wide variety of birds other than the feeders. Most of the genuinely interesting birds on my garden list are absolute one-offs, lucky flyovers or heard only - eg Woodcock, Kingfisher, Reed Bunting, Sedge Warbler, Black Redstart ...

Most of the stuff that uses my garden actually nests on the scrubby embankment that runs adjacent to my immediate neighbour's garden, and which partially restricts the open view I have of anything flying through. The neighbour's garden is a thin wedge that doesn't get much sun; we got the much better share of back garden space when the plots were laid out, though they have more land at the side and front.

Looking pretty much due-west over our knackered fence ...

... and looking north-west over our front conifer border

Ours is the red dot: sprawling suburb to north/east, sterile farmland to the south, industrial estate and motorway to the west .... but you see where the embankment turns from larger trees (mainly sycamore) to more scrubby before petering out

I pointed the camera at some Starlings which looked superb in the morning sun, and a pair of the Collared Doves that are still knocking about.

Scarce Fungal Infection

Whilst at KQ yesterday it seemed that I couldn't stop bumping into these ......

Scarce Fungus Weevil

I really like these, quite stupid looking but they have an unfathomable charm. I also like the way they manage to lood like bits of dried-up bird shit both ways up. Anyway I found five yesterday, three whilst looking at piles of dead wood and a couple whilst poking about in Cramp Ball fungi.

Brazenly sitting out waiting to be found

Hiding in a hole behind larval dinner

I'm assuming that the individuals I found on dead wood piles (where no Cramp Ball fungus was evident) have just used this as a winter refuge, but not entirley sure. On this particular tree, I found a couple of the weevils and also set about cutting a couple of Cramp Balls open.

You can have your King Alfred's Cake and eat it

Within one of the balls I found a couple of another fungal-eating beetle ...

Biphyllus lunatus - substantially smaller than the weevils it shares dinner with

Right next to one of the balls on the aforementioned tree, I also found a Psychid case that I'm not at all convinced about. It doesn't look right for Narycia duplicella which is the most likely species in VC55, and it doesn't match other species I've seen before. I've retained the case but no idea if it is tenanted with a pupa (possible at this time of year) or vacated.

I also noticed this on another trunk in the same area ...

Diurnea fagella - female

Another more surprising find in a part-broken Cramp Ball was this new-for-me spider ...

Snake-back Spider (Segestria senoculata)

Otherwise; I saw and heard Raven, Red Kite, Kestrel and Buzzard whilst mooching about, bumped into a couple of Muntjac that stopped and looked at me briefly before sloping off as I tried in vain to prep the camera, saw a good few butterflies including Orange-tip and also a couple of early Common Heath moths.

Here's a few other random bits.

Dark-edged Bee Fly - abundant!

Two-toothed Door Snail (Clausilia bidentata)

White-legged Snake Millipede - (Tachypodoiulus niger)

Uncooperative Heliophanus flavipes

Some sort of beetle larva with a woodlouse I can't be arsed to check

Quarrying Solitude

I'm going back a few days now - time flies and all that.

Back on Friday 2nd June I headed over to my favourite site in VC55, Ketton Quarry. I remain convinced that this is one of - it not the - best sites in Leicestershire and Rutland. The varied habitats, and the fact that it is close to interesting sites, make this a place where it is easy to spend hours and still find new and interesting stuff.

The site is managed by the LRWT. It's formed from the oldest ex-workings of a limestone quarry, and indeed a very large quarry remains active immediately on the north and west of the site. The quarry feeds the Ketton Cement Works that is east of the reserve, but also still supplies Ketton Stone for building works. The reserve lies just north of Ketton village, accessed from Pit Lane. The deepest part of Rutland Water and the dam are to the north-west, and North Luffenham airfield is to the west.

Both the reserve and the working quarry have produced some fantastic nights moth trapping (like this one). But the reserve itself is also excellent for inverts, flora, reptiles and mammals - in fact the only group that is perhaps a little underwhelming are the birds, although I have recorded Nightingale there in the past. And Budgerigar!

On Friday I spent almost five hours on site, and did not see a single soul in all that time. Bliss! I could hear activity from the quarry, but I cannot ever remember going there for such a lengthy walkabout without seeing at least one dog-walker or another naturalist/photographer. I've also bumped into geologists there before now.

I went there with the sole intention of poking around with the camera and a filling a few pots - but not in a gung-ho record everything and sweep/beat everything to death way. I was there to relax and get away from the world for a while and it worked a treat. I'm starting to get some mo-jo back after the best part of two years doing and seeing relatively little.

Here's a few shots from the day, though I recorded a lot more than I did with the camera.

Swollen-thighed Beetle - absolutely everywhere

Metellina mengei

Onthophagus joannae - on presumed fox scat.

Think this beetle has only been recorded from Ketton Quarry in VC55. I found one there before, but on this visit I found at least 20 on fox, dog and badger faeces (I found a number of badger latrines).

Dark-edged Bee Fly

Japanese Knotweed - sadly coming back time after time, on the ashes of it's last growth!

Hairy Shieldbug / Sloe Bug

Centrotus cornutus

I found a number of carabids under stones and logs in this one area, and I have some to key. They are all typical black carabids that can be categorised by size for the moment as normal, big and huge!

This is on the edge of an area of beech woodland, and those two mounds and strip between them are the only site in whole of VC55 for ......

... Yellow Bird's-nest. Only just emerging, but lots of spikes present.

I saw a number of Common Lizards and a couple of Grass Snakes but didn't find any Adders.

Evarcha falcata (female), and I also swept Euphrys frontalis and Heliophanus flavipes.

Ketton Quarry 11/04/2014

As I mentioned in the last post, on Friday I spent most of the day pottering about at Ketton Quarry. I was hoping for some warm sunshine from early morning to bring out the reptiles, but after I'd battled my way through the rush-hour traffic and across the A47 it was still a bit overcast at c9am. No sign of any reptiles despite several searches throughout my time there. The sun did eventually come out and warm everything up, though not for any prolonged spells until late morning.

Ketton Quarry has featured several times on this blog as it is without doubt one of my favourite sites in VC55. The reserve is not exactly huge, but there is good diversity with open grassy areas, scrub and woodland, with tracks and rides both through and between these areas. Plus of course there is the adjacent huge open working quarry.

Aside from the reptiles which refused to come out, my main interest for the day was always going to be inverts. Plenty of the commoner butterflies were on the wing, including my first Holly Blue and Speckled Wood of the year, but no sign of any Green Hairstreaks, Grizzled Skippers or Dingy Skippers as yet. The only moth flying about was Common Heath, which despite the name is distinctly uncommon in VC55 - in fact this is the only known current site for it.

Common Heath

Plenty of Diptera on the wing too including lots of the smaller hoverlifies such as Melanostoma scalare, but the most obvious flies were Bee Fly - 100s of them all over the site.

Bee Fly

Beetles were the main interest though, and aside from the superb Green Tiger Beetle I picked up a couple of interesting ones. First up, a speculative search under loose bark on one of many log piles produced what I initially thought was an odd/brown Scarce Fungus Weevil. This was perpetuated for a few seconds as I noticed that there were also three other Scarce Fungus Weevils on the same log.

Scarce Fungus Weevil

Having seen this for the first time last year, I wasn't really sure on how variable they could be aside from the pale 'face' and rear end varying from buff to whitish. I also wasn't sure if there were any similar species, but then I noticed that the browner individual had obvious white spots on the elytra and white bands on longer antenna. I then found yet another odd individual - much smaller, darker and with even longer white-marked antennae and legs. I figured that these were indeed another species and I was right - they are both a male and a female Platystomos albinus. Better still, new for me and new for VC55.

Platystomos albinus - female

Platystomos albinus - male

Whilst searching, I found a random piece of rabbit leg perched on top of one of the logs. How it got there I have no idea, but once I'd moved it I noticed another interesting beetle. Like the two preceding species, this one also had some funky white markings on the underside but otherwise it just looked dark to the naked eye. Under the eyeglass though it looked pretty smart with pale grey-blue hairs and tufts of golden hairs on the pronotum. After a false start, I've identified it as Dermestes murinus - another new one for me.

Dermestes murinus

Also found under bark/around logs were Pterostichus madidus and Loricera pilicornis, along with typical woodlice, millipedes and centipedes.

Sweeping around the grasses was not as productive as it will be later in the season, though I did find the leafhopper Mocydia crocea which I've recorded from here before. Other Hemiptera noted during the day were Pied Shieldbug and Scolopostethus thomsoni.

Aside from searching logs, I also had a good look over the various rocks and stones and also a brick pile. This brick pile has been present for as long as I've been visiting the site (well over a decade) and the bricks are quite heavy and large compared to normal house bricks. Not sure what used to be built there, maybe some remnant of a quarrying building I suppose.

The bricks yielded a few molluscs, notably Discus Snail, Common Chrysalis Snail and Two-toothed Door Snail. I also found a cracking little harvestman which was new for me, and once I'd noticed it I started to find several of them on various rocks.

Megabunus diadema

I took an hour out from poking about to grab some early lunch in nearby Stamford. When I got back to Ketton, I tried out my recently acquired sieve - more out of curiosity than expectation. Not having used it before, I had a go at sieving various clumps of moss, dried grasses and a bit of leaf-litter. Apart from inadvertently finding lots of ants on a couple of occasions, it was pretty productive. Lots of very tiny stuff including Collembola (none of which looked new or particularly interesting under the eyeglass), but I was pleased to sieve out some very small jumping spiders. I like jumping spiders! One was identifiable, the other not (by me at least) although they were all very small and presumably immature.

Heliophanus flavipes - another one I've seen here before

Unidentified jumper
Thanks to Matt Prince for highlighting that this is a male Heliophanus flavipes

Also sieved from dried grass, a few click beetles that I've keyed out ...

Agriotes sputator

... and a weevil that I need to key out to confirm (when the key I've just ordered arrives)

Possible Otiorhynchus rugosostriatus

All in all an excellent few hours at Ketton. I left mid-afternoon and dropped in to Rutland Water on the way home which I'll save for another (shorter) post.