Linyphiid spider Tenuiphantes cristatus

I have come to realise that before jumping into the complexities of spider palps there's a lot of benefit to be had from looking at the pedipalp . This pattern of spines on this species is very easy to pick out, although the cymbium itself is quite an easy one with its crest

Water beetles

Surprisingly, given the amount of different water habitats at Cullaloe and an invertebrate survey having been done, there are not many records of aquatic beetles from Cullaloe. Only one diving beetle (The Great DB) and 2 Hydrophilidae (Water scavenger beetles).

Finally I pulled out from the cupboard a diving beetle found in a bucket last year which was a new diving beetle for the reserve, the fairly common Rhantus exsoletus, notable for its yellow underside.

Hopefully we can lift that total this season as the reserve beetle total is still only 77

Hazel

Hazel flowers are out and also this ...

Striped Ladybird etc.

A good day at the weekend saw a number of new species added in less than an hour! First a hawthorn twig gave up a couple of species of fungi, with this nice Melanomma - a pyrenomycete.

and then on finding an old ash tree with some fallen branches the ash specialist fungus Peniophora limitata - a nice easy species in the field with its purpley-grey colour and dark boundaries.

last but by no means least a new ladybird for the reserve dropped out of the neighbours' fir trees that overhang the reserve at the cottage - Striped ladybird

Porpidia crustulata at Cullaloe

A nice decoration to some exposed stones in the mossy barrens and on the path. There seems to be no surface of any kind that something won't cling to and spurt out its spores. It's a wonder we can breathe at all!

Beetling about

A bit of a change of pace was a new beetle for the reserve - species #75. A very common, ubiquitous even, species of leaf beetle which nevertheless wasn't recorded at Cullaloe - Chrysolina staphylaea

New tenants and Lonchoptera bifurcata

Cullaloe has some new tenants - though only a few.

This fly, species previously known in Fife only from Dumbarnie Links and Tentsmuir, was hanging about in Gorse in January

January roundup

So a very decent start to the year saw me successfully resist the temptation to full on listing and focus on new species. 25 new species were added to the catalgoue. Most of these were new and most fungal, but some were roundups from previous records through Fife Nature (especially springtails, oddly) and one re-determination via iRecord added Sloe Shieldbug (making T.Bantock another new contributor to the Cullaloe story - many thanks!)

The latest additions on the 31st were the lichens Hypotrachyna revoluta and Cladonia digitata. Sadly since I found the first record for Fife about a week before somewhere else I robbed the reserve of a medal! It's nice though

This means the lichen total slowly edges towards 50 and semi-respectability. Double that ought to be more like the final tally though.