Flat to the mat

Everything is now progressing at full speed: I saw the first House Martins last week and Swallows will be around in the next day or two.

A few trees are in leaf, with Willow leading the way as usual:

Willow leaves

Hawthorn wasn't far behind, and hedges are now greening up very nicely:

Hawthorn leaves

Notice that the leaves are all in pristine condition. That won't last long once the caterpillars and leaf-miners wake up and start feeding. This synchronisation between insect and foodplant is very well illustrated by the Beech leaf-miner Orchestes fagi: the instant the Beech leaves unfurl, the female weevil lays her eggs on the central vein of the leaf and the miner starts to tunnel towards the leaf margin. A few days later, the mine is complete and the next generation flies off to start the cycle all over again. The synchronisation in this association between two species is critical, since the leaf is only soft enough to eat for the first few days after opening: after that it's too tough. Keep an eye on Beech trees towards the end of the month and you should see the mines within a couple of days of the leaves appearing.

A few flowering plants are now producing flowers more or less all year round and are in flower alongside the spring-flowering species. I suppose we are now warm enough for hardy species to keep going through milder winters. This specimen of Red Dead-nettle has survived the few cold nights and has plenty of flowers already:

Red Dead-nettle

Other flowers that have survived continuously include Herb Robert, Sowthistle, Smooth Hawksbeard, Dandelion, Daisy and Bush Vetch. All of these are currently in flower here.

 
Other species are showing when conditions are right. This specimen of Dark-lipped Banded Snail is one of many colour variants of this common species:

Dark-lipped Banded Snail

I'll show other variants as and when they appear.

I'm always intrigued by the intense colours that can sometimes appear and then seemingly vanish without trace. This Daisy has an intense purple pigment to the tips of the petals, but the fully open flower will be more or less pure white:

Daisy bud, showing the purple petal tips

I suppose there is a fixed amount of pigment that is eventually shared over a larger area. Some fungi show exactly the same effect, getting paler as they mature.

More sun: more flowers

Yesterday was bright and warm, so the spring flowers responded appropriately. Wood Sorrel appeared during the day:

Wood Sorrel

And Barren Strawberry started to open just as the sun was going down. It opened fully today in hazy sun:

Barren Strawberry

Barren Strawberry can be separated from the Wild Strawberry by the little notches in the outside of the petals, plus the bluish cast to the leaves, and the fact that the final tooth in each leaf is shorter than its neighbours:

Leaf of Barren Strawberry

During a school foray today, one of the students called me over to look at some slugs and snails that she had found. It was clear to me that I had never seen some of them before. It turns out that the large slug is the Irish Yellow Slug - Limacus maculatus - which was originally thought to be endemic to Ireland, but it originated from the Crimea, spreading from Ireland to England only late in the 20th century:

Limacus maculatus (right) and Oxychilus cellarius (left)

The small snail to the left is the Cellar Snail - Oxychilus cellarius. Both new to my Species List.

We have lift-off

This is the second day of sunshine and everything has leapt into action.

Along the sheltered ditch I found:

Lesser Celandine:

Lesser Celandine

Coltsfoot:

Coltsfoot

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage:

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage covers the rear wall of ditches and wet banks around here. Here's a habit shot from the back wall of the stream:

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage on the ditch wall

I also checked the Greater Stitchwort plants just a little further along, but they're still pretending to be blades of grass:

Leaves of Greater Stitchwort

I also hunted for 7-spot ladybirds along the sunnier side of the track and found this single specimen just before the end:

7-spot Ladybird

Back home and I spotted this female Eristalis tenax hoverfly on Dandelion:

Female Eristalis tenax nectaring after emerging from hibernation

Females of Eristalis tenax are the only members of the family to hibernate. Other Eristalis species overwinter as pupae and won't emerge for a few weeks yet. So although the puparium will offer some protection from the cold, the female E. tenax has survived the exposure and now has a head start on getting her eggs laid.

High pressure at last

The seemingly endless cycle of low-pressure weather systems appears to have ended, and we currently have a high-pressure area coming up from the south. This will bring sunnier days and colder nights, but that's a vast improvement on the rain we've had since November.

The relative heat brought out a fresh Dandelion, although they seem to be in flower all year round nowadays:

Dandelion

We have quite a few Buzzards in the local area, and I see some most days. Now that the next-door Rooks are nest-building, the Buzzards like to survey the rookery, presumably planning future raids. I heard this one calling to its mate and got a quick shot (with macro lens!) as it flew overhead:

Buzzard

They usually fly in pairs, although later in the year we can see whole family groups flying when the youngsters are being trained up.

Work on my Donegal Wildlife database is continuing at a reasonable pace, with perhaps 400 of my 1550 species in place at this stage. It's certainly worth a look, although there are still some broken links and blank pages. You can find it here: http://donegalwildlife.altervista.org/ 

The 'News' section at the top left of the home page is always kept up to date with the latest entries.

Feedback is always welcome, whether it's here or on the guestbook page on the database.

Gap in the rain

I decided that enough was enough and went out to look for some Celandine. The most likely local location is near a sheltered stream, and sure enough, the first buds were just visible:

Lesser Celandine bud

The ditch is also home to a wide range of liverworts, mosses and ferns, but they will keep for a few weeks.

I did, however, spot this Scarlet Elf Cup - Sarcoscypha austriaca - just beside some Celandines:

Sarcoscypha austriaca - Scarlet Elf Cup

It seemed strangely out of season, but the Fungal Records Database shows that spring sightings are quite common..

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage is also ready to flower:

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage

Just a reminder that my new database is up and running, with around 20% of my species illustrated. You can find it at donegalwildlife.altervista.org

Late news.

On 2nd July 2010, I showed a photograph of what I thought was a sawfly larva. Turns out it's the caterpillar of the wonderfully-named micromoth Schreckensteinia festaliella. Thanks to Linsepatron of Denmark for that.

A touch of sun

We're having a dry sunny day, so I popped out to see what I could see.

First Willow I checked was covered in new catkins:

Willow catkins

As soon as they open fully, hoverflies and bees will magically appear for the pollen and nectar.

I also spotted this absolutely minute orb spider working on a tiny web. It must know something that we don't:

Orb spider on web

I have been working very intensely on the new wildlife database, and have some 300 species loaded so far.

If you want an early look, you can find it here:

http://donegalwildlife.altervista.org/

Warning: there are many broken links, dead-ends and incomplete pages, but I think it's time to get feedback from a wider audience. The taxonomic tree is available for all species, but very few common names have been linked so far. A major feature is the ability to follow links between associated species. There are around 600 such links in place at the moment. This is a major breakthrough, showing the complexity and interlinked nature of our wildlife.

Feedback can be added here or in the guestbook on the new site. Have a look and let me know what you think.

Background work

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have started work on my Donegal Wildlife database, and I now have around 200 of my 1500+ species in place. The structure of the database has changed a little due to feedback and also due to my experiences putting the site together, and the work (which effectively summarises over 11 years of recording) has taught me a few things:

1) I have a lot of photographs
2) Over the years I have progressed quite a bit and I can now identify species that I couldn't identify previously. This means that some of my old 'unidentified slug' pictures can now get a name. The by-product of this is that I'm actually increasing the number of species in my work, so my species total has increased without me leaving the study.
3) I'm now understanding taxonomy more clearly than I had before.
4) Some species had slipped through the net and although they were documented, they were missing from the species list. So again, my species list has grown a bit. (The obscure side-effect of this is that I can start working on the project, add a few species and then discover that I still have a higher number of species to add than I started with.)
5) Some of the formal names for species have changed in the past 11 years. This is to be expected as we find out more and more about how species are related, but it means that this kind of work will need to be updated on a fairly regular basis.
6) I still haven't decided how to document unnamed hybrids (thinking of Willows and Dactyls particularly, here).
7) Google takes around 10 days to reach a site once it has been informed that it exists.
8) I still have huge gaps in my coverage, especially in relation to spiders, bugs and beetles.

I now have a dilemma: I feel the strong urge to share what I have done so far with a much wider audience, but I am acutely aware that I'm only 13% through the work, so there are still many more gaps and blind links than entries. So far I have 'completed' butterflies, mosses, sawflies, bees, wasps, leafminers and molluscs, and made a start on trees, flowering plants, animals, birds, fungi and moths, with a scattering of other partially-completed groups. Groups not yet started include flies, beetles and lichens.

Access methods include:

1) Deciduous Woodland (as an example of "search by habitat")
2) Common names in groupings (e.g. Butterflies, Sawflies, Leafminers, Fungi)
3) Taxonomic tree, which is complete for every entered species, since that is how the species are stored in the database.

There is also a text search, which lags about 10 days, so that it isn't fully useful during the development (but will be extremely useful when the site is stable). And finally, there is a 'random page' button that takes you to a err...random species in the website.

The website also contains a guest book for comments and a working forum to discuss the site and wildlife in general.

Please use the comment facility on this blog to let me know what you want, and I'll decide how to proceed based on that.