A rare spot of birding

I used to think of myself as a bit of a birder, then I was a birder who looked at other wildlife, and these days it's the other wildlife that I look at most. I still enjoy a spot of birding though, so when I got a chance to have a couple of hours to myself at Dungeness on a recent family holiday, it was a nice change of pace. Just before we'd arrived on the south coast, a buff-breasted sandpiper (a vagrant from  America) had been reported, along with a cattle egret - a species that I've seen all over the world, but never in the UK. The egret was very obliging, hanging out with some cows on a field by the entrance track. That brought my UK birdlist up to a rather under-whelming 244 species, could I make it 245. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be - the sandpiper had probably departed a day or two before, a despite some concerted efforts to string a distant juvenile Ruff, it wasn't meant to be.

Terrible phone-scoped picture of the Cattle Egret, being an Egret next to some cattle

Of course, even though birds were the main focus of attention, I couldn't help stopping to look at a few insects along the way. The ditches by the side of the entrance track were playing host to the curiously spotty eyed Eristalinus sepulchralis, a common wetland species, and on the main part of the reserve I saw my first Helophilus trivittatus of the year. This latter is a migrant species which occurs in variable numbers each year, and differs from the resident Helophilus species in lacking a black stripe on the face, as well as generally being a larger and paler looking insect. I'd also packed the moth trap in the hope of catching a migrant or two, and succeeded with a handsome bordered straw perched on the top of the trap one morning. After last year's influx these seem to have been a lot thinner on the ground this year.

Eristalinus sepulchralis

Helophilus trivittatus

Bordered Straw

On the way back from the south coast, it turned out that another RSPB reserve, Rainham Marshes, is conveniently placed around half-way on the journey, and even has a nice cafe to grab some lunch, so that's what we did, and as the weather was still glorious, we went for a stroll onto the reserve. We failed to see any of the burgeoning population of water voles - although the grass snake swimming down one of the channels might have had something to do with that, but we did see another Rainham speciality, the endangered Shrill Carder Bee. Most of the individuals seen were looking at bit the worse for wear so late in the year, but one or two fresher looking ones, presumably recently emerged queens, were also around.

Shrill Carder Bee

Back at home the ivy is still the main attraction, with a pair of Sericomyia silentis the highlight. I saw a fair few of these during my travels earlier in the year, but this is the first time I've seen them in Bedfordshire. I was also very pleased that a dark looking Syrphus with thin looking stripes rewarded closer inspection by turning out to be Syrphus torvus, a common species, but one I rarely record due to the difficulty in recognising it as different from the other Syrphus species in the field.

Sericomyia silentis

Syrphus torvus - If you look very, very closely you can just about see the hairs in the eyes that are diagnostic for this species

Autumn highlights

As summer draws to a close, the number of insects starts to drop, but there are still plenty of things to see if you know where to look. One of the best places is a good stand of flowering ivy, which on a sunny day can be absolutely covered with bees and hoverflies. Luckily for me, there is a cracking clump of ivy flowering just about close enough to The Lodge for a lunchtime visit, which I've spent a couple of lunchtimes this week inspecting.

Initially the sheer number of insects is a bit disorientating, like a falcon with a flock of starlings it can be hard to focus on any individuals and make sense of what's present. Once I'd got my eye in I could see that the vast majority of insects were made up of a few species, honeybees, Myathropa florea, Eristalis pertinax and tenax with a decent smattering of Ivy bees, Colletes hederae, showing that they're well established after first turning up a couple of years ago.

Myathropa florea

Eristalis tenax

Ivy Bee, Colletes hederae

The trick then is to try and spot the different species amongst the swarm of commoner things. Sometimes it's easy, like with the impressively large hornet mimics Volucella zonaria and inanis, other times a fleeting glimpse of something that looked a little bit different disappearing into the depths of the ivy leaves a sense of thwarted excitement. The real holy grail for me this Autumn is the enigmatic Golden hoverfly, Callicera spinolae, an ivy specialist that's restricted to Eastern England.

Volucella zonaria

Volucella pellucens

Bee-wolf taking a break from bee wolfing

So far that ambition remains just that, but on Wednesday morning another one was fulfilled by my trusty moth trap. I haven't been trapping that frequently recently, an energetic 10 month old has made going through the trap in the morning a bit more of a challenge. With the recent mild weather I thought it was worth a try though, and with recent reports of double-digit catches of Convolvulus Hawk-moths on the south coast I made a throwaway comment that one of those would be nice. Unbelievably when I went out to the trap in the morning a magnificent beast of a Convolvulus was sitting calmly inside the trap! This is the first record of a live Convolvulus hawk-moth in Bedfordshire since 2013, a new species for me and a minor celebrity when I took it into the office in the morning!

Convolvulus Hawk-moth, what a moth!

So good it deserves two photos

Hopefully one good thing will lead to another, I'll be hanging around the ivy hoping so!

Catching up

It's been a while since I last posted, partially due to lack of time, but also due to a bit of a lack of notable wildlife recently. It seems to be a really quiet summer for invertebrates, especially at The Lodge where a lot of my wildlife hunting takes place. Right now the heather is out, and that usually means it's covered in bees, hoverflies and wasps, but this year it's more of a smattering than a covering.

One of the few species that looks like it's having a good year is one of my favourite bees, Dasypoda hirtipes. For a few weeks now, the patches of ragwort by the path to the heath have been playing host to the delightfully fluffy males of this species. They lack the outlandish pantaloons of the female, and resemble instead a larger, hairier version of the Colletes bees that also love the ragwort at this time of year.

A male Dasypoda hirtipes

The paths through the heath are riddled with holes made by nesting bees and wasps, especially the extravagantly name Ornate-tailed Digger Wasp Cerceris rybyensis which stocks its burrows with bees. The wasp doesn't have it all its own way though, as its burrows in turn often fall prey to the dazzlingly marked Ruby-tailed wasps which are easy to see at present as they search for nests to lay their own eggs in. Cerceris burrows play host to two of most striking Ruby-tails to be found in the UK, Hedychrum niemelai and H.nobile, two closely related and hard to distinguish species, sharing a pattern of metallic green and red across their bodies. In an entirely gratuitous shoehorning in of another ruby-tail picture I'll also mention the Chrysis ignita aggregate of species, a collection of near identical green wasps with ruby tails, one of which I found wandering along a rail one day.

Hedychrum niemelai/nobile

A gratuitous Chrysis ignita agg.

Man-made structures are often good places to look for wildlife, one Lodge speciality in particular, the UK's largest jumping spider Marpissa muscosa, seems to only ever be seen on a certain stretch of fencing by the heath. Unfortunately that bit of fence has now been removed after being damaged in high winds recently, so it was a pleasant surprise to come across a splendid female Marpissa on the log pile that sits around 50m from the traditional spot. As with all jumping spiders, this is a highly photogenic species with the large eyes and hairy face making them the cutest of the UK's spiders.

A lovely fluffy female Marpissa muscosa

The logpile is proving to be a productive spot this year, having already delivered a set of goodies back in May, it turned up my second ever Chalcosyrphus nemorum earlier this week, a species normally associated with wet woodland, but also found in drier woodlands, especially on log piles - it's nice when species do what they're supposed to!

Chalcosyrphus nemorum

Hopefully we'll have some good weather for the remainder of August and the numbers of insects will pick up a bit - and I'll have no excuse not to get a few more posts in before the end of the year!

Hunting the black bee

After travelling all over the UK for the last month, it's been nice to get back and about on the local patch. At The Lodge, some familiar summer wildlife is out and about, with lots of Meadow Browns fluttering though the grass, the striking longhorn beetle Rutpela maculata on the brambles, and the lovely wool-carder bees on the lamb's ear in the gardens.

Male Anthidium manicatum on lamb's ear

A near annual summer event at The Lodge, is the pursuit of the mysterious black bee. I first saw one of these in 2012, at which point it was assumed to be Andrena pilipes, a scarce and predominantly coastal species. It's since been mooted that it might actually be the much rarer Andrena nigrospina, but the two species are very difficult to distinguish. The fact that we've only ever seen the black beast in July, and never earlier in the year, might suggest that it's nigrospina, but we probably need some better evidence than that before we come to a firm conclusion. One thing that might help would be to find where they're nesting, as the form of Nomada fulvicornis which parasitises each species is apparently more distinctive than its hosts.

The first sighting of the year came last Monday, with a female heavily laden with pollen on a lovely flowering tree which I've somehow never noticed before. We'd actually been looking for clearwing moths using pheromone lures, but I'd got a bit distracted, first of all finding my second ever Melangyna cincta on some brambles, and then finally noticing the tree and the bees buzzing round it.

The mysterious black bee

Melangyna cincta

The following day we went round the old heath, where we didn't find any black bees, but we did find a rather nice black beetle. Last year the first Stictoleptura scutellata for the reserve, and possibly for Bedfordshire was found, and now one flew in from nowhere, and crashed into Col's neck before dropping to the sand and allowing itself to be photographed. With a supporting cast of the wasp mimicking hoverfly Chrysotoxum verralli, the dazzlingly green wasp Trichrysis cyanea and an obliging Cerceris rybyensis feeding on a forget-me-not, it was a productive lunchtime!

Stictoleptura scutellata

Chrysotoxum verralli

Trichrysis cyanea

Cerceris rybyensis

Later in the week we ventured onto the newer area of heath, and some promising areas of bare ground by the path quickly turned up the goods, with at least one heavily laden female bee looking like it was returning to a burrow - unfortunately it didn't find one, so we're still not completely sure where the nest site is. One thing that is definitely nesting in the bare sand is the wasp Tachysphex pompiliformis, which flew in carrying an impressively large grasshopper with which it will stock a burrow for its larvae.

Tachysphex pompiliformis

That's almost all the wildlife for now, but at the weekend I dug out my clearwing lures, with a clear target in mind, given the poplar plantation that's just over the fence from my garden. I've looked for hornet clearwings at the base of poplars in the past, without any luck, so I was keen to see whether the lures could bring the moths to me. Within a few minutes I had my answer, a glorious male zipped up to the lure and gave it a thorough investigation before I netted it for a photo session a bit later in the day. I'm definitely a fan of being able to conjure such a fantastic beast out of thin air, I think the lures may be getting a few more outings over the next few weeks!

Hornet Clearwing

Hornet Clearwing, so good it deserves two photos

Can I stay in Scotland?

In an attempt to distract myself from today's headlines, here's a summary of my two week stay in the highlands, looking for the rare and elusive pine hoverfly. Sadly I wasn't able to find any pine hoverflies, I suspect the terrible weather last week may have played a part, but it was always going to be a difficult challenge, so I'm not too down-hearted. Instead of dwelling on what I didn't see, I'll focus on all the fantastic wildlife I did see - I've already mentioned such wonderful creatures as the bumblebee robberfly and the pine tree munching longhorm Rhagium inquisitor in my previous post, but there's a lot more to come.

Last Saturday the weather finally came good, just in time for a trip over to the RSPB's Crannach reserve to do a bit of surveying, alongside a lovely group of like-minded people who'd gathered for a fascinating workshop on wood ant identification. Unsurprisingly ants were high on the agenda, and we found a nice range of species, including one of the two Scottish species of wood ant, Formica lugubris, the hairy wood ant. Other insects included the luridly green sawfly Rhogogaster punctulata, and I was delighted to find one of the hoverflies I swept from the flowery tracksides turned out to be Xanthandrus comtus, a scarce species in Scotland.

A (very subtley) hairy wood ant

Undoubtedly the star of show from a purely personal point of view were the bright orange small pearl-bordered fritillaries that were fluttering over a area of boggy ground, settling only occasionally to allow a few poor photographs. In the nutrient poor environment, some plants have turned to predation, both round-leaved sundew and common butterwort were common across the site. Hopefully between all of us, we'll have added a decent amount of knowledge about the species that make this remote site their home, and help inform its management for the future.

Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary

Round-leaved Sundew

After that it was back to the grind of searching for pine hoverflies, I've spent a lot of the last week staring at rowan flowers! Even if they didn't lure in the hoverfly I wanted, they did attract a lot of other interesting species. Over the course of the week I saw at least 12 species of hoverfly on the rowans, as well as several other species on other flowers nearby, and excitingly a small number of the nationally scarce (and adorable) little hoverfly Microdon analis at one of the sites. It wasn't only hoverflies though, I also spent a long time scratching my head at an oddly marked longhorn beetle, which after a bit of online discussion was agreed to be an extremely dark variant of the common northern species Judolia sexmaculata.

Sericomyia silentis - one of the most impressive species seen on the Rowan flowers

The adorable Microdon analis

A very odd looking Judolia sexmaculata

Whilst the majority of my time was spent in the quest for pine hoverflies, I did take a couple of side trips to try and see some other highland specialities, thankfully with more success! A trip on a cloudy and rainy afternoon to a site near Grantown-on-Spey produced three male and one female Aspen hoverfly, another highly endangered specialist, which is a bit easier to find than its pine compatriot. On a sunnier day I took a short detour onto the RSPB's Abernethy reserve and was rewarded with a brief sighting of the pinewood mason bee, Osmia uncinata, foraging from bird's foot trefoil, as well as the bonus of the pinewood specialist hoverfly Didea intermedia.

Aspen Hoverfly - another hoverfly that doesn't look much like one

Pine Mason Bee, Osmia uncinata

Didea intermedia

Whilst my time in Scotland hasn't always gone exactly according to plan, it's still been a fascinating couple of weeks, and if anything it's cemented my love of natural history even further. I'm looking forward to continuing to learn more and more about the fascinating wildlife of this country, and to continuing to develop a more detailed knowledge of the hoverflies that have been my focus this year.

Pining away in the highlands

After a very pleasant week in the lake district we've made our way north to Scotland, and specifically to Aviemore, in the heart of the highlands. For the next couple of weeks I have one over-riding target, to try and find the elusive pine hoverfly, Blera fallax. This critically endangered species has only ever been found in the ancient pine forests of northern Scotland, and at the time of writing, is only known to occur at one site. My aim for this fortnight is to firstly try and find some adults at the known site, to show that this is a plausible way of establishing the presence of the species, and then to go searching at a couple of other sites where Blera has previously been recorded to see if I can re-find it there.

All sounds very simple - except that at the time of writing this, it's currently bucketing it down with rain, and about 10 degrees outside - not good hoverfly finding weather! Hopefully the weather will improve soon to give me a fighting chance of finding Blera. We did get some reasonable weather on Monday, when a couple of staff from SNH came over to show me the sites. We didn't see any Blera (that would have been far too easy) but we did see some cracking wildlife, including a few highland specialities.

First up was a bit of a monster of a fly, and one that was very near the top of my wishlist for this trip, the bumblebee robberfly, Laphria flava. It's one of the biggest flies to be found in the UK, with the larvae feasting on longhorn beetles and the adults eating pretty much any insect unfortunate to cross their paths. This one was sitting on a stone by the path when we saw it, but then helpfully relocated to a pine stump - just like they're supposed to!

The impressive robberfly Laphria flava

Deadwood is key for many of the special species, and a fallen pine tree produced the next set of goodies. First up was the fairly common and widespread ant beetle Thanasimus formicarius, which was swiftly ignored in favour of the much rarer Rhagium inquisitor. This medium sized longhorn has a subtle pattern of greys, browns and whites that help it blend into the pine trees that it relies upon. Much less well camouflaged is its larger relative Rhagium bifasciatum, which I saw at Farnham a few weeks ago, and which popped up again here.

Rhagium inquisitor

Inquisitor again - it was posing very nicely!

Rhagium bifasciatum

At all the sites I'm searching, there are a number of specially prepared pine stumps, which have had holes cut or drilled into them to replicate the conditions which pine hoverflies need to breed. These conditions are also to the liking of other deadwood loving hoverflies, as we proved by finding the larvae of Myathropa florea and Callicera rufa in one of the stumps. The latter is a funny looking creature, a large white maggot with two sets of miniature antlers (or eyebrows if you prefer)

Callicera rufa larva

There were a few adult hoverflies around, including another one I'd been hoping to see, the wasp mimic Chrysotoxum arcuatum, a northern and western species which doesn't occur in my home county of Bedfordshire. All in all a very successful first day in the highlands, let's hope it's not the last successful day I have!

Chrysotoxum arcuatum

Flies in the garlic

We're up in the Lake District this week, enjoying the sudden outbreak of summer after a miserable spell of weather. There hasn't been too much time for wildlife chasing, although there are few more pleasant ways of spending one's time than watching Grey Wagtails chirruping on the river's edge whilst supping a pint of Cumbria's finest ale as I did today.

From the moment that we settled on the plan off staying in the Lakes I've had my eye on one particular species that I've had on my 'to see' list for a while now, the hoverfly Portevinia maculata. It shouldn't be a tricky species to find, as it loves Ramsons - which carpet many woodlands in springtime, but unfortunately not any woodlands near home that I'm aware of. Around here every wood seems to be carpeted with them, so we set off this morning to the charmingly named Dorothy Farrar's Spring Wood in search of some garlic loving hoverflies.

The only fly in the ointment is that it's getting a little late in the year for the Ramsons, and with them the hoverflies, and after a little while in the wood I was starting to think that perhaps our hunt wasn't going to be successful. Just as I was starting to lose hope I caught sight of a small hoverflyey looking fly on a Ramson leaf and quickly brought up my camera to take some photos, and managed to take a grand total of one before the battery died - aargh! A quick faff later I had a new battery loaded, and thankfully the fly had stayed put, allowing me to get some nice shots of a female Portevinia - usually the harder sex to find. A few minutes later I added a male, with its distinctive square grey abdominal markings, to the set as one posed nicely on a sunlit patch of moss.

Female Portevinia maculata

Male Portevinia maculata

I think this probably counts as my first ever hoverfly twitch, but it almost certainly won't be my last, I've got a much harder target to aim for in the next couple of weeks - hopefully I'll be posting about that soon!

Hunting for bees at Farnham

Yesterday was a bit of a treat, a day out surveying for bees with Rosie at the RSPB reserve at Farnham Heath. It's one of the premier sites in the country for aculeate hymenoptera (bees, non-parasitic wasps and ants) with a list of well over 200 species. Our aims for the day were twofold. Firstly we wanted see how many species we could find, and to see how this compared to a previous survey in 2002 which was conducted around the same time of year, but when a lot of the site was still under conifer plantation. Secondly we wanted to see if we could refind the extremely rare Lasioglossum sexstrigatum, which has still only been found in a handful of sites in the UK since arriving in 2008.

We failed on the latter, but we're optimistic that by the time all the specimens have been identified we'll have amassed a list that will show the benefits of restoring the heathland. Aided by local experts Tom and David we immediately started finding species I'd never seen (or in some cases heard of) before. Some felled trees near the entrance to the reserve provided the first interest of the day, their upturned root plates providing a vertical profile like a miniature cliff, perfect for nesting bees like the tiny Lasioglossum parvulum. Where you find nesting bees, you often find their parasites, and in this case they outnumbered their hosts, with a small swarm of the smallest Nomad bee in the UK, Nomada sheppardana, loitering around the nest holes.

The diminutive Lasioglossum parvulum

Its equally tiny cuckoo bee Nomada sheppardana

Moving further into the reserve we were sound being treated to a masterclass in bee identification, as Tom and David demonstrated some impressive field knowledge in putting names to a range of Lasioglossum species which look almost identical at first sight. Final identifications will come from examination under the microscope, but we probably added L.morio, L.smeathmanellum, L.leucozonium and L.prasinum to the day list in a matter of minutes.

Lasioglossum leucozonium, refueling shortly after being released

After that the new species continued thick and fast, heading up a sandy track to the accompaniment of Woodlarks singing and a Red Kite swooping past, before stopping at a patch of bilberry where we added a few bumblebee species, including the heathland specialist Bombus jonellus, I finally found my first hoverfly for the day with my first Volucella pellucens of the year, before that was well and truly trumped by Tom presenting me with a Seriocomyia silentis in a tube - a hoverfly that I've been wanting (and failing) to see for ages. After than my first Gorse Shieldbug for a couple of years was a bit over-shadowed!

Gorse Shieldbug

Heading downhill again, we found a few more flowers growing by the side of the track, and with them a new set of bees, including the dazzlingly blue Ceratina cyanea, followed by a lovely female Andrea labiata, with its black tipped red abdomen making it look like a giant version of the many Sphecodes cuckoo bees that were patrolling the heath. Tom also found another cracking non-bee with the spectacular long-horned beetle Rhagium bifasciatum.

Rhagium bifasciatum

After a bit more wandering we ended up at our final site for the day, a large flowering holly that was attracting a range of bees and other insects, including a slightly battered Green Hairstreak and one of the better wasp mimicking hoverflies, Xanthogramma pedissequum.

Green Hairstreak that's been in the wars

Xanthogramma pedissequum

We're hoping to make a return trip in July to see an even wider range of species, and to hunt for the enigmatic Chrysotoxum octomaculatum, one of the rarest hoverflies in the UK, found only on heathland in Surrey and Dorset (where I also have some adventures planned :) )