Raiding the Archives

For various reasons, including but not limited to shite weather, work, other commitments and a large slice of late autumn blues, I've not been out much lately. I'd quite like to be zipping off to see Rufous Bush-chat, Masked Shrike etc but it's not happening. I didn't even get over to the Lincs/Cambs area to see that blasted vulture which had now properly departed the UK (and good luck to it).

Perhaps I'll get out a bit during this week or at the weekend, but if I do it will be strictly local and socially distanced. I've got plenty to do, it's just that not much of it is blog-worthy. This evening though whilst carrying on organising a few more batches of old photos, I found a couple of garden bugs that I've not posted here previously.

The first is one that I am very pleased to have re-found. I had this species in the garden in 2013 during the 1000 in 1km challenge, and as far as I know that was the first record for VC55. I knew I'd had another in the garden since, and that I'd probably pointed the camera at it, but it wasn't on my MapMate and half-hearted attempts to find anything in the 1000s of uncatalogued photos in my archives were futile. It's certainly not a great photo, but thanks to the digital data I know when it is from and can submit a record for it at last.

Pseudoloxops coccineus 24/07/2014

The other is not special or scarce, but as it happens I can see from the digital data that it has also escaped my garden records on MapMate. So this is one that, if and when I create it, can be added to the garden Hemiptera list.

Heterogaster urticae 20/09/2015

One useful pointer from this is that it's worth checking and (re)setting the date and time on your camera - the files are all date and time stamped which is always handy!

Long-legged Miridae from Leicestershire ...

 .... you'll be my sunshine daisy from L.A. ....

Why on earth that cheesy child puppet was singing about hemiptera I have no idea.

A couple of days ago I received a file with load of VC55 Hemiptera records. I noted that all of the records that I have sent directly to the county recorder have not as yet (and may not ever) filtered through to the overall county dataset. I'm therefore, on a very ad hoc basis, uploading old records onto NatureSpot. I've realised at the start of this that particularly in the late summer of 2013 I had a very rich period of noting bugs and hoppers from moth traps, both at home and when out and about. In particular, I've just rediscovered that I had three different Phytocoris spp. within a week or so, along with a similar looking long-legged bug. Even better, whilst I posted a couple of these on the 1k in 1km blog, none of these records have featured on here. Which is great as I have nowt else to post about today.

First up, the easiest (certainly the least subjective) one to ID ..

Miridus quadrivirgatus - Whetstone 01/08/2013

This is a moth-trap specialist in VC55

 

Phytocoris varipes - 02/08/2013

The longitudinal markings help to ID this one, but close scrutiny of antennal width/hairs needed

Phytocoris ulmi - Whetstone 22/07/2013

Similar to varipes but more uniformly coloured - again antennal width/hairs key

Phytocoris dimidiatus - Pickworth Great Wood 20/07/2013

This is the most contentious one - the lack of sharply defined black markings on pronotum are key, and the width of pale bands (narrower or equal to dark bands) on mid-tibia separate from similar P. longipennis ... but may not be separable from P. reuteri (which seems to have more south-easterly distribution as far as I can see).

Pseudoloxops coccineus - Whetstone 01/08/2013

Okay, not one of the long-legged ones. I've included this as it's from the same time frame and it looks great. More importantly, as far as I can see there are no earlier/other VC55 records.