Last night, for the first time in well over a year thanks to [lack of] health etc, I ventured out with traps into woodland. I headed to Gisborne's Gorse, what is essentially mixed woodland within the Charnwood Lodge LRWT reserve. It's not 'real' woodland though, it was created in the late 19th century and part of it is more like a large-scale landscaped garden (there are a couple of old houses within the planted area). With such a long hiatus, it meant it was also the first time my 'new' car has been loaded up with traps. I've had it [Cupra Born EV] since Jan 2024, and the x3 traps, gennie and cable reels easily fitted in though I had folded the seats down just in case.
I had no great expectations for the night, although I had a couple of hoped-for species. I was only intending to run the traps for three hours or so - no point going overboard so early in the season.
And so it was that I lit up around 18:15, and ran the traps until packing the last one around 21:45. There were still moths coming in to the traps and it was still c7°C at that time, but I wasn't seeing any increasing diversity. I'm sure if I'd run for longer I would have had more Noctuids and maybe one or two more species, but the eventual total was 204 of 18sp. which is pretty fair for this early in March.
The couple of hoped-for species were Spring Usher which I'd not seen since 2012, and Yellow Horned that I'd not seen since 2013. Mottled Grey was also on the radar, though I was sure I was too early for that. No sign of any Spring Usher to the traps though, quite possibly too late this year. But Yellow Horned was bang on, I ended up with x51 of them and all box-fresh. Other highest counts were x42 March Moth and x36 Oak Beauty.
Given the abundance of fallen and felled wood alongside the track, I opted to photograph a few whilst out using the ever-reliable TG-6 and light guide. Smaller micros came home though, including a couple for dissection.
Yellow Horned
Engrailed
Satellite
Tortricodes alternella
Oak Beauty
March Moth
Pale Brindled Beauty
Brindled Pug
The only surprise as such was not the species, but the context. This female Dotted Border was sat on top of one of the traps basking in the glow of the light. The trap was not directly underneath the canopy, so the only way it could be there would be being 'flown in' whilst in-cop with a male or simply walking towards the light and crawling up. Given I only saw one male Dotted Border, and that it was in a different trap, the latter explanation seems more likely but of course it's a guess.
Dotted Border
Not too many micros aside from several T. alternella.
Ypsolopha ustella
Agonopterix ocellana
Acleris ferrugana/notana [dissection pending]
In compiling this post, I've reminded myself what an absolute pain in the arse it is to keep editing image sizes etc on Blogger. I think I'd realised this before and stuck to uploading at 'view size' only, but Bluesky seems to screw images up that are not already sized up. So going forward, it's going to be quicker and less of a pfaff to just save the images in two sizes. It will mean that anything on here will revert to what you see is what you get - no bigger image when you click on one.
I imagine one or two read the blog title and were delighted horrified that I might include a Coldplay track. Fear not.
I found a load of birch leaves with some very obvious feeding damage. I reckon
this has to be a sawfly, and the damage is not too dissimilar to the Zig-zag
Sawfly on Elm - except being within the leaf rather than from the edge. It's
not really a mine as such. You'd think that this would be straightforward to
identify the culprit, but so far I have no idea. No larvae on any of these
though, so it's one I will have to make a point of looking out for a bit
earlier in the year next year if I remember ....
One that certainly is a mine was this gallery leading to a blotch typical of a
dipteran miner, this one on bramble ....
This fits Agromyza idaeiana. The above phone snap was taken
when I found it, what I hadn't noticed until now was that the photo I took at
home of the larva in the mine, just over 24hrs later, shows that the blotch
had developed substantially in that time. In the photo above, use the obvious
dark spot just to the left of the the blotch as a reference; in the photo
below you can see that it is a load of frass which is now much lower
down the leaf than the top of the blotch which is now doubled in size.
It's not that long ago that, somehow,
I'd never seenFly Agaric. Whilst at Charnwood Lodge I found loads of fruiting bodies
underneath the canopy of otherwise exposed trees ....
I also found an earthball in moss at the edge of a wooded area, which from the
large diameter (c10mm) must be Scleroderma citrinum [Common Earthball].
I've had another play with some squeezed moss soup. I've managed to get some
text and measurements from the camera software to merge onto the image, here's
another testate amoeba with a 100micron line for scale.
I can't get the measurement data to transfer to the video clips yet though, so
will probably need to dimension snaps to accompany them. Here's a rotifer of
some sort (I think!) - look at the extent of the disturbance it's causing
whilst 'hoovering' .... this is all happening within a merest veneer of soup
under a cover-slip - it's ridiculous really.
Meanwhile, I have absolutely no idea what this weird thing is propelling
itself around using cilia of some sort.
Believe it or not though, that's far from the strangest thing I've seen all day
...
I do like Isabella Rossellini, and I'm not at all surprised that
sado-maschism excites her. There's a whole load of these on the 'Green Porno'
Youtube channel, all equally weird yet informative.
Yesterday afternoon when I arrived at Charnwood Lodge, it was looking
decidedly dodgy on the weather front. We'd had constant rain on Saturday so it
was always going to be wet underfoot, and there was light drizzle when I left
home so I expected to get properly wet.
As it happened, I ended up having a nice long walk across the moorland,
around the small Colony Reservoir and around the base of Timberland Hill with no rain at all.
Timberland Hill is the area where Leicestershire's one and only Cream Coloured
Courser was shot on 15th October 1827 - the fourth British record and well
documented at the time, the specimen is still in the local museum. As you can
see it is prime CCC habitat, with the moss and heather and bilberry and oak.
There was no sign of the second for VC55 whilst I was there ....
As I wondered around these areas I collected leaves, bags of moss and poked my phone camera at a few fungi. I then
headed into the wooded area known as Gisborne's Gorse and almost like flicking a switch
the sun started to come out.
More leaves bagged, and I stopped around the old house where I found loads of
the Rhododendron Leafhoppers featured yesterday.
The stroll back to the car was very pleasant, and I was thankful that I'd left
a flask of hot coffee in the car. During the whole time wandering around I saw
one person - Margaret McLoughlin as she departed just as I arrived. I also
managed to avoid the free-roaming longhorn bovines which is always a bonus.
I've had a brief play with the microscope, squeezing some peaty water out from
mosses. I have no idea what I'm looking at - it really is another world. Sadly
I've not found anything that looks remotely like a Desmid as yet, but lots of
'testate' amoeba type things and possibly a 'naked' ameoba. Also some nematode
type things wiggling about and lots of even smaller round green blobs zipping
through the field of view. It is absolutely like looking back to the
beginnings of life. It is a start, I've got a lot of practice before anything
properly presentable comes out of it but here's a few early snaps and and
vid-clip ....
A testate ameoba
A tiny banana
Another testate ameoba
Perhaps a 'naked' ameoba?
Same beast as above, except slightly out of focus ....
I spent a splendid three hours or so waltzing around Charnwood Lodge this
afternoon, after a dreadful couple of hours watching LCFC lose their first
game of the season. I've got lots of photos that I haven't had time to sort
out, lots of leaf mines that I've not had time to sort out, and tubes full of
water and bags full of mossy stuff for squeezing to look at under the
microscope. In short, I've created a bit of interest for the early part of the
week at least.
I will post these though. Whilst walking through the woodland area known as
Gisborne's Gorse, which at some point in time was a very large garden, I
remembered to look at the masses of Rhododendron bushes. I always look at
Rhododendrons, but usually at the wrong time of year, so up until today I'd
never seen one of these crackers ....
Graphocephala fennahi [Rhododendron Leafhopper]
Once I'd spotted one, I soon got to the point that I couldn't miss them. I saw
dozens on the handful of bushes that I looked at. And what a smart large
hopper it is, with garish hippy-like colours.
My last round up of varied bits from Charnwood Lodge last Saturday (see how long I managed to string out one field trip!). However this is a break from my normal inverted outlook.
Whilst knocking about the site, I noted some strange stuff that didn't ring any bells - something I've not seen before - this weird looking stuff that I found under the bark of a well rotted log. I had no idea if it was fungal or some sort of egg mass, but a quick enquiry on the PSL Facebook group threw up the ID, and it is a slime mould ...
Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa - which is pretty cool looking I reckon
Literally on the other side of the bark to this slime mould was a familiar looking liverwort.
Bifid Crestwort
Earlier, I'd seen what appeared to be a trio of small cauliflowers bulging out of the inside face of a hollowed dead tree. There was another more solid looking lump and what appeared to be an exploded puff ball on the same patch of wood. Didn't take long to work out that this is another slime mould, and that I'd seen the various stages of its development.
After walking around the small reservoir, I found a board-walk that I'd never seen before running alongside a damp-looking dry stone wall.
This wall must be a Bryologist's dream. I pointed the camera at something that looked a bit quirky ...
A quick browse through NatureSpot suggested that this is Aulacomnium androgynum - Bud-headed Groove-moss. Perhaps one of the best vernacular names! Even better, a quick squint at the mapping showed a yellow square pretty much exactly in the same spot.
In the same area was a fair bit of this lichen - which I won't bother trying to name.
Cladonia sp.
And rounding up the non-invert ramble, this orange staining on the wall and trees in one spot - all on the same side. Quite probably the algae Trentepohlia abietina.
