Anyway, amongst my pots from KQ yesterday were a few nice-looking (and therefore probably unidentifiable) sawflies. This afternoon after work (still WFH for the forseeable), I set about pinning them. Having learnt the hard way despite Seth's pointer earlier this year, I'm fed up with dropping tiny pins and panicking about it so I tried to be more organised ....
I got my stuff laid out neatly on white paper, with selected pins in the plastic lid of some plastazote strips. The strips of white card by the way are what I am now using to soak up ethyl acetate and drop in the pot, rather than having bits of kitchen paper all over the place. These should be reuseable for a good few goes, I suppose it's a bit like perfume tester strips in Boots. Actually some of the staff in there last time I went in looked like they'd sniffed to much ethyl acetate.
Anyway, above are x5 sawflies, a Nomada lathburiana (after keying out) and a small ?Dichotephora sp.? for another day.
Pinning sawflies, like any other proper entomological task, is something I am not practiced in but I have at least ended up with x5 specimens in a store box for labelling and later scrutiny. One has a firm ID, four have tentative sensu lato names. Post-script - IDs updated 19/05/2020 after seeking guidance from sawflies facebook group.
Tenthredo mesomela - confirmed
Macrophya annulata - confirmed as either this or M. blanda
