January totals

Triplax aenea

So January finished with much higher invertebrate totals across the board than I anticipated, despite ice, snow, hail and frost for much of the month. The baited bottle trap succumbed to wind and rain, with water ingress forcing off the bait chamber. However, there's nothing that would be there in freezing weather in January that won't be findable in February and it's a good thing I'll still have something to count. February is a hard shift in year listing because so much of what's there is already listed in January. That being said, additions haven't really slowed.

I managed to find something to fit into most of the categories, and even found new species in a good many (bold in table). Some smaller categories I have completed 100% of target, but targets are there to be exceeded. All in all, 38 species have been added to the reserve list so far, 26 of which were also new to me. I was amazed to be able to find 50 species of beetle, not counting a few I haven't identified, and just sneaked over the line on 20 spiders with Bathyphantes approximatus on the 30th (new to me but known from the reserve). New to both me and the reserve on the 30th was the beauty queen of woodlice (?), Porcellio spinicornis. I feel like I must have seen it before, but then I turned out not to have P.scaber on my list, so who knows!

The reserve total now stands at 2188.

Category	Count
mollusc	4
annelid	2
flatworm	1
harvestman	4
pseudoscorpion	1
spider	20
gall mite	0
tick	1
millipede	3
centipede	2
crustacean	5
collembola	7
odonata	0
dermaptera	0
orthoptera	0
hemiptera	10
coleoptera	50
diptera	18
lep-moth	0
lep-butterfly	0
hymenoptera	2
insect-other	1
invert-other	0
Total	131

Willow Coppicing

There's been some Willow coppicing underway at Cullaloe. This is the area that's been coppiced so far. Some of the trees that have been cut must have been pretty old. At least one stump looks like it has probably housed a few Lunar Hornet Moths in its time (now, even?). Be interesting to see what develops. This post to mark the date for future reference.

Coelositona cambricus new to reserve (and to me)(and to Fife)

Thanks to the longsuffering Mark Gurney via iRecord this botched ID was redetermined to Coelositona cambricus, which is new to the reserve, new to me, and apparently new to the county.

I failed in Duff on this because I read the "pubescence" as "scales" (isn't the "pubescence" made of scales? anyway ...). Also in Morris because I didn't think it had a pattern. With hindsight I can just about make out a degree of tessellation. Maybe when you spend months in a grass pile it's not as obvious as it might otherwise be. Yes, that's an excuse.

Drag the Waters

Today I decided to embrace the wetness and fortunately the ice near the spillway on the main pond was getting a bit thin after some thawing. I did have to give it a nudge in places and in other places it was still pretty thick. Anyway, it was thin enough for me to go after my target species, which was Asellus aquaticus (Water slater). I also hoped to nab a pond snail, which I have in the past. That was not to be this time. I might not have dug enough into the mud.

Luckily the edge waters managed to produce a good many water bugs though - happy days! Wasn't even a Notonecta, which I'll get in spades in a bottle trap in the spillway later. Wrong time of their lifecycle, maybe, I meant to snap a pic of Tom Huxley's "Water Bugs of Fife & Kinross" for this blog but apparently I didn't. I'll add it later. It's a fantastic book backed by much fieldwork and, I understand, also accompanied by an immaculately curated collection at NMS, which I must see at some point in a future, better, less pox-ridden world. 

Anyway, it was a fun time and the year invertebrate total reached 120. That's way more than I was actually expecting. I must have been predicting on a gloomy day or something.

It seems that everywhere there are new species for the reserve and the first bug I worked on - the only "larger" one - turned out to be the very-common-but-still-unlisted Corixa punctata.. One of the smaller ones was a male Sigara dorsalis, already known from the reserve as well as from my garden moth trap.

Water Hoglouse

C.punctata

On two previous slow years (2017, 2018 - what on earth could I have been doing, I wonder?) year additions were 55 and 63 respectively. That's across all taxa. This year, so far, there have been 39 additions to the list already. It'll take some going to match the best year for additions (2019, 418 spp., 1KS campaign), but another 300 will see the reserve list go to 2500. I'd be well pleased with that.

(stop press: a search through several Sigara reveal some male S.falleni, a common species new to me with their distinctive palae picking them out from the crowd)

pala

Caecilius est pater

Matella est mater et Quintus est filius et Grumio est coquus, et cetera.

I was reminded of one of the new species at Cullaloe this year when the record was verified on iRecord (yay, I didn't screw it up). Rather than stick to the standard menu of flies and beetles, which I'm going to major on, I've also taken bits and pieces of other things with varying degrees of success. This is the only psocid I have so far - Epicaecilius pilipennis. Hopefully it won't be the last. I have the tools so no excuses.

The name reminded me of 'O' Grade Latin at high school, and the very useful phrase "Caecilius is the dad", which has been invaluable in daily life. It's still hard to believe that we studied Latin at school, when I basically went to Drug Stab Comprehensive, and non-denominational into the bargain. Even more odd when the teacher used to wear a cape. He was definitely an outlier, that guy.  

Field sports

It reached a whopping 5 degrees today on the car readout as I headed to Cullaloe. A brief swish at the spruces that divide the reserve from the neighbouring cottage garden and then back to business on the grass pile - though not before snagging a Phaonia tuguriorum from the sunny fence. I dug modereately deeply into the pile under a thick layer of frost, but far from the core of this bountiful bump. I did pot a few flies from the trees, but let's see if I can ID them first! 

The delightful (non-springy) springtail Neanura muscorum showed up a few times, and oddly turned out to be new to the reserve. Also featuring in those already determined was the fat-nosed weevil Rhinoncus leucostigma, (pericarpius as was). I was delighted to add this to my list and the reserve list until I went to the spreadsheet to find that... I sieved it from a grass pile in 2019! It likes a bit of Persicaria so presumably from the abundant Redshank on the reserve.

N.muscorum

Phaonia tuguriorum

Rhinoncus leucostigma

That little bundle takes us to 112 inverts on the reserve so far this year, 31 new. Let's not mention the weevil I fumbled the ID of and didn't keep the voucher and which was turned round the post by the weevil goalie on iRecord. Dammit. Bound to happen from time to time.

Chilly

With snow on the ground and temperatures barely above zero the bottle trap had no takers thus far. With the music of coppicing chainsaw in the Willows I opted for the side of the burn and a nice fat Deschampsia tussock, with the theory being that tussocks harbour species which haven't travelled far and like that particular area. One tussock doesn't equal another. And so it seemed.

Most obvious in the mix was a selection of wasps, including Ichneumon extensorius. However, beyond that are at least two other species awaiting determination. Nice to have were three additional beetles, including one new to reserve and two which are sort of expected. Expected were Chrysolina staphylaea, a Salix specialist which I just managed to delete the photo of while trying to upload it - duh - and Tachinus rufipes, which is a very common litter species.

Also probably expected, but still surprising, was the super tiny Encephalus complicans, which at first I thought might be a bug, or even a mite, with its weird habit of pulling its abdomen over itself so it looks like a ball. Very lucky I decided to pot it as I was delighted to see it was a beetle. That leaves me on 46 beetle species with a full week and two weekends left. I knew the reserve Coleoptera list was bad, but 14 new species in 22 days. Seriously? Long may it continue. I might even not have an embarrassing beetle list myself by the time this is over.

Ichneumon extensorius, female

Encephalus complicans

Tachinus rufipes

One of the other 3 species of Ichneumonoids turns out to be Chasmias motatorius, also on the reserve list but nice for the year list.