Record shot

I suspect the term record shot hasn't made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, but if it had I'd imagine it would say something like "a photograph which acts as a record of, or aid to identification of, a species". Record shots might be a fine photograph in their own right, but more often the term is attached to a photograph as a kind of apology for its aesthetic deficiencies. My trip to Potton Wood this afternoon produced as fine an example of the latter as you are ever likely to see.

With an unexpected free hour becoming available, and the sun shining, there was only one place I was likely to head, especially as now is the time of year to start cracking some of those new year resolutions. Specifically, I was hoping to find the bumblebee mimicking hoverfly Criorhina ranunculi, one of my resolutions from my 2015 hoverfly review post. Initially things didn't look too promising, a lot of the sallows weren't really flowering yet, and the few that were, were way out of reach in the canopy. As I pressed on into the wood there were at least some hoverflies to look at, the common Eristalis pertinax seems to be having a particularly good spring. I also allowed myself to be briefly distracted by my first butterfly of the year in the shape of a slightly worn out looking Comma, and a collection of odd looking fungi which turned out to be stump puffballs.

Eristalis pertinax

Comma

Stump Puffballs

Deep in the woods I came across a sallow that seemed much further into flower than the others, even if the nearest flowers were still significantly above head height. I decided to hang around and see what I could see, as there were clearly lots of insects being attracted. These were mainly bumblebees, Buff-tailed, Early, Tree and Garden, but amongst them I noticed a smaller yet still fluffy looking silhouette. It looked distinctly promising for a Criorhina, but was clearly not going to come any closer, so I pointed the camera in its general direction and took a load of photos.

The initial results looked something like this, with the fly a mere speck in the centre of the image.

A judicious bit of cropping later though, and enough detail remains to be clear that this is indeed a Criorhina ranunculi.

Criorhina ranunculi, with the red tail and pale hairs on the thorax clearly visible

Criorhina in silhouette, the distinctive face shape and colour, as well as the antennal shape, show well

 being able to do things like this makes me very grateful to live in the age of digital photography. 20 years ago I'd have been lugging a film camera around, and not about to waste an entire roll on the off chance that I might be able to identify a single insect, and even 10 years ago, the digital cameras that were around probably wouldn't have captured enough detail to make identification possible.

A zebra in the sunshine

After a few weeks of icy temperatures, the weekend brought a change in the weather, with prolonged spells of sunshine sending the mercury heading for the dizzying heights of double figures. I was itching to get outside today to see what effect all this spring-like weather was having, and practically ran out of the office at lunchtime. It didn't take too long to find the first creature enjoying the sunshine, a beautiful male Zebra jumping spider hunting for prey on a fencepost. I think this is a male Salticus scenicus, but it seems tricky to tell these from the other Salticus species, so perhaps best to err on the side of caution.

A cute Zebra jumping spider

Onto the heath, and although the magic sallow is yet to put out its catkins, the Andrena clarkella colony was starting to get going, with 10 or so males alternately sun-bathing and searching for females. To my surprise, one female had made an early appearance (they usually emerge a bit later than the males) and was promptly jumped on by two males, eager to secure their genetic passage into the next generation. 

Male Andrena clarkella

In the gardens a first Eristalis pertinax for the year was nice to see, with the distinctive body shape showing why this species is sometimes known as the Tapered Drone-fly. The winter heather is always a great place for recently emerged queen bumblebees, and no fewer than four Buff-tailed Bumbles were joined by a single Tree Bumblebee, Bombus hypnorum, which has become such a familiar sight in recent years it's easy to forget that it only arrived from the continent a decade or so ago.

Tapered Drone-fly, Eristalis pertinax

Mostly Mosses

With the chilly weather continuing, there haven't been many insects to look at, so this week I turned my attention to a group I've never really looked at before. At the start of the week my moss list stood at a rather dismal 3 species out of the around 600 that can be found around the UK, so I thought I'd see what I could do to improve that. I signed up to the Grasses, Sedges, Rushes, Mosses, Lichens & Ferns group on Facebook, and am extremely grateful to the help I've received there, without it, my enthusiasm for mosses might have been extremely short-lived. Instead, over the course of the week I've managed to more than triple my list, to a mighty 10 species! I've enjoyed poking about looking at a set of species that I've previously ignored, and starting to get to grips with the common species.

First on my new moss list is the aptly named Common Feather-moss, an extremely common moss in the woods at The Lodge, which has feather tendrils, coating the bases of trees and numerous patches of deadwood. Out on the heath I added a couple more common species, Broom Fork-moss and Cypress-leaved Plaitmoss, and rounded off a successful outing by adding a non-moss to my list, the cute little blue weevil Ceutorhynchus erysimi, which was conveniently wandering along a fencepost just after I'd bumped into Mark, who's currently writing some brilliant guides to weevils.

Common Feather-moss

Broom Fork-moss

Later in the week I had another lunchtime wander, this time heading up to the iron-age hillfort in the hope of finding new species. It didn't take long to find some, galley hill was blanketed in heath star-moss (good names these mosses have), up in the pine trees by the hillfort was a small patch of bank haircap. and a thick branched moss underneath the heather proved to be Neat Feather-moss.

Heath Star-moss

Bank Haircap

Neat Feather-moss

After that I'll admit to cheating a little bit, and looking at the records for the reserve to see if any of them gave specific locations to let me do a bit of moss-twitching. A lot of records were quite vague, but a description of "pond on the front lawn" was pretty specific, and sure enough there was lots of the distinctive Pointed Spear-moss in the pond, and lots of Springy Turf-moss in the grass nearby.

Pointed Spear-moss - pointy!

Oh and just in case you thought I'd forgotten my previous like of lichens, here's one I added to my list recently, the rather elegant Oak-moss Evernia prunastri.



Hopefully we'll be seeing some warmer weather soon, but if not, at least there's still lots of natural history to be hunting for :)