Nomads on the access trail

There was a little bit of sunshine at the end of the afternoon, and the bees and flies made the most of it!

However to start off with there was a nice 7-spot ladybird.

However the first real excitement were a number of nomad flies, the first of which I found in the darkness of the shaw between the pond and the junction on an elm leaf. The bumps on the elm leaf are almost certainly the elm leaf gall Aceria ulmicola (=ulmi).

In addition there was the start of some elm leaf galling, rather like the leaves I saw the other day beyond Hadlow Place Farmhouse.

Then there were several Nomada flying around in the sun by the oak tree at the start of Great Court. I think these two pictures are of the same insect, which is perhaps most likely to be Nomada flava, although it is impossible to be sure:

Of course where there are kleptoparasitic nomad bees, there need to be hosts, and sure enough I found several Andrena solitary mining bees here and further along the plum hedge. the first two pictures are Andrena carantonica (scotica), as ID'd by Eucera:

There were also a few smaller hoverflies. This one is probably a Platycheirus, and it could perhaps be the commonest species, Platycheirus albimanus. 

I think this is a different hoverfly species, although it is difficult to see the pattern on the top of the abdomen. I was pleased with these photos.

Leaf miner on birch

While exploring the area for suitable nightingale habitat for the BTO survey I was over at Hadlow Place in rather cool, breezy and occasionally drizzly conditions. In the avenue of birches between the caravans I came across several leaf miners, all within arms breadth, on the birch leaves. This is a picture of the top surface of one of the leaves showing the mined patch, more or less limited by the midrib and laterally to the main side veins.

One of the mined patches had what looked like a pupal case suspended below the damaged area. When I looked, all the other patches had what looked like a small circular "attachment scar", and I was pretty sure that I was looking at pupal cases, most of which had either dropped off or been removed.

However on looking on the British Leaf Miners website, the best fit was probably Coleophora serratella, which is actually a "cased larva". This became rather clearer when on looking out the specimen from the bottom of the camera case a few days later, the larva took off moving quite quickly, using its head (and front legs?) to move across paper and plastic very effectively, holding the case at about 45 degrees from the horizontal.  This is a picture of the cased larva in situ, again with the case at more or less the same angle. This is the second stage of the larval case. When this larva pupates, it does so in the larval case, but on the upper surface of the leaf, and in May.

In this cropped picture the darker area is the body of the larva, I think. The yellowish brown colour of the case fits with the published description, on the UK moths website. I think it isn't not dark enough to be C. milvipennis, one of the other species found on birch.

Aspen flea beetles

I managed to get a few blurry photos of the tiny metallic beetles on the aspen stand by the Victoria Road entrance to the access trail this evening. I tentatively identified them as Phratora, a genus of leaf beetles, but Christian correctly identified them as Crepidodora species, a genus of flea beetles.

I wonder if the photograph above may be showing a male?

Crepidodera does seem to fit well the longitudinal striae of punctures on the elytra, the orange legs and antennae and the swollen hind femurs adapted for jumping. The host plant and the overall appearance would tend to point me towards Crepidodera aurea perhaps, but I would really need a specimen to get a reasonable ID. 

Work in the Czech Republic indicates that aspen is the preferred host, and that sweeping does catch most beetles in the evening as opposed to at midday - they may be nocturnal. The adults are thought to hibernate in the soil or leaf litter, and emerge in April/May. They then feed and reproduce, and new adults emerge from the soil again in mid summer, causing more damage towards the end of the growing season, or hibernate through until the following year. Males predominated first, then females, then males again. 

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.