Warming up

It was 15C today (that's 59F in old money), so I was quite hopeful that I might find some activity. A loud buzzing led me to a queen Bombus lucorum that was scanning that back wall of a ditch, looking for a nesting spot:

Queen Bombus lucorum searching for a nesting spot

I had already seen a queen B. terrestris earlier in the week, but couldn't get a shot, since they move pretty quickly. I would certainly expect to see B. terrestris a lot earlier than B. lucorum, so this one was a bit of a surprise. I also saw another B. terrestris in my garden late yesterday afternoon, so they're clearly out and about.

Now that I'm doing the 1k square challenge, I'm looking even more closely at everything. I noticed that a specimen of Soft Shield Fern had some brown blotches on the upper surface and suspected that something was going on. I turned the frond over and found the feeding signs and pupal case of the micromoth Psychoides filicivora:

Larval case of Psychoides filicivora (centre)

The larva eats the sori (spore-bearing containers), leaving the distinctive brown blotches (to the right and top of the image) and then makes a shelter (centre) where it pupates. The adult emerges in May. Psychoides filicivora was discovered in Dublin in 1909, and has now spread throughout the island. It is thought to have arrived on ferns brought in from other countries, and has now been found in coastal areas in England and Wales. The literature states that it is known from Soft Shield Fern, Male Fern and Hartstongue Fern, but in Ireland it can also frequently be found on Polypodium. I examined a few fronds and, sure enough, I found this specimen: 

Psychoides filicivora on Polypody

I'll have to inform the references to get them updated.

A couple of flowers have opened in the last week:

Primrose, which is probably 2-3 weeks behind the usual schedule:

Primroses

And Coltsfoot which is at least a month late in flowering:

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot is a little unusual, in that the flowers appear before the leaves. That means that the energy used to produce the flowers comes from last year's growth, and must be stored in the root system. There must be a good reason for that odd behaviour, but I can't immediately think of a beneficial one.

The 1k challenge has now reached 258 species. You can see the list here.

Plan C

En-route to my chosen photography spot (plan A) for today we got stuck behind a slow-moving tractor, so I chose an alternative location. When we arrived there our usual parking spot (plan B) was occupied, so we moved on to location 3 (plan C). It seemed that we were destined to find something special, and so it turned out: two new species for me, one of them a first county record.

Psychoides filicivora is a micromoth that eats the spore-bearing sori of ferns, primarily Male Fern. The larva gathers the contents of the sori and constructs a shelter from them. The shelter is the brown spore mass to the left of the midrib below. You can see where the sori have been removed from the frond to the right of the midrib:

Psychoides filicivora was first discovered in Ireland in 1909 and has moved to western Wales and England, mostly in coastal areas.

My second new discovery was the macromoth Haworth's Minor, which is usually found on Ragwort if the moth is out before dark. This is a very local species which feeds on Cotton Grass as a larva. As it happens, the nearest Cotton Grass is close to plan B where we normally park the car, perhaps 500 m. away.

I also got a rather nice shot of this Ichneumonid just as it landed. Notice the black stigma on the wing, which is a rather good diagnostic for Ichneumonids.

Sneezewort is also very local: I only ever see it in a couple of very small patches:
Finally, we can see that autumn is rolling in. These are the seeds of Common Sedge: