More hanging around sallows

After a nice long Easter break it was back to work yesterday and today, but that came with the consolation of being able to check out the sallow on the heath, which has come nicely into flower. I was hoping for another new hoverfly, perhaps a Cheilosia grossa, but the only hoverflies to be seen were a solitary Parasyrphus punctulatus and a Melanostoma scalare, both common spring species.

Melanostoma scalare

There were a few more bees buzzing around, possibly more able to fly in the chilly air with their furry coats, including a lovely female Andrena praecox, the small sallow bee. As the name suggests this is a specialist on sallows, the females will only collect pollen from this one tree, they are oligolectic to use the technical term.

Andrena praecox - a nicely distinctive bee

On Thursday there was also a larger Andrena on a catkin, which I think might be a female A.bimaculata. I've not seen it before, and I briefly dismissed it as another honey bee, before thankfully deciding to give it a second look. They look very similar to a number of other Andrena species though, and I'm not quite sure that it's not an Andrena trimmerana, unfortunately I don't think the key characteristics are visible in my photos. In an attempt to clinch an ID I went back to the sallow today with Rosie, armed with our nets, but there weren't any female bees around to catch. We did bag a couple of male Andrenas though, which might fortuitously be one each of bimaculata and trimmerana, we'll take a look under a microscope to check. (Edit - I've now had the ID of the female confirmed as bimaculata, and the males were indeed one of each - very efficient netting!)

Andrena bimaculata

Elsewhere on the heath things are pretty quiet, as there aren't many other sources of nectar or pollen around. The fences did attract a good number of basking flies, including a single Eudasyphora cyanella, a species I'd never heard of before this year before seeing some photos on the UK Diptera facebook group. Once you know to look for the black and white markings at the top of the thorax, they're actually quite distinctive.

Eudasyphora cyanella

The gardens are buzzing with bumblebees, including the first Red-tails I've seen this year, and on a daisy a single dimunitive male Andrena bicolor was taking a rest. These are one of the easier male Andrenas to identify, with the combination of their small size, spindly build and black hairs on the face making them quite distinctive.

Andrena bicolor

Liking lichens

There have been some really interesting posts on lichens on the pan-species listing facebook recently, and seeing as my UK list hasn't made it into double figures yet, I thought I should take a closer look at some of the lichens at The Lodge. The first one I found is the extremely common Xanthoria parietina, which is one of the few on my list already, but when I posted the photo to check I'd got the identification right, it turned out that a second common species, Physcia adscendens was also present, tick!

Xanthoria parietina, with little bits of Physcia adscendens poking through

My next find wasn't a lichen, but an impressive display of one of the few fungi I'm able to confidently identify, the excellently named Turkey-tail. Shortly afterwards I was rather surprised to see a leafhopper braving the near zero conditions. It's one of the difficult Idiocerus group, but with the pale markings on the head and pronotum it can be identified with reasonable confidence as Tremulicerus vitreus, a fairly common species associated with sallow and poplar, and in winter with conifers.

Turkey-tail, looking rather like a Turkey's tail!

Tremulicerus vitreus

Onto the heath and back onto the lichens with a wonderfully foliose Cladonia species, probably Cladonia ciliata ssp. tenuis according to more knowledgeable people than myself, but not with enough confidence for me to claim another tick. Much more straightforward were the lichens encrusting the concrete rim of the old swimming pool in the garden, the extremely common Lecanora muralis (commonly known as the chewing gum lichen as it often forms small patches on pavements that look like discarded gum), and my final new species for the day, the equally common Physcia caesia. I enjoyed taking a closer look at things that I've previously ignored, so I suspect a few more lichens may appear on this blog in future, at least until the insects are back :)

Cladonia cf ciliata ssp tenuis

Lecanora muralis - chewing gum lichen

Physcia caesia