Extra high pressure

A second consecutive day of blue sky was a bit unexpected: the forecast was cloudy with showers! I think I remember that in the olden days (pre-warming) we could rely on weather forecasts for about a week ahead. Nowadays, it seems they can't even get it right for the next 24 hours. I rather suspect the computer models that they use to make forecasts no longer work now that we have warming.

Still, making hay.....

I went down to the local river, where Wild Garlic and Bluebells make the first appearance. A few heads of garlic were in evidence:

Flowers of Wild Garlic - Allium ursinum

And a single Bluebell plant had started to open:

Bluebell flowers just opening

 I also caught a few shots of hoverflies. First of the smaller species is usually Melanostoma scalare:

The hoverfly Melanostoma scalare (male)

I always think that if you were hoverfly-sized, then a flower must be a wonderful place to explore, rest and feed.

Syrphus hoverfly species are a little bit earlier this year:

Syrphus sp. hoverfly (female)

There were a great many craneflies in the air. This female (long, pointed abdomen) stopped long enough for a shot:

Female Cranefly

The larvae of craneflies are the 'leatherjackets' that eat the roots of grasses and make empty patches on lawns.

As I'm writing this, we appear to be heading for a third consecutive day of blue sky, so I'm off out again.

Three for the price of one

As part of the research that I'm currently carrying out on the eggs and larvae from Soft Rush (click here for a recap), I continue to examine specimens in quite a bit of detail. Yesterday I found what is clearly a minute leafhopper covered with a fine white web:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

My mind immediately leapt to an Entomophthora-type fungus that has killed the leafhopper. A bit of research shows that there is a single fungus - Entomophthora petchii - that kills various members of this huge family of bugs, but at this stage I had no idea which leafhopper I was looking at, or even which stage of the lifecycle it had reached when it was killed (nymph? adult?). A few features need examination: those dotted wing covers seem to be small and incompletely formed. This could suggest a nymph - since bugs all go through various nymph stages (instars) before reaching adulthood, or it might be one of the brachypterous species, where specimens can reach adulthood with either incomplete wings or fully winged. Size is also an issue: this hopper is only 4mm from nose to tail.

I took shots from various angles:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

And eventually found Conomelus anceps on the brilliant UK bugs website:  http://www.britishbugs.org.uk It turns out this is a Juncus feeder, and is quite common, but I've never seen it before, so that's one new species for me. I had also never previously identified the bug-killing fungus Entomophthora petchii, although I've certainly seen leafhoppers killed by a fungus. So that's two new species for my list.

I then decided to check previous records of Entomophthora petchii and found that there are only four existing records in the BI fungal database: all from Yorkshire (Helmsley, Pocklington, Leeds, Holmfirth) (and recorded under Zoophthora petchii), so I have moved the distribution map for this species quite some way to the west. First Irish record.

So one sample has led to three new records: two for my species list and one for Ireland:

Conomelus anceps killed by Entomophthora petchii on Juncus effusus

March and April have both been very variable in terms of weather, with very hot sunshine interspersed with long periods of rain or hail. The early heat has brought out various hoverflies much earlier than usual: this is Helophilus pendulus, which I regard as a summer species:

Helophilus pendulus

And this is a Syrphus:

Syrphus sp. hoverfly

The standard reference says "April onwards", for these two species, but I've certainly never seen them this early.

Post edited to tighten up naming (leafhopper).

TV filming

I just spent the last two days filming for a new TV program. Filming involves a lot of walking, talking, real photography and pretend photography. I took 650 shots, and have about 45 keepers, with around 15 to show. I'll break them down over the next couple of days, hoverflies first.

In no particular order we have:

Epistrophe grossulariae:

Leucozona glaucia:

Syrphus sp. (female)