Life in the land of the dead

Been far too busy/lazy of late to post, mainly because I've been far too busy/lazy to have anything to post about. This weekend for instance, the first weekend for a while where the conditions have been crisp and cold rather than miserably wet, I could have sauntered literally a couple of miles down the road to look for an over-wintering Yellow-browed Warbler (not Hume's) with a Hen Harrier loitering around the same area. Could not be arsed. Absolutely no motivation to get some boots on. It can't go on like this of course, and I'm sure a glimmer of lengthening days and increased opportunities will coax me out of this winter malaise.

I did have a minor effort today though, just by sticking the camera in the car to take on a short errand to stock up on fat balls. I dropped past the old churchyard in Blaby and had a nose around on the stone walls and gravestones for half an hour which turned out to be surprisingly productive.

For some reason I'd never seen Juniper Shieldbug, but here there were six brazenly sitting out on top of gravestones despite the temps barely being a couple of degrees above freezing. Pretty sure no Juniper anywhere around, but certainly some Lawson's Cypress or cultivars.

A search of the stone walls around the church and algae/lichen covered brick walls on the adjacent lane soon revealed a number of Psychidae cases. Narycia duplicella and Luffia lapidella (f. ferchaultella) were certain, but a few cases looked a bit more Dahlica-like. I'll go back and have a longer better look another time. But even better, a patch of granular grey-green lichen [Lepraria sp.] held the inconspicuous larval tubes of Infurcitinea argentimaculella. Good to find this well away from all other VC55 records to date (Charnwood). The photos are not exactly exciting, and these were on the shaded side of the wall in what were already dull conditions so a bit 'fuzzy'! Still you get the gist.

Here's an absolute racket that I recommend you play at ear-bleeding volume; its enough to wake the dead.

Moths / Books

We had a couple of days of very mild weather around the turn of the year - so mild that I put out the moth trap on New Years Eve and was massively surprised and disappointed to find it empty in the morning. It soon turned cold with overnight frosts, but has now swung back to damp and mild again. But until last night the outdoor light fitting with a 20W actinic light, and general lit windows at the back (the usual spots for the first moths of the year) were blank. Last night though there was the familiar sight of a knackered Winter Moth.

I always look forward to recording the first moth of the year at home; in many ways of course it is completely meaningless as the change from Dec 31st to Jan 1st is completely arbitrary in the context of the flight season of the moths that are likely to be around. It does seem to go one of two ways though: either the weather turns so cold that moths flying earlier in December have had their lot and sometimes it is late January before anything shows up, or the weather holds and so the first moths in January are the same as the last moths in the December. This year, here at least, is somewhere in the middle but a knackered Winter Moth is not quite as fulfilling as a fresh Early Moth, Pale Brindled Beauty or Dotted Border.

On Sunday I nipped over to Swithland Res in the mid-afternoon; I had intended for that to be a quiet and leisurely look at wildfowl and stuff, but it was actually a bit of a waste of time. Not sure if there was a particular steam engine of interest on the Great Central Railway but there were a lot of people loitering around on the causeway with big lenses (and they were certainly not there for the masses of Mute Swans or Coots on the water), and also more people than I've seen for a long while along Kinchley Lane and at the dam including a family flying a drone along the dam wall and yoots in a car with massive exhausts and no silencers. I ditched the bins after watching a handful of Goldeneye and had a quick half-arsed look along the walls before sacking the whole thing off.

Infurcitinea argentimaculella - larval tube on granular lichen (honestly)

Taleporia tubulosa - larval case

Elachista regificella - early tenanted mine on Great Wood-rush

And fresh in today, a trio of new books for the ever growing reference library:

The first volume was excellent, trust this one will be too and seems so on first flick through.

One of these days I need to have a proper crack at rockpooling - this will certainly come in handy when I do, and looking through is a great motivator.

Okay, I will be honest and say I bought this on a whim. I don't really 'need' a bird guide as pretty much everything I encounter I've seen many times before or I know what it is anyway. Except immature gulls, which don't count. But, I realised, the main guide I have (Collins) is well outdated on systematics and doesn't include a lot of species that now 'exist'. My copy is from 1999 and I've not bought any general bird guide since then. This is the 2020 second edition with photo plates, and actually looks a very neat and useful guide for reference and it includes pretty much all recent rarities as well.

Here's a banging tune for you to sit back and soak up with your volume on loud ....

Rushing

Yesterday I followed up on a tip-off from Graham Finch and headed out to look for some larval life that would provide a lepidopteran tick. What I didn't realise until checking afterwards was that I was getting a vascular plant tick in the process. I headed out to Kinchley Lane that runs along the side of Swithland Reservoir, the site that I usually go and look for Psychidae early in the year.

See all that green stuff on the bank around the birch trees and at the base of the wall, well it's not just grass - it's Great Wood-rush. Clearly I have seen this many times whilst on that lane, but I've never taken any notice of it and it wasn't on my list. Here's some shots of the general appearance, hairy-edged wide leaves (for a wood-rush) and flower spike ....

Anyway, what I was looking for on this plant was leaf mines like this one ....

A creased blister causing the leaf to fold in on itself on older mines. I found a few, and collected what I thought was two tenanted mines and one old vacated mine ....

It was then that I noticed that what I thought was an older mine was going in the opposite direction to the others: this one had a frass collection nearer to the tip of the leaf with the mine heading basally. And, despite appearances all three mines were tenanted.

I needed to open the mines to check the larva to be sure on the ID. This larva was clearly not impressed as it constantly shuffled up and down the leaf so I had to whack up the ISO to get a clear enough shot.

So, mines on Great Wood-rush tenanted by a greenish larva with a brown head and prothoracic plate which is darker at the outer margins (as opposed to whitish-grey with black prothoracic plate) confirm this is Elachista regificella (and not Elachista gleichenella which may also mine this plant). Sweet. Highly unlikely that I'll get one reared through but it has to be worth sweeping the plants in late June - mid July. Great Wood-rush seems to be localised in VC55, mainly around the Charnwood area including Swithland Wood.

Whilst I was there I had a quick look for Psychidae. Every year there seem to be fewer cases, or perhaps my eyesight is getting crapper.

A couple of Dahlica sp. above (probably D. lichenella based on size and lack of obvious insect fragments), Narycia duplicella below.

I also found a few Dyseriocrania subpurpurella loafing about including this pair in-cop.

And there were loads of Alder Flies, none of which I bothered collecting to check exactly which one.

It was pretty nippy whilst I was out and certainly not inspiring enough to spend a lot of time looking around. I headed to Ulverscroft to have another look at the Infucitinea argentimaculella colony, and found absolutely loads of tubes. None that I collected last year were successful, so I think his year I'll go and collect a few in late June by which time they'll have pupated.

Not So Tenuous Larva

Been busy today, though I did manage to get out for a couple of hours or so this afternoon, and the bits from that will have to wait. First up though, a quick follow up on the larval tube cases I collected yesterday from Ulverscroft.

No knowing if they were genuinely cases of Infucitinea argentimaculella, or if so were they tenanted, I had to have to go at opening them up to have a squizz. the first one I opened, the biggest, was in fact a dud - no larval workings, just a bit of twig or similar that had been lichenised. the second one, slightly smaller, was immediately more promising as there was a clear silken structure beneath the lichen-coated outer. It was vacated though, with perhaps the remanants of a pupal exuviae at one end.

So onto the third case, the smallest of the three, not much more than a centimeter in length and quite thin. Hold on - is that a ......

So with that, I can far more confidently add Infurcitinea argentimaculella to my list. Not hopeful of rearing this one, but I reckon looking again in a couple of months or so will be more productive.

Something completely different, I've been pleased to note a pair of Collared Doves knocking about the garden lately, often displaying and mating on the fence. Today they were back with another in tow for good measure. This has become a bit of a garden rarity in the last few years. They were milling about picking around the meagre offerings of whatever the Goldfinches had dropped.

I took pity on them and spread a couple of handfuls of sunflower hearts onto a less messy area for them .... and within seconds of me shutting the back door to watch what happened they were ousted by a pair of the usual fat greeder feckers.

Just as well I put enough out to satisfy all of them in the end.

A Tenuous Case

I made use of a couple of free hours this afternoon. First off, I headed to Swithland Reservoir in glorious sunshine. I'd only just got out of the car when I noticed a few ducks close to the dam by the overflow, including two of my favourite species beginning with G ....

Gadwalls were preening and having a drink in between bouts of courtship ...

No such luck for this lone drake Goldeneye.

After grabbing a few snaps, I set about my main purpose. Staring at walls. It didn't take long to find the expected Psychidae.

Luffia lapidella f. ferchaultella

Dahlica sp. - found a good number of cases in a slightly different section of the boundary wall to where I usually look. All looked to be D. lichenella, no potential D. triquetrella.

I noticed one moving about, surprisingly. They overwinter as full-fed larvae and should be pupating by now. When I got my hand lens out to have a good look at this one I noticed something else very close by .....

Bristly Millipede - never ceases to amaze me how these are invisible when you are actually looking for them.

Whilst I was enjoying these wall-dwellers, they were not what I was actually looking for. News came through during the week that Keith Tailby and Mark Hammond had found putative silk-tube cases of Infurcitinea argentimaculella. The photos seemed compelling, if a little inconspicuous. They'd been found at Ulverscroft and along the Swithland Res walls, but I was seeing nothing. After a quick call to Keith, I decided to head over to Ulverscoft and try there.

I was soon looking at a much more promising habitat, with the dry stone wall covered in a powdery blue-grey lichen (Lepraria sp.). If you think looking for larval cases of Psychidae is tenuous, you ought to try this .....

This is likely to overwinter as a small larva, but should be starting to become active again in spring, so it seems likely that bigger cases are old and vacated. I've collected a couple to have a look at, but definitely this is one to make an effort to return to in a couple of months. With lichens generally doing better now, and with eg the spread of lichen-feeding footmen spp., seems likely that this has also done well in the last decade or so and could well be wide-spread. After all, even when it's on your radar (which it wasn't) it is not exactly jumping out at you!

Just before getting back in the car, I had a quick look at the outer wall and quickly found more Psychids.

Narycia duplicella