Bioblitz!

Last Saturday saw Bioblitz 2013 in Ireland: 4 locations competed to see which could record the highest number of species in 24 hours. The full story is at http://bioblitz.biodiversityireland.ie/

I was at Colebrook where we recorded 1086 species to top the list. My specialist areas were leaf-miners, micro-fungi and hoverflies, but most of us recorded whatever we saw during the day. I didn't manage to photograph everything I recorded, but this post contains some of the more interesting images.

Since I was 'doing' miners, I headed directly for the main wooded area and immediately found many mines of the weevil Orchestes fagi:

Mine of the weevil Orchestes fagi

A couple of things are worth noting about this miner. First, the leaves of beech trees have only been open for around a week, and the mine has already completed. The larva can only eat fresh leaves (when they are very soft) so no time is wasted when the leaves are unfurling. Second, most of our leaf mines belong to moths or flies, with a few sawflies making up the numbers: there are very few beetles that make mines. Finally, miners that make corridor mines (like the first part of this mine) are severely limited in size by the width of the mine and thickness of the leaf. Species that make blotches (like the final part of this mine) can grow to much larger sizes as larvae, and hence result in larger adults. Having said that, the adult weevil is only 3 mm. long.

Staying with weevils, here are two shots of another weevil: Phyllobus glaucus:

The weevil Phyllobus glaucus

The weevil Phyllobus glaucus

This is a feeder on broadleaf trees, usually near water. Thanks to Malcolm Storey for the id on that one. New to my species list.

While I was near the river, I also recorded a few microfungi on grasses and leaves, although nothing new to me.

I also found this stonefly, which appears to be one of the Perlodidae, but I don't have a key to get it any closer:

Adult Stonefly

Stoneflies are always found close to water, since the larvae are aquatic.

Another very fruitful area was the marshy area further along the river. This was a wonderful environment with dappled sunlight filtering down to an old pond. The fringe was surrounded by Marsh Marigolds:

Marsh Marigolds

And Skunk Cabbage, which is an escape:

Skunk Cabbage

Each of the plants is around 1 m. across.

New to my Species List.

Further in, I found the Green Tortoise Beetle, Cassida viridis:

Green Tortoise Beetle - Cassida viridis

The Cassida family of beetles are paranoid about safety: the larvae carry an 'umbrella' of dead skin and dung to ward off predators, the adults are 'stealth'-shaped in order to avoid casting shadows, and when they are flat to a leaf, present nothing for a predator to grasp.

New to my Species List.

The hoverfly Rhingia campestris has a tongue which folds and unfolds in a zig-zag fashion. When not in use, it stores it in the projection in front of its face:

The hoverfly Rhingia campestris

Solitary mining bees are very busy at the moment, stocking up pollen to feed their larvae. There are many species of Andrena, and this seems to be Andrena haemorrhoa, although it shows similarities to a couple of Andrena species that haven't previously been recorded from Ireland.

Andrena haemorrhoa mining bee

This Empid Fly had captured a specimen of Bibio marci:

Empid with Bibio marci as prey

Bibio sp. are known as St Mark's Flies because they normally emerge around April 28th. They are a month late this year.

Syrphus sp. hoverflies can be difficult to separate without a magnifying glass. This male has hairy eyes, which makes it safe to call it Syrphus torvus:

The hoverfly Syrphus torvus

One sunny day

This year seems to be following the pattern of the previous two: once the frost is gone, we enter a period of extended rain and showers that lasts all the way through May and beyond. Any days with sunshine, therefore, are both welcomed by me and utilised fully by insects.

I have seen a couple of white butterflies on verges as I drove along, but this is the first that has settled long enough for a photograph. It's a male Green-veined White: the females have more spots which are also more pronounced.

Male Green-veined White

This is the first of this year's spring butterflies. These Green-veined Whites will have at least one further generation in July, and maybe another one later in September, but I rather suspect this will be a two-brood year given the lateness of the first. Just to keep things amusing, the second generation have more pronounced markings, with second generation males looking quite like first generation females....

The Speckled Wood is also rather late this year:

Speckled Wood butterfly

This is another butterfly that can have three generations per year.

Here's the underside:

Speckled Wood - underside

A couple of years ago, I was photographing fungi in September, and a Speckled Wood landed beside me on some fallen leaves. I turned to reach for the camera and when I turned back I couldn't see it, although I knew exactly where it was. It took me a good 10-15 seconds to see through the camouflage and get the shot.

Most of the 'regular' hoverflies are now present, although still in quite small numbers. This is the extremely common Melanostoma scalare, probably my most frequently-encountered hoverfly:

Female hoverfly - Melanostoma scalare

I still haven't seen a single Orange Tip butterfly this year. Last year I reported that someone had very carefully gathered every single specimen of Cardamine pratensis on the patch and left them in a pretty little 'posy' at the end of the hedgerow. I suspect the entire local population was wiped out at that time. I'm hoping that some mated female finds the couple of flowers that have opened this year and restarts them. The simplest act can have the most devastating effect.

Heat at last

We had a couple of warm days and suddenly everything is moving.

Solitary bees dig private tunnels in soil where they lay their own eggs and bring back pollen to a store which will feed the larvae when they hatch. These nests are often grouped in 'aggregations' of tunnels where the situation is favourable, but each individual tunnel remains self-sufficient. The largest family is Andrena, where the females can often resemble small bumblebees. My favourite is Andrena cineraria, where the female appears to be wearing a Barbarians rugby jersey:

Female Andrena cineraria gathering pollen

Once the pollen has been gathered, the female will seal the tunnel and the larvae will hatch, eat the pollen, pupate and then hibernate until next spring. The species with the shortest season is Andrena clarkella, which feeds exclusively on Willow pollen, and most nests will already be sealed: this is a bee that can be seen for perhaps 50-60 days each year.

Staying with Dandelions, I spotted this 14-spot ladybird in the precise centre of one. this will give a good idea of scale:

14-spot ladybird on Dandelion

And an intriguing shot of an aberrant Dandelion:

Aberrant Dandelion

Dandelions belong to the Compositae, which includes Thistles, Daisies, Knapweed, etc. Each 'flower' is actually a composite collection of individual flowers, some of which are Ray florets (the outer ones), and an inner group of Disc florets. This specimen appears to have dispensed not only with disc florets, but also with the reproductive parts of the ray florets. I rather suspect that this is a genetic experiment that is doomed to be unfit for survival. All flowers on the same plant were identical.

The following shot shows just how late this year has become. I normally see Greater Stitchwort in late March, but this specimen is at least 6 weeks behind the usual date:

Greater Stitchwort

Lady's Mantle has a habit of not being there one day, and then being fully opened the next. When I was down taking a shot of the lovely folding leaves, I noticed a couple of other leaves waiting to be discovered:

a) Lady's Mantle b) Meadowsweet c) Meadow Buttercup

Flowers of the Lady's Mantle are at the lower left.

I wasn't expecting to see too many fungi at this time of year, but I found a couple of very old Polyporus badius on dead Snowberry:

Polyporus badius

And a couple of specimens of a Psathyrella which I think is Psathyrella spadiceogrisea. I'll do some microscopic work on these once the spores have been gathered:

Psathyrella cf. spadiceogrisea

Yesterday, I saw 3 species of butterfly in the garden. There were perhaps half a dozen Small tortoiseshells, a single Green-veined White and late on, a single Speckled Wood.

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

The Green-veined White and Speckled Wood are this year's first butterflies, whereas the Small Tortoiseshells are actually last year's autumn brood which have emerged from hibernation. Orange Tip has to be next, since the Cardamine is out.

Bilberry has flowered, so perhaps we might see a Green Hairstreak or two in the next week or so:

Bilberry flowers

I was a little surprised to find Field Woodrush on the patch. I normally see Heath Woodrush, and maybe I have been ignoring these smaller specimens. One major clue to identification is the pale 'blob' at the end of each leaf:

Field Woodrush - Luzula campestris

Lastly for today, a few specimens of Green Alkanet were spotted on a verge at the side of a remote road:

Green Alkanet

These are garden escapes, but I cannot imagine anyone taking their garden refuse for such a distance in order to dump it. Maybe bird-sown.

The season progresses

It's very interesting that at the very time when I'm photographing queen bumblebees, the EU has been trying to decide whether or not to ban or curb the use of neonicotinoid based insecticides. The most recent vote was indecisive, with UK voting against a ban and Ireland abstaining. But despite those disappointing votes, a two year ban has been implemented. I'd say the trial ban with a review in a couple of years certainly won't further damage the chances of our bees (and hoverflies!) surviving. It will, however, damage the profits of large, wealthy (and hence influential) producers, so I can guess where the pressure is coming from. Sooner or later we will all wake up and realise that we haven't got any food because the pollinators are all dead. 

The fourth of my queen bumblebees of the year is Bombus pascuorum:

Queen Bombus pascuorum - Common Carder Bumblebee

These are among the later of our local bumblebees to emerge, after B. lucorum s.l., B. terrestris and B. pratorum. I rarely see the queens of B. pascuorum, whilst it is relatively common to see the other queens hunting along hedgerows looking for a nesting spot. This is probably due to the fact that B. pascuorum is a surface-nesting species and the queen can therefore choose her nesting-spot relatively quickly.

The s.l. (sensu lato) after Bombus lucorum indicates that this is actually a complex of at least 3 species: B. lucorum, B. magnus and B. cryptarum. These three species are extremely difficult to separate when looking at anything other than queens. It seems that B. cryptarum is an upland, western species, B. magnus appears to prefer heathland and B. lucorum s.s. (sensu stricto) is a lowland species.


The reference is:

Niche differentiation of a cryptic bumblebee complex in the Western Isles of Scotland
JOE WATERS, BEN DARVILL, GILLIAN C. LYE and DAVE GOULSON School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, UK

I managed to get a shot of a queen 'lucorum' this morning:

Bombus cryptarum queen nectaring (empty pollen baskets)

My local specimens of the lucorum complex all seem to be B. cryptarum, since they always show the distinctive thin line through the collar as indicated in this close-up:

Bombus cryptarum queen, showing the thin line through the yellow collar

That's how I'm recording them for the moment, anyway.

The 1k challenge is making me look much more closely at almost every specimen I see, and today I thought I  had found a new snail:

Cepaea nemoralis - Dark-lipped Banded Snail

So I keyed it out (height = width, > 8mm., no umbilicus, dark lip round aperture) and it turns out to be a common colour variant of the Dark-lipped Banded Snail - Cepaea nemoralis, which I've had before.

I took a few other shots, including this face shot, which shows the stalked eyes rather well:

Cepaea nemoralis, showing eyes

Preferred habitat is moist vegetation in cooler areas.

Going back to my initial moan about pesticides, I'm pretty sure that politicians are the wrong people to handle environmental issues: they are driven by short-term votes rather than thinking about longer-term issues. Is there some body or mechanism that can act outside government? If not, I fear that our wildlife is doomed to be a perpetually low priority.

A bit warmer

We had a couple of weeks when the wind was blowing from the east, and I agree that it's "fit for neither man nor beast". I reckon nothing happened in wildlife terms during that period, so I'd say we are currently running about 4 weeks behind what I have come to expect on the patch. Now that we have reverted to the prevailing westerlies, we have to dodge the rain showers. Ho hum.

Now that Willow catkins have opened, a few insects have started to pollinate. This hoverfly is Parasyrphus punctulatus:

The hoverfly Parasyrphus punctulatus

Parasyrphus punctulatus is one of the earliest hoverflies to be found, although I rarely find it in large numbers. The main identification features are the semicircular yellow markings on the abdomen, which are strangely described in the standard reference as 'hemispherical'.

I have seen plenty of queen bumblebees searching for a place to nest - both Bombus terrestris and Bombus lucorum - seemingly in larger numbers than I have seen before. Perhaps the searching season has been compressed by the weather. I first found Bombus pratorum - the Early Nesting Bumblebee - in a fairly wild area in 2006, but I have seen several workers appearing on the hedgerow in the last few years: apparently it is becoming increasing urbanised due to the removal or loss of its usual habitat.

I found this queen - one of two queens that I have seen for the first time this year - crawling slowly around, so I suspect she had just emerged, since she is shiny clean.

Queen Bombus pratorum

Bombus pratorum is one of our smaller bumblebees, with queens the size of the workers of larger species and workers not much larger than a pea. Identification of the queen is based on size, the orange/red tail and the two-tone yellow bands on thorax and abdomen. You can see the worker here, and the male here.

A couple of moths came to light. The micros were worn beyond identification, but the March Moth is always very easy to identify due to the very triangular shape of the wings at rest:

March Moth

This is a good 6 weeks later than I normally see.

A few more flowers have opened, the most notable being Common Fumitory:

Common Fumitory

The Fumitory family (which is large and complex) gets its name from the glaucus ('smoky') colour of the leaves.

The 1k square challenge list now sits at 295 species. The list can be seen here.

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.

Season under way

When I woke up this morning and saw the clear blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon, I knew that today was the day for the season to start. I waited until mid-day before I ventured forth, since insects need time to emerge, inflate and dry their wings and have a few test flights before they start nectaring, not to mention a decent temperature to support flight.


The first specimen I saw was a female Eristalis tenax, which was entirely expected (see my earlier post here). She was on a Dandelion, which flowers for 12 months around here:

Female Eristalis tenax on Dandelion

I chose that shot because it shows the very wide dark facial stripe.

I went to a sunny bank where the Celandines are in full bloom and quickly found a male Platycheirus albimanus, also on Dandelion:  

Male Platycheirus albimanus on Dandelion

I noticed that this close-up shot shows one of the conclusive identification features: a clump of thick, dark bristles under the front leg, near the top:

Male Platycheirus albimanus, showing dark tuft of hairs

Although this isn't the earliest I have seen this species (last year I saw it on March 27th), it is a good indicator that we're catching up at last.

Fungal rusts are usually specific to one family of plants, although some are unique to species. This is Puccinia umbilici on Navelwort - Umbilicus rupestris:

The fungal rust Puccinia umbilici on Navelwort

Notice how fresh the Navelwort leaf is: rusts don't waste any time.

I suppose I should clarify my 'specific to one family of plants' statement. Fungal rusts very often have two hosts which are completely unrelated. This odd situation arises because fungi need somewhere to exist when the primary host loses its annual growth (perennial) or dies altogether (annual). So they tend to live on one host in the summer months before transferring to their overwintering host. The most extreme example I know of locally is Puccinia sessilis which spends the summer on members of the Allium family (in my case on Ramsons), but overwinters on Canary Reed-grass, which I don't have locally. The airborne spores must therefore travel many miles to ensure their overwintering survival. The detail is even more complex, since the fungi have different parts of their reproductive cycles on differing hosts. Sometimes I begin to wonder if these travelling rusts are actually an amalgam of two species. The more I study wildlife, the more complex it becomes.

Finally for today, a shot of the fungus Milesina scolopendrii on Hartstongue fern:

Milesina scolopendrii on Hart's-tongue Fern

This one doesn't need an alternate host, since the fern is evergreen, but as an example of perversity, complexity and downright confusion, other members of the Milesina family (which all infect different ferns) rely on Pine trees as an alternate host.