Cassida flaveola, Pale Tortoise Beetle, new to Fife from Cullaloe

 With the weather cool and threatening rain (and windy...) I went to Cullaloe anyway and decided to sieve even more of the grass pile of wonder. Most of what fell into the tray was of the ho-hum, would-have-been-pleased-to-see-you-in-January variety but one little translucent disc caught my eye, thankfully.

I have recorded the larger, greener Cassida rubiginosa on the reserve, and this is quite noticeably a different thing. It likes Caryophlyll ... Carophylea ... probably Red Campion.

2021 Beetle #87

What stinks and sounds like a bell?

Dung!

An attempt to prod around some sheep poo yesterday turned up numbers of Aphodius sphacelatus, one of which was retrieved from a bucket of water before the rest emerged from gathered poo. Only other thing I had was a small staph, as yet undetermined. And this Tachyporus, which I shamefully forgot because I potted it in the field.

2021 Beetle #82 - Aphodius sphacelatus

2021 Beetle #83 - Tachyporus nitidulus

male, gendetted

Beetle #81

Another win for the grass pile. New to me and the reserve. With the reserve total on 185 we're slowly creeping towards a not-horrible 200. The aim, though is to be about 100 north of that by end of play. 48 of the existing tally is already Staphylinidae.

2021 Beetle #81 - Hygrohypnus angustatus

80 beetles and Lithocharis nigriceps new to me/reserve/county

2021 Beetle #79 - Pterostichus madidus

not photographed because I thought I surely must have already recorded it!

2021 Beetle #80 - Lithocharis nigriceps

As per the species account in the book - - in a (the) pile of grass cuttings

Beetle additions - 76 & 77

Still from the 2nd, a Catops from fish-baited pitfall trap and another staph from the Land O' Tussocks. The Philonthus is known from here according to my field guide marginal notes, but wasn't actually on the list. There were no Catops on the list, despite discovering a new species of fungus for Scotland on an unidentified one a couple of years back!

2021 Beetle #76 - Catops tristis 

2021 Beetle #77 - Philonthus laminatus

Big and shiny

More spots

A species I always go looking for when the nights get milder. Can almost always find one after head-torching a few tree trunks

2021 beetle #66, Dromius quadrimaculatus

Already listed, but amazing to see the Triplex aenea out to play on the dead Horse Chestnut and associated fungi

No apparent damage - spore feeders?

A quick tap over the sweep net

Spotty Stenus

Stenus bimaculatus is a beetle I found in the Cullaloe Hills last February, but it was nice to see it show up on the reserve as the 65th beetle species of the year. It's the 11th species of Stenus for the reserve and the 6th this year. I knew it was going to be new because none of the other 10 species are spotty.

It was in the eternally-giving grass pile near the car park. If I had only skimmed the top layer of that pile today, now that it's warmed up. I could probably have half the species re-recorded! It was tempting to take a video of how much movement there was in the tray.

The mega grass pile in all its glory

2021 beetlle #65 - Stenus bimaculatus

New Fife beetle

On a random whim today I headed for leaf litter sieving in the woods. The ground's been a bit warmer and, honestly, I was hoping to pick up a spider or two. Of course when you start throwing leaf litter around anything's possible.

What I didn't expect, I think reasonably, was a big shiny dollop of histerid beetle to gleam from the gathering humus layer in my tray. I love these things, but I've only ever seen one species. In two places. I've been dreaming and scheming of baited pitfall traps and bottle traps, of sieving poo etc., in the hopes of seeing maybe one or two. I still am, but nt sure what may be around here. There's certainly no shortage of poo and I'm happy to provide carrion. I guess they are so shiny because they want all that, erm, stuff, to slide off them like a shiny wotsit, as the proverb says.

Anyway, that was a long way for a short cut. This is Margarinotus neglectus, The Lonely Clown (awww). There are no dots in the new Histeridae bookie, so I'm claiming it as new to county. 

2021 beetle #63, Margarinotus neglectus, new to me, new to Cullaloe, new to Fife.

Gleaming underside. Fabulous.

Gleaming upperside, with handy etching

Digging and dipteran larvae munching tools

Pygidium-sh bits (the back end)

Another beetle I grabbed from the filter beds the other day, with a minor sense horror, turned out to be Helophorus obscurus, which I actually thought it might be. However, it had the good graces to be male and to allow me to extract the necessary bits to secure the ID.

2021 beetle #64, Helophorus obscurus

Thaw

Mercifully, the snow is disappearing to be replaced by a spring-like, exuberant sound of twittering, happy birds, though the pond remains solid. A return to Cullaloe allowed me to follow deer tracks around the place and see that they were the ones digging up the woodland floor, and not badgers, as I previously supposed. Wonder what they were after.

A Dactylis tussock coughed up Mecinus pascuorum, a weevil fond of Ribwort Plantain. Well, there's more than enough of that. Also a Cyphon variabilis, which I found before but didn't identify, and two species - Sepedophilus nigripennis and Tachyporus obtusus - already recorded on the reserve.

2021 Beetle #56 for this year and the 170th beetle on the reserve list.

2021 Beetle #57, 171st beetle Cyphon variabilis

2021 Beetle #58, Sepedophilus nigripennis

2021 beetle #59,  Tachyporus obtusus

Drip, drip, drip

With the pitter patter of hailstones on my hood I was happy to let them bounce off as i played in the grass pile. Quedius cinctus, new to me and to the reserve, became the 32nd beetle of the year and the 24th new addition to the catalogue. It's quite a distinctive Quedius and the two parallel lines of punctures on the shiny elytrae mark it as being in its own subgenus. 

What with ice and rain and domestic duties it's been a slow couple of days. Still, like the rain there's a steady drip of new additions. When I get my act together I'll definitely try to bring back a sample for filtering semi-properly.

Pine Ladybird

Clamped onto a tree trunk in the rain the other day, this Pine Ladybird was new to the reserve list.

Carrion beetles

Mmmmm, tasty. Nothing like a bit of rotten fish to get the juices flowing - in this case about 1cm cubed of 3 week old cod hung over a pitfall trap

2 Nicrophorus vespilloides

6 Oiceoptoma thoracicum 1 Pterostichus niger

Stenus flavipes new to Cullaloe

Everyday has new species to add now but it's always satisfying when you can identify a 3mm beetle by dissection. I really like the genus Stenus, but I wasn't ever really happy with ID until I learned how to do the fiddly process of extracting the necessary ID features.

Habitus

Two dark terminal antennomeres

Genitalia

Black Sexton Beetle

Always nice to see one of this stinky little family

Nicrophorus humator

Dromius quadrimaculatus 0 a new beetle to Cullaloe

A nocturnal, tree-dwelling ground beetle, which is best searched for at night on tree trunks, where it roams presumably hoovering up other small invertebrates

Willow Beetle

Been more than a month since the last post but the weather is now a bit warmer and leaves are out - All the young birch trees (and presumably the Willows, though I was specifically looking at Birch trees) have abundant Willow Beetle- Lochmaea caprea

Great Diving Beetle at Mossmorran

A brief bottle trap for ten hours during Sunday turned up 2 of the above. Very fine they were too

Violet Ground Beetle

This one not from Cullaloe, but from Bavelaw/Red Moss in the Lothians. A nice beetle, though

Bottle trapping

A quick bottle trapping session in the water found a couple of Water Boatmen, a few diving beetles as yet unidentified, a newt and a shed load of leeches. The newt I quickly released without photo, hopefully not too much the worse for wear. The water boatmen seem to have expired. Maybe they are quite delicate beasts despite their size. I have a couple of the diving beetles for determination and a couple of leeches out of ghoulish curiosity. I hoped they could be identified but this may take more capability than I have access to at the moment. Let's see.

I was amazed to find anything given the water looks like some kind of white ghastly chemical soup

Hydroporus palustris

The diving beetle turned out to be Hydroporus palustris, according to Nature of fife Coleoptera list the "commonest species of vegetated edges of lochs etc." Sounds fair enough

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