Obscured

I ran the garden trap around the weekend last week, before the temps dropped a little for a few nights to give a bit of respite. Reasonably busy catches, including a few beetles and bugs which are likely to start ramping up in the trap over the next month.

By far the main highlight was a new species - not just for the garden but one I've not seen anywhere previously, though it has colonised the county recently and I have tried for it at a couple of sites ....

Obscure Wainscot

Best of the beetles was this longhorn, albeit an agg. only ....

Leiopus nebulosus agg.

And amongst the bugs were these ....

Stenotus binotatus

Miridius quadrivirgatus

With the ridiculous forecast temps heading this way in the 'red zone', the trap is back out again for the next few nights. It'll probably be easier to watch it rather than trying to get some sleep with the night temps predcited!

Back to the Brook

I've had a productive and busy weekend. Doing work. I've got next week off, or most of it at least, and I needed to get ahead on a few things for month-end reporting. Otherwise I've enjoyed a day over at my Mum's. I've done virtually nowt on the natural history side, except that on looking at a few snaps from the garden moth trap, and a very brief detour on the way home this evening, I've picked up a couple of new species. Well one certainly, the other is probably a case of actually looking at something and putting a name to it instead of ignoring it as I may well have done for 40+ years.

I'll start with the garden-trap bonus. I ran two traps on Friday night - nothing too exciting on the moths front but the MV trap in particular had attracted a range of 'intruders' including a number of beetles. I pointed the camera at one that was clearly a Sitona weevil ....

.... and noted that it clearly wasn't the expected Sitona lineatus. It didn't take long working it through the Mark Gurney guide to Sitona spp. to come out to Sitona obsoletus, new for me and the garden.

Other intruders included ....

Dromius quadrimaculatus

Miridis quadrivirgatus how I normally see it - tucked into an egg-box

And so to this evening. On my way home, I briefly stopped and looked at Bushby Brook that flows through the Thurnby Lodge estate. It is one of the brooks I used to play in (literally) as a kid; well away from home, back in the days when kids could be out playing all day before computer games were invented and when kids playing unaccompanied in potentially dangerous situations was nothing to get excited about.

There is a small accessible pond in an open playing field on one side of the road. I don't remember the brook or ponds being in any way interesting for plant life, as I was in no way interested in plant life.

And in truth the plant I was looking for is not particularly interesting; it's just a common plant of waterways that I'd never bothered looking for / at, however it was one that I had on my radar for my recent visit to Cosby but couldn't see. So when checking for possible sites I noticed this and today brought a perfect opportunity.

Water-plantain

My list of 'plants what I ought to have seen if I ever bothered looking' list is, very gradually, getting smaller. Must be just a few hundred left to go ....

Distressing Damsels

Early this evening I had a leisurely and relaxing amble around an area of what was wet grassland / marshland which has now been opened up and made accessible as a leisure area with cycle tracks/paths etc. It's also part of a complex associated with the building of the newly located Everards Brewery, and accordingly it's been named Everards Meadows. It's easily big enough to walk away from the flat grassy picnic area, cycle shop and coffee house and find nice open areas with potential. It runs into the Soar Valley and you could easily walk from there onto Aylestone Meadows.

I took a sweep net, but the camera didn't get any use. Although it was reasonably warm and sunny there wasn't a lot flying or active, but the sweep net yielded lots of hemiptera. In particular, I found lots of Damsels, the Nabidae. Having potted them, by the time I'd got home and eaten etc it was too late to try and photograph them properly, so I've had to anaesthetise them, plonk them on card and grab a shot with flash. You get the gist, but they're not pretty to look at and are more like damsels in distress.

Tree Damsel Bug - Himacerus apterus

Broad Damsel Bug - Nabis flavomarginatus

Field Damsel Bug - Nabis ferus

Which Nabis?

I believe it's a nymph, though it superficially resembles Marsh Damsel Bug - Nabis limbatus

And a couple of leggy Miridae, same shape different family:

Miridius quadrivirgatus

This turns up in moth traps a fair bit in VC55, but not sure there are any other 'in the field' records

Phytocoris varipes

The damsel distress didn't stop there either, as on checking whether I'd seen Nabis limbatus before I realised that I had Himacerus apterus listed twice. Arse, -1 for the list.

"I just wanted somebody to caress
   This damsel in distress
      I just wanted somebody to undress
         This damsel in distress
            I just wanted somebody to bless
               This damsel in distress"

Long-legged Miridae from Leicestershire ...

 .... you'll be my sunshine daisy from L.A. ....

Why on earth that cheesy child puppet was singing about hemiptera I have no idea.

A couple of days ago I received a file with load of VC55 Hemiptera records. I noted that all of the records that I have sent directly to the county recorder have not as yet (and may not ever) filtered through to the overall county dataset. I'm therefore, on a very ad hoc basis, uploading old records onto NatureSpot. I've realised at the start of this that particularly in the late summer of 2013 I had a very rich period of noting bugs and hoppers from moth traps, both at home and when out and about. In particular, I've just rediscovered that I had three different Phytocoris spp. within a week or so, along with a similar looking long-legged bug. Even better, whilst I posted a couple of these on the 1k in 1km blog, none of these records have featured on here. Which is great as I have nowt else to post about today.

First up, the easiest (certainly the least subjective) one to ID ..

Miridus quadrivirgatus - Whetstone 01/08/2013

This is a moth-trap specialist in VC55

 

Phytocoris varipes - 02/08/2013

The longitudinal markings help to ID this one, but close scrutiny of antennal width/hairs needed

Phytocoris ulmi - Whetstone 22/07/2013

Similar to varipes but more uniformly coloured - again antennal width/hairs key

Phytocoris dimidiatus - Pickworth Great Wood 20/07/2013

This is the most contentious one - the lack of sharply defined black markings on pronotum are key, and the width of pale bands (narrower or equal to dark bands) on mid-tibia separate from similar P. longipennis ... but may not be separable from P. reuteri (which seems to have more south-easterly distribution as far as I can see).

Pseudoloxops coccineus - Whetstone 01/08/2013

Okay, not one of the long-legged ones. I've included this as it's from the same time frame and it looks great. More importantly, as far as I can see there are no earlier/other VC55 records.

Rare Bug / Garden Mothing

I'll kick off with some belated news - I posted a photo on the VC55 Wildlife blog of a random bug that turned up in my garden trap on 18th July. Whilst I don't take a great deal of notice of everything non-lepidopteran in the trap - this did not look familiar.

Recently I was given an ID for it - Miridius quadrivirgatus. Apparently a mainly southern and coastal species which has started turning up more frequently inland - see here. Better still, it is only the third record and second site for VC55. The slight downside is that both of the previous records came from the same Sapcote moth trap on - the two nights previous to mine! Oh well.

Last night was very mild but very breezy. I decided to give the traps their first airing for c20 days. Surprisingly they pulled in a few moths and the catch (14 of 8sp.) included two garden firsts for the year:

(125W MV 4 of 4, 80W/100W actinic/tungsten 10 of 6)
1041 Acleris sparsana 1
1042 Rhomboid Tortrix (Acleris rhombana) 11771 Juniper Carpet (Thera juniperata) 1
2107 Large Yellow Underwing (Noctua pronuba) 1
2237 Grey Shoulder-knot (Lithophane ornitopus lactipennis) 12240 Blair's Shoulder-knot (Lithophane leautieri hesperica) 2
2262 Brick (Agrochola circellaris) 1
2264 Yellow-line Quaker (Agrochola macilenta) 5
2306 Angle Shades (Phlogophora meticulosa) 1

I've updated the moth yearlists as well:
Garden - 9907 of 387sp.
Total - 20038 of 565sp.