Time / Live

It's the same old for me in later summer / early autumn: all of the enthusiasm that builds up to a spring and early summer peak seems to just dissipate. There is no trigger for this as such, but I seem to hit this every (normal) year one way or another. Part of it, I guess, is the additional strain on my time of working whilst others are off on their break - which usually means picking up additional work. And I generally don't get much a break during the summer; pre-Covid, when travel was actually possible, if we went abroad it would be later in the year anyway.

Either way, I've done nothing remotely noteworthy in the last couple of weeks or so. Even the garden trap has been quiet. And - at long last - we are actually going to get our garden ripped out and re-landscaped with some drainage. But that also means no or limited garden moth trapping for a good two or three weeks after this weekend.

I am looking forward to some live music though: a mix of things booked pre-Covid that were rescheduled (twice) and new events.

First up, I'll be heading to Sheffield for a slightly niche gig: Heaven 17 playing tracks from the first two Human League releases, Reproduction and Travelogue. Of course you all know that Heaven 17 were formed from the original Human League line-up (Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh were joined by Glenn Gregory after splitting with Phil Oakey and Adrian Wright). This was originally scheduled for March 2020, then Sep 2020 ....

A couple of weeks later, I'm off to the Isle of Wight Festival, the same one that was meant to be June 2020, then June 2021 .... Not the strongest festival line up you'll ever see, but it's a good crack and overall I'll probably spend more time the Big Top than at the main stage.

I'll be back in Sheffield in early October for a rescheduled 808 State gig ....

Later in October, I'm off to Birmingham to see Public Service Broadcasting ....

And looking further ahead, Gary Numan is popping into Leicester in May ....

Along with the return of full attendance Premier League games, some Europa League games coming up and a family break in October, my time for all things natural is stretched. But I'm sure the enthusiasm will return, as sure as the sun rises, and autumn turns to winter turns to ....

Carry On Intruders

Today has been damned miserable from a weather perspective; damp with either light drizzle or snow through most of the day and a bit nippy - certainly not the sort of weather that makes you want to jump out of bed and get out and about. Which was probably just as well, as I wanted to catch up with a few work bits anyway. I'm finding that working from home again, general Covid restrictions and the Premier League and cup fixture lists being strung throughout from Monday to Sunday with everything televised seems to mean that the lines between week and weekend are blurred to the point of being irrelevant. I can take time out in the week when I want, and work at the weekend if I need to - it really doesn't matter!

I have unexpectedly added a species to the 1km list though, thanks to a very quick squint outside last night with a torch. On the same uPVC window ledge where I found the small spider Nigma walckenaeri on Thursday, I saw a tiny blob trundling around water drops which looked decidedly Collembola-like to the naked eye. I grabbed the camera and tried for a few shots, of which a couple came out well enough to name it ....

You can just about make out the change in antennal colouration and the multi-barred pattern on the rear of the abdomen to confirm Dicyrtomina saundersi. I might expect to find globular springtails if sieving leaf-litter in the garden I suppose, but living on a white plastic window-ledge is taking Collembola synanthropy to a new (off the ground) level.

I also pointed the camera at the Early Moth from Thursday night, though I'm not sure why I bothered as it's not the smartest individual. I seem to feel a sort of obligation to photograph just about every moth species that turns up in the garden through the year, a feeling which always fizzles out by April when the numbers increase and I then pick and choose what looks nice / is scarce etc. I'm always amazed to find that there are numerous common species that fly later in the year that I've hardly ever photographed, and then promptly forget the next year.

My copy of the latest useful bit of coleopteran literature landed on my doormat today.

A high number of the species in these families can be found in carrion; the uninvited undertakers of the natural world intruding on the corpses. Some also come to light, and a number of the Silphidae are regular moth trap intruders. A quick flick through shows some brilliant features such as surveying tips and I like the habitat tables. The species accounts are very detailed, and the illustrated keys look excellent. All I need now is some dead animals in the square, and I can also think about how best to deploy anything our blasted git of a cat brings home.

Meanwhile, how great is this new track from Gary ....

Bugs and Buds

I've finally managed to crack a couple of hemipteran puzzlers that I've been mulling over all week. Both were swept and potted at Ketton Quarry on Monday, and both popped their clogs in respective pots before I could even attempt a photo. Luckily there were both big enough that they were not going to shrivel away to nothing in a couple of days. It's not often now that I find a bug and can't resolve it having gone through the British Bugs galleries, but both of these stubbornly refused to be identified until I had a lucky moment last night and a eureka moment this evening.

First up, this dark Mirid with bright red cuneus, bright green underneath and (although they fell off) longish 'Phytocoris like' hind legs. I could not pick out anything similar in the British Bugs galleries, then last night whilst flicking through Facebook I noticed a photo of the exact same bug on the UK Hemiptera group. Here's a lazy photo of my dead hind-legless bug ....

It's a male Closterotomus trivialis, which currently isn't featured on the British Bugs gallery. It was added to the British list as recently as 2008, when adults were found on a small number of cultivated Hypericum plants in a north London garden. They still don't seem to have spread; the NBN atlas maps is pretty devoid of dots - except there is one for Leics., a 2018 record from a garden. It must be spreading, and whilst info seems a bit sparse I wonder if the abundance of native Hypericum spp. at Ketton Quarry is relevant. Needless to say, it's a new one for me.

The other bug that has been bugging me is this; a smallish, entirely all dark and quite hairy thing ....

Earlier this evening I had one more trawl through British Bugs and realised why I was missing it: this is a macropterous form of Orthocephalus coriaceus, a widespread but local bug of grasslands. No VC55 dots on the NBN maps, and no previous records as far as I can tell. And again, new for me.

Great stuff. I seem to be quite lucky lately in that although I'm limiting the number of specimens collected to check out quite a good percentage of them have been new for me and significant for VC55.

Here's a few flower buds from the same visit to fill the page a bit ...

Yellow Bird's-nest

Deadly Nightshade

Hedge Woundwort

Bladder Campion

Common Spotted Orchid

And because I can, another Stenurella melanura - Ketton Quarry seems to be a good site for this longhorn in VC55 .....