25 May 2016

Contrary to earlier weather forecasts, Sunday was actually a nice day and I was able to get down to the patch to complete a butterfly transect, which was fairly uneventful with a couple of holly blues, a small white, large white, a couple of orange-tips and a few green-veined whites. A lone peacock butterfly was also noted outside of the transect.

I had a few more firsts for the year with the first flowering foxglove, scarlet pimpernel, red clover and star-of-Bethlehem. The first swollen-thighed beetles were seen sitting in the buttercups and a blue-tailed damselfly was seen at Reffley Reservoir.

A bit of excitement was had when a good candidate for garden warbler was heard on Osier Marsh. These shy birds sound very similar to a blackcap and like to hide in deep cover. I always think they sound a bit more 'flutey' than a blackcap and won't record them unless I have actually seen them to confirm their ID. And it was finally confirmed when it was eventually glimpsed for a brief moment as it moved between the deep cover.

I still haven't seen any dragonflies yet, but the damselfly numbers are building quite nicely on Reffley Reservoir. A count of 76 large red damselfies were noted, with 36 pairs actively mating. Thirty four azure damselflies were also counted, with 5 pairs mating and a single pair were actually ovipositing (laying eggs) in the vegetation.

I spent all day Monday identifying three new species found the day before. The first was quite easy and was a day flying moth called mother shipton. Apparently, it is named after an olde worlde Yorkshire witch who wore clothes of a similar pattern to the moth! The second two took much more time and I had to wait for one to be confirmed from an expert on line.

mother shipton moth.

A hoverfly was found as I was returning from the butterfly transect. I had first thought it was a wasp and stopped to check which species it was. On a closer inspection, it was clear this was one of the hoverfly 'wasp mimics', so I netted it for a closer inspection. When I tried to ID it, my guide gleefully informed me that it was one of the 'Difficult Five' and so it proved to be. Having gone around in circles for a few hours I decided to take some photo's of the important features and put it on a Facebook group that has some of the top hoverfly experts on it. I got my ID a few hours later from no one less than the actual author of the guide book I was using!

Chrysotoxum cautum

measuring the lengths of the antenna segments

Judging the size of the genital capsual

The third species I had found was another bee and I spent the vast bulk of Monday trying to sort it out. I could get as far as that it was one of the mason bees, but I couldn't pin down which species. I kept ending up at some really rare species that don't occur anywhere close to Norfolk and the ones that it was most likely to be didn't have the correct features of my bee. I was using the ID keys, but still couldn't get the right species and couldn't work out where I was going wrong, so tried some radically different choices in my selections, but still couldn't get anything close to what I had.

When you are not used to identifying a certain group of insects, it can be difficult to interpret what some of the id features are. Because of this, I spent most of Monday getting nowhere fast and it wasn't until mid-evening that I had my inspiration. I found the part where I was interpreting differently and this led straight to the correct species - a red-vented mason bee. As soon as I looked at the page I knew I had the correct one at long last. Even though I finally managed to get there, I still have to disagree with the part of the key I had to interpret differently!