Mixed Bag

Some quick snaps from the last couple of days, none that I'm especially happy with. The TG-6 seems a bit low on image quality and not as sharp as I'd like when using out in the field, hand-held in stacking mode. There has to be something I'm missing in the settings ....

Heterogaster urtica

Bruchus rufimanus - found loads of these under bark, keyed

Pine Ladybird

Common Malachite Beetle larva - under bark on same tree as I found one in 2013

I've decided these certainly are Pammene regiana cocoons - collected to rear

Lecanora muralis

Common Earwig

Dead Moll's Fingers [Xylaria longipes]

I've also got a Norellia spinipes pinned (keyed, swept off daffs, early?), and a new beetle - Calathus fuscipes - to try and photograph alive if possible. First Small Tortoiseshell of the year today as well on a short walk this morning.

This afternoon I headed to the hospital. To have a tourniquet strapped on my arm, have my arm sliced open a little and have a thin tube of plastic inserted in a major artery and fed up, across and down to just above the heart under x-ray .... not as dramatic as it sounds, and in the great scheme of things not the most uncomfortable procedure I've had to endure in the last couple of years. My chemo got deferred by a week so I could have this PICC line in, starts again Monday and hopefully will be easier to deal with.

Tort 106

Back in Feb 2014, I mused over what the 100th tortrix species would be for the garden and I posed a list of ten possible species that may turn up. I then promptly started to lose interest/freetime for regular blogging and garden moth recording.

As it happened, the 100th tortrix species and the 101st turned up on consecutive nights; the 100th was indeed the one I suggested would be most likely of the possible ten, but the 101st wasn't on the list. Since then I've added four others - none of which were on the list of possibles:

100    24/07/2014    Pammene regiana
101    25/07/2014    Cochylis dubitana
102    29/06/2015    Spatalistis bifasciana
103    01/07/2015    Zeraphera isertana
104    23/08/2016    Cydia amplana
105    25/05/2017    Cochylis nana

All of which shows just how impossible it is to predict what might turn up.

Last night I added the 106th tortrix, and happily it was on the original list of possibles! Like Spatalistis bifasciana, it's also one that I added to the VC55 list in the first place so nice to see it turn up in the garden.

Epinotia signatana - 106th tortrix, 360th micro and 675th garden species

As it happens, I had another Pammene regiana the night before so seeing as I missed posting about it first time around probably good to post one now.

Pammene regiana

And I suppose I should try and find any photos of the other garden first torts, but the only one I know I have to hand is the 104th from last year which was also a full British tick ....

Cydia amplana

And I may as well post this tort which seems to be particularly common to the garden traps so far this year.

Eucosma cana