The storm blows itself out and the sun appears

After the flood alert last night, I evenually got out for a proper walk with Monty around the access trail, and the sun smiled on me! For the whole of MT122 the wind was too strong for very much, but along MT123 it was more sheltered and there were many Diptera and even some Andrena taking advantage of the sun and the shelter.

Not much luck with the hoverfly identification today - I got knocked back by the top guns on my admittedly rather hopeful male Melangyna cincta, but I have no other ideas as to what it might be!

Much further along the trail, on the plum hedge by Great Court I found a female that seemed to have more parallel abdominal bars - maybe this was a genuine Melangyna cincta! Or maybe the males do actually have bars that do sweep forward, and I was right all along.....

A little bit further along the Great Court Hedge I found my first ever Dasysyrphus albostriatus sheltering from the breeze and enjoying the sun. Its turning out to be rather a good day! The oblique pattern of the abdominal bars together with the grey stripes on the top of the thorax and small yellow patches at the rear of the thorax, and the dark stigma on the wings were pretty convincing:

Gosh its wet!

Flood alert this evening with likely heavy bands of rain expected tonight between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m.

The walk around the access trail showed how much the  plants like the weather warm and wet, with the first bush vetch and hedge parsley in flower! The blackbirds and robins were singing lustily in the damp drizzle. Too wet for photography though. 

To the access trail as it starts to rain

It was a bit of a miserable afternoon as I walked over to the circuit, but there were one or two burrowing bees and hoverflies on the dandelions. There were good signs of spring flowers, (tasty) Jack in the Hedge, White and Red Dead Nettle, Lesser Celandine, Lesser Stitchwort, Bluebell, Ground Ivy. 


The weather forecast was a bit poor, and as the first spat of rain arrived in the cold breeze, there was hardly anything moving, just one unidentified bumblebee. 


Anyway, Monty had a good walk! Good birdsong, robins, song thrush, great tit, with black-headed gull and blackbird were seen as well.

RSPB Tudeley car park

Doing my RSPB car-park duty, I found a quiet Andrena male on a hawthorn leaf in the woodland fringe around the car park, and some of the pictures are shown below. At first glance it could have been Andrena nitida, and although it didn't fit the draft Andrena key on the BWARS website, it did fit the Falk book, and I still think that's the right ID.

Note the apparently darker hairs along the inside margin of the eye, which is mentioned in the Falk book. 

 

The characteristics of Andrena nitida include the foxy red thorax hairs, white moustache with some dark hairs, white underside hairs and whitish or pale brown leg hairs, together with the shiny dorsal surface to the abdomen. There was also another individual, possibly of the same species, on one of the branches:

Sunny Cliffe on Good Friday - Eupeodes luniger

Superfast access (but not on BT!)

Yes I meant a superfast visit to the access trail - sadly I was not referring to my broadband access supplied by BT. A very quick visit to the groups of blackthorns along the access trail in cold breezy conditions gave me almost entirely bumblebees today. This Southern Vestal Cuckoo Bumblebee, Bombus vestalis, was clearly demonstrating its habit of holding its wings close together. Its host, Bombus terrestris, always seems to hold its wings significantly further apart, and out an angle, like a fighter jet, and this is generally the quickest way to spot the difference (either that, or the obvious long body and white tail on vestalis usually leads me to my normal snap conclusion).

Eristalis intricarius on the Access Trail

Moving along the outside of the blackthorn alongside the path, on the Hadlow Estate side, seemed to be a good strategy for getting close to the bees and flies on the blossom, without having to kink my neck up too much.

On the second group of blackthorn (including the bunch by the start of the nature trail) I found a decent view of the Yellow Legged Burrowing Bee, Andrena flavipes.

At the third major group of blackthorns there was a suspicious looking bee, and sure enough it turned out to be my first sighting of the bee mimic Eristalis intricarius! I was really pleased to see this at last, and all the features checked out.

The humeri were clearly visible, the upper outer cross-vein was not re-entrant, the R4+5 vein was deeply looped, and the lower and upper outer cross veins were running in a smooth curve more or less continuously parallel to the rear wing margin, so this keyed out at Eristalini.

The two anterior veins R1 and R2+3 are joined into a short common vein before they reach the wing tip, and the scutellum is yellowish or brownish rather than black, so that puts it into the genus Eristalis.

No really obvious central black stripe down face, but maybe a smudgy version of one. The front two legs have partly or wholly dark tarsi, the sides of the thorax are not dusted at all and its obviously furry, very much like a bumblebee. This should make it either Eristalis intricarius or Eristalis anthophorinus. Side of the thorax definitely very black, and squamae possibly a bit darkened, so should be the known UK species Eristalis intricarius as opposed to the European species anthophorinus.

Just to be safe, the basal part of the tibiae is clearly and obviously pale. If the tibiae were dark I should instead have been looking at the other common bumble bee mimic, Merodon equestris, the large bulb fly.

This one was a male, the more variable gender in this species!

On the same group of blackthorns several honeybees, Apis mellifera were working away, easily identified by their hairy eyes.

And then there was I think an Andrena

And then I came across a Southern Vestal Cuckoo Bumblebee, Bombus vestalis.

This is my first bluebell for the year - at the moment the bluebells look as though they are about two weeks ahead of normal years!