I had a quick check of the front-door lights last night and was surprised to find a Flame Carpet moth - Xanthorhoe designata. I do get that here, but normally much later in the year (and we've had frost for 3 nights in a row).
Opened leaves on the Willow attracted my attention and I spotted this minute (5mm) beetle right at the topmost leaf. One of the Staphylinidae, but I'm not going for an id any closer than that.
But the biggest surprise of the year has to be this wonderful damselfly that emerged from my tropical fish tank:
I got some new plants recently, so the nymph must have been on one of those. Realising that many of the tropical specimens come from Asia, I googled asian damselflies and quickly arrived at Ceriagrion cerinorubellum, which is apparently not confused with any other species and ranges from India to Vietnam. So I'll get the specimen off to Dublin for registration as another new species for Ireland.
2 comments:
What a fantastic beast. Hope you mean you're going to send a pic of it, not the damsel itself if that means killing it?!
He's already dead, I'm afraid. Donegal is a bit short on the smaller damsels that they eat.
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