The oak trunk turns up trumps

It was just a little bit warmer this afternoon, and there were a few more insects out. There were quite a few things basking and exploring on the trunk of the aspen tree just by the access path, including this noon fly, Mesembrina meridiana. Note the shiny thorax and yellow feet as well as the orange wing patches.

A bit further along there were insects on the hedge parsley as well, starting with this male Epistrophe eligans. I have now seen several of this species around the access trail, as well as my first one at RSPB Tudeley car park at the start of April.

and this is probably Eupeodes luniger, the commonest of a number of very similar species.

Next I found an oak apple type gall, that had developed on the tip of a twig:

and there were a lot of insects on the oak tree trunk - this has finally come up trumps! Most obvious were several common wasps, Vespula vulgaris, wandering over the rough surface.

and here he or she is, highly magnified, disappearing underneath a ledge of bark!

And then his or her head appeared from under the other side of the bark scale:

This photo was taken a little later, and might, or might not, be the same insect.

There were also some small Andrena bees. There were several insects, perhaps not of all the same species. This is a better than usual sideways view of one of the individual bees, a male I assume (all the insects I saw were I think males).  White moustache, whitish hairs under reddish hairs on the thorax, slightly shiny back to the front sections of the abdomen. Silvery orange hairs on the legs, a bit variable. The other pictures show more or less the same features, from different angles.

And here was this rather smart fly, a bit like a blowfly.

and this other familiar fly with an orange abdomen. According to Ophrys this could be Phaonia subventa a common fly, as suggested by its wing venation and colour pattern. How lucky I am to be able to use ispot!

and finally my second sighting of an Eristalis intricarius. Would it be fanciful to think it might be the same individual of a few weeks ago, perhaps having changed colour over the intervening period?

Just shows what a little sunshine can do!

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).