A quick tour

A short while back I changed the card in my camera and now I can't find the full up one that I cunningly hid somewhere in my room. So, despite there being a backlog of some three weeks from the last blogpost, I don't have very many images to show you! 

Luckily I'd already shifted a few onto my desktop, including several showing specific locations I intended to target for fly and beetle searches. Then lockdown happened. To be fair, they are all in my home 1km square and I am allowed out once per day for 'exercise'. I'm not sure swinging a net and sieving piles of woodchip was quite what the government were thinking of when they defined exercise, so I shall try to restrict any such activities to when I'm well out of sight of any members of the public (not tricky around here!)

So here's a very short virtual tour of some hotspots for you....

This was a rather substantial Sycamore until recently, will soon be full of great beetles!

These large fallen logs are an absolute magnet for sunbathing flies

Again, the lichen-encrusted rocks in this wall are a magnet for sunbathing flies

Still to find Norellia spinipes on any daffodils this far north - not for lack of trying though!

There was a solitary sallow at the end of this lane that put forth good numbers of catkins. I was banking on this tree to provide me with a run of interesting flies and beetles. Sadly, the council foiled that plot and all that remains is a six inch high stump and a thin carpet of woodchip. At least they could have heaped the chippings instead of spreading it around. Or left the tree alone, actually!

I took myself for a wander over a nearby hill last week, the sun was out and I couldn't stand to just stare at the world through the window. Sunny but very chilly and my attempt at finding a sheltered suntrap found me staring at a windswept Ivy hang with buggerall on it. I spent a short while sweeping over the low grasses beneath trees high above the River Conon. Lots of ticks (the arachnids I mean, not lifers) and this assortment of flies, mirids and a bunch of Stenus for my efforts

Currently lounging in a small Backlog Box...

The fungus gnat Mycetophila ornata

EDIT - these are neither beetles or flies. My bad!

    

I bought myself an LED ring light for my microscope, I honestly have no idea how I got by with my desk lamp beforehand. £25 well spent, just check out the difference!

Euophryum confine viewed down the barrel of my microscope as lit by the desk lamp

Ta da!!!! Same beast, same set up, but illuminated by the ring light rather than the desk lamp

I'm pretty pleased with the extra level of detail I can discern with the LED set up. For features requiring low side lighting I can revert back to the desk lamp, it's right next to the microscope anyway so no hassle there. The LEDs are dimmable, from very bright to barely visible and the camera sensors deal with the light source a lot better too, colours are now much truer to life. The only downside is the reflection bouncing back from the insect itself, as can be seen on the pronotum above. But basically a sound purchase, in my opinion.

The only other thing of note was finding my first Cantharis soldier beetle of the year, though not quite how I'd been anticipating the occasion

Taken just before it fell to the woodland floor, never to be seen again! 

I'm now at 93 species of beetle identified from 22 families (plus an extra two families where I haven't identified the specimens to species level) and 28 species of fly identified from 17 families (plus an extra 11 families where I haven't identified the specimens to species level). 

Not sure where The Ghost is at regards his beetle family tally, but he's certainly behind me for flies, though I fully expect that to change any day now. Mark is hot on my heels regards number of diptera families he's recorded so far this year. As for the beetles? Sheesh, who even  knows! He's probably just waiting for the final four or five families to fall and that'll be him done for the year... I'm really out of my depth here, but it's still fun. 

For now.