Creepy Crawling

Getting to grips with green shieldbugs in winter

Residents of Reading might have noticed suspicious goings on of late. A scruffy young-ish bearded man, plodding slowly along a hedgerow or gazing intently at the bark of a tree, or maybe sifting through some leaf litter. I haven’t gone mad, though – at least I don’t think so –nor am I any threat to public safety.  I’ve been looking, in deliberate fashion, for insects.

I had tended in the past to let them come to me, by chance, when they were sat somewhere obvious. But such is my newfound fondness for our six-legged neighbours that I don’t find enough of them that way to sate me. If you really want to find more insects you have to take up ‘leaf-twitching’.

At least, that’s what some people call it (named for the surprisingly profitable habit of turning over a leaf to see what is lurking on the other side) although for me it’s a bit too in thrall to birding, as if it were a mere subsidiary or tribute activity. One might instead call it bug-hunting, but that sounds like an activity put on either for children or Americans, and I don’t think pedantic entomologists would like it (since to them ‘bug’ refers to the order Hemiptera only). So I’d like to propose we henceforth refer to insect hunting as ‘creepy crawling’. Firstly, it’s an excellent pun on a childish name for invertebrates. Secondly, it calls to mind the especially slow pace of travel required to really look properly and start spotting things in their hiding places. And thirdly, it’s more likely to be understood by the general public, who might not know what a leaf twitcher is but will almost certainly upon seeing me out and about say ‘what’s that creep doing crawling in the undergrowth?’

Creeps beware...

Despite appearances I’m not an expert creepy-crawler (though I am practicing!) and for the most part this year it’s been too cold for insects to be very active. But between cold spells I and they have still woken up enough that I have already seen quite a variety, from springtails to green leafhoppers, from the year’s first bumble- and honey bees to wintering green shieldbugs, and from small, barely animate blobs which I’m assured are scale insects to the marvellous big-eyed ground beetle, Notiophilus biguttatus. And a quick flash of lemon from a brief sighting of a brimstone on the wing. 

For the jaded or frustrated birder who despairs of ever scoring a decent self-found bird close to home but is prepared to be taxonomically imaginative, the opportunities offered by creepy-crawling are endless. Take, for example, one of those chilly days in late February. I was wondering slowly along the edge of The Wilderness (part of Reading University’s main campus), with no particular expectation of seeing anything new. Speculatively I grabbed hold of a fir branch I was passing, shook it, and dislodged two small insects. One, a fly, did as its name suggests and veered away on the wing. The other dropped onto my sleeve. A tiny, bug-eyed, greenish brown little thing that looked characteristically like a psocid – known variously as the barkflies or booklice – crouched there dozily, and I ushered it into a collecting pot without protest.

A psocid, NB, not T.brincki!

After a bit of poking and flicking back and forth through the online key, followed by confirmation from the ever-helpful Richard Comont, it turned out to be the scarcely distributed Trichopsocus brincki. Scarce! A word that gave me an inordinate amount of pleasure, for I’d been wondering if every insect I ever found would turn out to be ‘common and widely distributed’ (a few splendid butterflies notwithstanding).

As it happens I had made a lovely bird discovery in almost the same spot about a month before, when (more by luck than judgement) I was the first to notice a firecrest wintering in that corner of the campus. And I must confess that I still find the firecrest a great deal more delightful, it being one of my favourite birds, possibly my absolute favourite, and one of the most stunningly beautiful creatures I or anybody else will ever set eyes on. But with a paucity of nationwide psocoptera records, very few of which are for T.brincki, it’s my little bug-eyed barkfly friend that’s the more valuable find to science.

I’m aware that my records would be even more useful if there were more of them, obtained by more systematically covering one or two sites regularly (as opposed to the predominately single records I’ve been uploading to the brilliant iRecord so far). But I’m beginning to see how satisfying the process of seeking, finding, identifying and recording can be. Even if it continues cold for a little while longer yet, and even if I might attract the odd dubious look from passers-by, I’m looking forward to my next creepy-crawling expedition. What about you?

Sally - A Snowy Day

January 21, 2013

The 'land at the back of the village hall'

Having twenty minutes or so spare before we needed to depart for the day’s activities, I decided to pop outside to take some photos of what experience had taught me would be a short-lived covering of snow.  Whilst most of the country had been snowed under for some time, our little bit of Cornwall had been basking glorious sunshine.  OK, so I might be exaggerating somewhat but sunshine had definitely been a feature!  Anyhow, I digress.  So, wellies donned and woolly hat pulled over my ears, with camera in hand, I trundled off for a quick crunch around the village - down the hill, around the corner, past the church and the pub, and through the wrought iron gates into the area of land behind the village hall. 

I’m never really sure what to call the ‘land behind the village hall’ – part is an open green space, part is given over to planted, spiral flower beds, a grass-covered mound aka the ‘sleeping dragon’, some rustic benches, a willow erection and a rather lovely carved wooden seal, the latter in memory of a local Mousehole resident, and some serves as an extension to the church graveyard.  The area is lined with a rather interesting collection of tress, including sallows, myrtles and sycamores.  These trees are proving to be a fabulous haven for a massive array of lichens, mosses and liverworts, many of which I am thus far sadly only to admire without being able to confidently give them a name.

With the exception of community events, such as the annual church summer fête, more often than not the ‘land behind the village hall’ is free of people, allowing one to wander at will, leaf-turning to one’s heart’s content, and generally pottering about without the ever-present awareness that at any given moment, one will turn around to find somebody watching one with that characteristic look – the look that says, ‘I’m not really sure of what you’re doing, I’m not really sure that it’s a very normal thing for one to be doing but I think I’ll stand here and watch anyway, and with any luck, I’ll be able to catch your eye, then I’ll be able to make some witty remark about whatever it is I think you might be doing, before moving on and leaving you to get on with whatever it is you’re actually doing’. 

Well, fortunately, this morning was no exception, and it was little ol’ me, my camera and the birds.  Taking care not to slip on the gravestones which form the paved path leading from the entrances to the newer graves area at the end, I carefully made my way along the path, stopping every now and again to photograph the snow-covered features and nearby buildings as I went.  In the trees furthest from me were chattering Rooks and Jackdaws, up above soared Herring Gulls, and hopping about only ever a few feet from me, was a glossy male Blackbird, no doubt on the look-out from tasty worms and other titbits.  Then, as I neared the end of the path, something caught my eye – a brilliant flash of red, as something flew swiftly from the ground up into the corvids’ tree.  That scarlet flash and the characteristic flight that followed could mean only one thing – a Great Spotted Woodpecker.  Given their relatively new-found fondness for garden birdfeeders, you might think that my excitement at seeing a Great Spotted Woodpecker is somewhat over-the-top; however, it was the first time I’d seen one in the village, and anyway, why shouldn’t I get excited about seeing a Great Spotted Woodpecker?!  Too soon it was time to wander back home in order to depart for the day…

·   ·   ·

With the snow now pretty much all gone and the sun shining away merrily, we decided to interrupt our journey home with a stopover at Helston Boating Lake.  Here we hoped to see the Whooper Swan which had popped in for a visit but rather disappointingly we were out of luck, as despite having been seen here earlier the same day, it was now nowhere to be found.  Still, the friendly Mute Swans managed to win us over with their affections – the comedy of their ever-probing beaks coupled with their searching, dark eyes that eyed us longingly, wordlessly saying, ‘Feed me, feed me’.  We were also treated to an unexpected performance by a pair of ‘dancing’ Shovelers – a first for me in Cornwall.

Dunnock, Helston Boating Lake

Boating lake fully-circled, apple trees duly inspected for woolly aphids and psyllids (still too early), just as we were about to get into the car, I happened to spot the unmistakeable sight of the town’s sewage treatment works.  Golly gosh, how exciting!  Now, I have to emphasise that sewage works wouldn’t be my usual first choice of places in which to hang out but I’d been hearing interesting things about Helston Sewage Works – something to do with Siberian Chiffchaffs?  Of course, there was fat chance of my being able to identify a Siberian Chiffchaff but I still couldn’t resist further investigation.  After nipping off for a quick recce, I soon returned to gather the troops, filling their ears with the promise of ‘Goldcrests, funny finches and lots of little brown jobs’.  Who knew there was so much fun to be had at a sewage works?  Mind you, the lingering aroma wasn’t particularly pleasant but the thirty or so Goldcrests, funny finches (some turned out to be of the Gold variety but we were unable to properly make out the others), Chiffchaffs galore (some possibly of the Siberian variety…), Long-tailed Tits and other feathered delights more than made up for it.

And after that, it was time to go home…  but not before waving a quick ‘hello’ to a Snipe and a Little Grebe at Marazion Marsh and a fleeting visit to Penzance’s Battery Rocks to smile at the antics of the rather lovely semi-resident Purple Sandpipers.  All in all, a proper job of a birdy day!

Purple Sandpiper, Penzance

Sally - A BioBlitzing we will go...

“The time has come”, the Blogger mused,

“To write of many things:

Of bugs – and bees – and butterflies –

Of harvestmen – and – fleas

And why the weather’s up the spout –

And what to have for tea.”

(With apologies to Lewis Carroll)

Hello my little blog-friend, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I do hope you and the family are keeping well.  Eek, what to write – or perhaps that should be ‘how to write’, given the number of mistakes I’m making as I type.  But…  less of my personal failings and hang-ups - on with the job-in-hand.

In the land of BioListing, recording and the generally wonderful-but-perhaps-a-little-bit-nerdy world in which I’ve chosen to live, the past few months have been dominated by BioBlitzes – 24-hour events during which a given space is surveyed in order to find, identify and record as many wild species as possible*.

The first such event was the inaugural Tremough Bioblitz, which took place at the Combined Universities in Cornwall Tremough Campus in Penryn, and was admirably organised by University of Exeter Centre for Ecology & Conservation undergraduates.   A highly organised event, which was open to the public for only some of the 24 hours, as a so-called ‘expert’, I’d been enlisted to lead a number of walks.  Despite the best-laid plans, these turned into just the one walk, with the remainder of the time spent going about the usual business of wandering around, rummaging here, there and everywhere, with senses on full alert.   Disappointingly, the weather left a little to be desired, so it was definitely a case of nipping outside between downpours.  It was all a rather hectic yet fun experience, with some new species to add to the list: aphids, millipedes and plants, and some lovely new people met.  And, needless to say, one of the additional highlights of the event was the presence of a certain Nick Baker…

The Small Person with Nick Baker at Tremough BioBlitz

Next up was the third Rosewarne BioBlitz – a thoroughly enjoyable low-key event at Duchy College, Rosewarne near Camborne, where the usual suspects (plus a handful of extras) were on hand to get stuck into the job of seeking out all things wild and wonderful that reside on the extensive college site.  For once, the sun was shining, and we really couldn’t have asked for a nicer day, encompassing some inspirational botanising, dragonfly- and butterfly-pursuing antics in the wildlife garden, a relaxed sojourn by the wildlife pond, a group venture to the site’s outer limits, and some frantic moth-recording by means of a light and white sheet.  Highlights are too numerous to list in full but include the first ever Common Lizards Zootoca vivipara for the site, some lovely bugs, and some rather comical Screech Beetles Hygrobia hermanni.

Common Lizard Zootoca vivipara at Rosewarne BioBlitz

Then, the weekend of July 21-22 saw another inaugural event – the Garden BioBlitz: http://www.naturewatched.org/gbb.html  A combination of very little notice and having prior commitments meant that I was unable to give this the level of attention that I would have liked to.  However, on the Saturday, I did manage to spend a couple of (very hot) hours in my tiny, tiny jungle before being whisked away to experience the joys of Lafrowda Day in St. Just in the far, far west (as opposed to simply the far west), whilst on the Sunday, a far more concerted effort was made in fellow BioLister Brenda’s larger outdoor space.

What it lacks in area, our little garden certainly makes up for in species diversity, so despite only managing a couple of hours of investigating, all manner of goodies were uncovered.  Having a certain inclination towards the smaller, multi-legged creatures of this world, I took great delight in observing multiple colonies of five different aphid species, one of which was new to me: Cavariella pastinacae – found busy at work on the Parsnip plants leftover from last year’s vegetable-growing efforts.  Other new species included a single Lacehopper Cixius nervosus, a vast quantity of mines on Aquilegia produced by the dipteran larvae Phytomyza minuscula, and a previously-unnoticed rust Puccinia pulverulenta on the omnipresent Broad-leaved Willowherb Epilobium montanum.

Macrosiphum rosae on Teasel Dipsacus fullonum Garden BioBlitz

Blitzing Brenda’s garden proved to be equally (if not more) rewarding, perhaps notably due to the excitement of finding a thriving population of the Pittosporum psyllid Trioza vitreoradiata, hanging out, rather appropriately on Pittosporum bushes.  Admittedly, psyllids aren’t or wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea but each to their own, I guess!  In addition to my rather lovely psyllid, I was able to add another new bug to my list, this time a late instar Field Damsel Bug Nabis ferus, which was merrily wandering around Brenda’s mini-meadow, as were Common Green Capsids Lygocoris pabulinus and a good number of bouncy Common Froghoppers Philaenus spumarius.

A few unidentified odds and ends (mainly spiders and flies) notwithstanding, nearly 80 species were recorded for my little garden and about 150 for Brenda’s – not a bad weekend’s work, especially considering we had no moth trap to hand and lacked the time to have a really hardcore rummage in the undergrowth, let alone a decent delve into the soily depths.  Who knows how many more species we might have unearthed!

Common Frog(let) Rana temporaria Garden BioBlitz

Then, a mere week later, it was time for the long-awaited Windmill Farm BioBliz, when BioList members and other interested parties got together to do their stuff at Windmill Farm Nature Reserve (CWT/CBWPS) on the Lizard, here in Cornwall.  As others have already produced event retrospectives (see: http://wfarmnaturereserve.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/bioblitzed.html and http://consideringbirds.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/big-bioblitz-weekend-part-1/ et al.), I’ll try not to whitter on at length (I know, don’t hold your breath!).

So, the sun was shining, the tent was packed, some strange cakes had been made, and off we headed to Lizard Land, with Brenda in tow.  Itching to get started, we unloaded our stuff and took up residence in what was to be our home for the weekend.  It wasn’t long before other participants turned up, although the Up Country component didn’t make it for about another hour, and at 2pm, it was time to get started.  But where to begin?  I’d been eyeing up the nearby large patch of nettles and thistles, so for me it was easy, even if it did mean losing my starting companions, who headed off across a field towards one of the ponds/scrapes.  However, my nettle-poking efforts were soon interrupted by Warden-Andy and the invitation to accompany him in checking the known Adder Vipera berus sites.  How could I resist such an offer?!  After being rewarded with the find of several Adders (all female) enjoying the warmth provided by sheets of corrugated material, I was drawn to the allure of the dragonfly pond around the corner, whereupon I was greeted by the sight of Dragonfly-Steve thigh-deep in the water, busy collecting dragonfly and damselfly exuviae, which must have numbered in their hundreds.  Rather reluctantly, I managed to tear myself away from the dragonfly pond and all its glistening winged jewels, and headed off to the remarkably dry wet woodland, via a meadow alive with grasshoppers, butterflies and all manner of buzzing insects.

A Froghopper Neophilaenus lineatus Windmill Farm BioBlitz

Now, BioBlitzing certainly takes its toll, and after totting up a good number of species, reuniting with lost companions and greeting friends from afar, it was time to head back for a breather and to sort out notes, sort out unidentified finds, and generally recompose oneself. 

After a continuation of much of the same, mainly involving sweeping through vegetation, turning over leaves and beating trees, it wasn’t soon before the sun began to set (rather beautifully) and talk turned rather animatedly, to moth-traps.  I’m not entirely sure how many moth-traps were put in place around the site that evening but they numbered at least five.  Some rather intrepid BioBlitzers spent most of the night in the vicinity of one particular trap, interspersed with the odd 40 winks every now and again, in an attempt to record moths that decided to drop in for a passing visit only.  Despite protestations of low night-time temperatures and moth numbers being low generally, come the morning, there was a good variety of furry, winged beasties on which to feast our eyes.

Drinker Euthrix potatoria Windmill Farm BioBlitz

Then it was back out there in an effort to up numbers before our 24 hours were up.  All-in-all, an excellent time seemed to be had by all (even if I did spend the next couple of days prostrate on the settee, hurting from head to toe), with 400+ species being recorded.  The big question is, when and where will the next one be?  Bring it on, I say!

*For some general info on BioBlitzes, take a look here: http://www.bnhc.org.uk/home/bioblitz/

Chris: A Modest Garden Bioblitz

A typically blurry addition to the day's list, sat on our garden wall.

I only heard about the 2012 Garden Bioblitz via twitter last week – the medium by which modern naturalists now learn everything, it seems. But I shouldn’t have been surprised that unbeknownst to me, one of our number was involved in organising the event.  We’re a diverse, interesting bunch, I like to think. And I suppose that’s the only excuse I can offer for this blog not exactly taking off*:  that we’re too busy ferreting away at the myriad other things Biolisters are involved in, from blitzes to PhDs to the most dedicated amateur wildlife recording work you could imagine. And I can say that without being immodest, because thus far my own recording is of a much more limited and haphazard nature.

When I do pop up here and contribute a post it’s normally because I’ve had a sudden revelation about the wonders of a species group I’d hardly considered before, or because of inspirational events like Garden Bioblitz.

Inspirational why? Well, listing everything is no mean undertaking, as I’m sure I’ve pointed out. One couldn’t hope to build a good set of records cobbled together from chance sightings, photographs, and vague memories, but that’s essentially what I’ve been doing, most of the year. Like I said, haphazard. Where my listing has profited is when I dedicate an hour or three to really searching for things, identifying as I go where possible, and getting as many notes and pictures together as possible. The Garden Bioblitz (do visit its website) is basically a well-organised excuse to do so, with the added bonus of lots of other people doing it at the same time.

So I kitted up – sunhat, camera, binoculars, pen and paper and field guides to insects and flowering plants all stowed in my ‘man-bag’ – and headed out into the wilds of our shared garden. “You look like you’re going on an expedition,” my wife told me. And of course, I was. Because looking, and I mean really looking at the unsung, retiring stars of your garden’s wildlife will almost guarantee you a feeling of adventure and discovery. Simply by thinking to check the large bank of tall daisies next to where I usually just park my car, I saw my first ruby-tailed wasp, an astounding confection of metallic pink, green and blue. I have absolutely no idea what the spider below is, but it’s also not bad looking, and I’m looking forward to attempting to find out roughly what it is. 

Ok, I don’t have that many more examples. A lack of knowledge of what is a fairly limited garden, a lack of patience with intransigent flighty bees and hoverflies, and the distinct lack of juice in my camera battery combined to give me a fairly modest total of around 40 species.** I’m still working on the identity of many of them.  But the experience of putting together an ‘ordered’ list was invaluable. The few species which were new to me are now, hopefully, stored in my mental catalogue so that I’ll recognise them in future.   

And lastly, it’s renewed my determination to persevere with my overall year lists and coax them into some sort of order, at least by Christmas. At which point I’ll be well placed to start over and do the whole thing properly next time. Biolist 2013, anyone?

*For more regular biolisting inspiration – more often referred to in the wider wildlife watching  world as pan-listing, I understand – I’d suggest following the Talking Naturally team’s efforts on their blog, or the pan-species listing pages on Mark Telfer’s website. At least one individual has seen over 10,000 species in the UK, which is quite frankly ridiculous!

**I’ve seen most impressive scores of 176 and 146 from other Biolisters, and I hope I can coax them onto the blog with some nice words about some of them (pictures too, if we’re lucky!).

The Lesser of Two

Wildlife. Brilliant, isn’t it? Making lists – also brilliant. So what’s not to like about the concept of listing everything one sees in a year, whether it flies, crawls, bounds, squirms, or inches? Or maybe even sashays? Not much, I’d still say, with one large caveat – one quickly gets out of one’s depth.

Now, with birds, I’m OK. I’m a bird fan, I’ve liked birds for a long time, I generally know what something is the moment I get a good look. Even if it’s something I’ve never seen before: if I half expected to ever see one, I’ll hopefully have done my research and know what ID features to look for. Butterflies, too, are just about OK, with a slightly heavier reliance on the field guide. There aren’t so many to get to grips with, they’re brightly coloured, and if they stay still, you can generally get a photograph to refer to later.

However, move on to something less familiar, and I’m soon floundering. Take weevils for example. (Or leave them, if you prefer.) Until a few years ago, I’m not even sure I knew how to recognise a weevil. Now, I do. Although, saying that, all I can tell you about how to do so without cheating is that they are the beetles with the preposterous proboscises. Apart from these two brownish weevils below which don’t have particularly funny noses – yet I still look at them and think ‘huh, weevils’. Why they are weevils is a technical definition I should probably look up*, but one thing I can say for Bio-Listing is that it’s at least doing wonders for my ‘what order/family?’ skills.  

Still, I had a go at these two, and after a bit of internet digging and flicking through the ever excellent Chinery (Insects of Britain and Western Europe – highly recommended as an entomological jumping off point**) I concluded that the one on the left is probably in the Polydrusus  genus, and that the one perched on my van’s windscreen on the right is, despite looking very similar, actually a pea weevil.***

So weevil identification is possible. But, apart from myself, who have I just helped? The presence of one pea weevil along one hedgerow in Kent is of little biological relevance by itself. My records need to be plugged into the national network to be of any use, and ideally, to have been collected in a more rigorous, systematic fashion. That’s the direction our group is nudging each other in, and many of us are already submitting vast amounts of high quality data, often concerning organisms I know even less about than I do weevils – marine organisms, for example. It’s a whole other world.

But there are so many things to look at, and so much is new to me, I still find all the animal and plant groups distract from each other too much to have a concerted go at any one, birds aside. This was to have been the year of moths – but during the warm dry spell (now a distant memory) I got distracted by bees, wasps and wildflowers, then flies, a brief flirtation with the year’s first few butterflies, a side-step briefly into moths, my original intention, then lately back to plants in general. And bees again. And now weevils. Or spiders. Or the beautiful, bright orange fungus I saw this morning. One day, I’ll either settle down to just a few groups – knowing everything is probably a bit too much to ask. A master of biodiversity – now, wouldn’t that be something?

*”A weevil is any beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily.” – Thanks, Wikipedia! But why is a weevil a weevil?!

** Available here, though you may want to wait until September for the new edition – the old one is likely to prove pricey until then. Neither Michael Chinery nor his publisher pays me any commission, by the way!

**Without keys for each order, I usually struggle to do so well, and end up feeling more like one of the three incompetent entomologists. See no weevil, catch no weevil, ID no weevil…

Bird Tracking

When listing is more than just an indulgence

This ‘Bio Listing’ lark. Birding. Mammal spotting. Botanising. Whatever it is you do. It’s all just a jolly, right? A bit of fun, a competition: a bunch of geeks, showing off what we know. Maybe so, though it’s not like there’s anything wrong with enjoying yourself. Everybody is out for a good time: who can blame us?

But luckily for our consciences (and our egos), it just so happens that you can make (wait for the pun) your listing count. Oh yes. There are ways without end to share your biological records with somebody else who would like to know, and perhaps even with a scientist who will crunch the numbers and make some sense of it all. From big, annual projects like the Big Garden Birdwatch or Big Butterfly Count, or the less well known Moth Night, to year-round efforts such as BTO’s Garden Birdwatch or, indeed, recording schemes for any organism you could care to imagine, which I’ve no doubt would welcome ‘amateur’ records : see http://www.brc.ac.uk/recording_schemes.asp.

These might be familiar. I’m sure all are worth your involvement. But plug of the day is for the increasingly excellent Bird Track site, run by the BTO. I don’t use it nearly as often as that excellence deserves. Used well, it not only makes use of your birding but will give back – encouraging you to go out and bird even more, especially at local sites that may be under watched by others. The ‘Explore my Records’ feature enables you to see your sightings portrayed on a table, graph or map, filtered by date, location or species, and export data to a spreadsheet. You can compare year lists, generate graphs that show a species’ recording rate changing through the year, view spring arrival dates for swallows and other seasonal indicators. And all those records from thousands of birders, taken together, makes for an enormously useful data set that, as the name suggests, tracks birds in real time.

I should be making the most of its wonders – and if you bird, so should you. So let’s resolve together to make 2012 the year of Bird Tracking. I’ll be aiming to submit at least three complete lists a week (when you enter every species you saw at a particular site, along with start and end times to give an indication of effort – the most useful records for analysis), which will blow my previous recording rates out of the water. And coming back full circle, will lead to an awful lot of pleasing graph- and map-based opportunities for bird-nerdery by the end of the year. Win-win!