Spring Loaded

I took the girls on an amble round the village yesterday as the temperatures hit a soaring 17c. Absolute bliss and Isabelle wanted to do a little biological recording so we took her notebook out and recorded what we saw.

After a couple of queen Buff-tailed Bumblebees from Cumbria earlier in the week marked my first bees of the year, a brace of White-tailed Bumbles were pottering about the station gardens. Also present were my first Hairy-footed Flower Bees Anthophora plumipes with males zipping all over the place. Small Tortoiseshells were very much in evidence and there were Colt's Foot and Common Field Speedwell Veronica persica growing in the disturbed ground.

Common Field Speedwell

As we ambled on we saw loads of singing birds and plenty more butterflies including a couple of Peacocks. There was a brief Eristalis sp. Drone Fly on a Dandelion. Lesser Celandines were everywhere and a handful of Buttercups were still hanging on. It was fabulous to be out. Earlier in the day I found the Firethorn Leaf Miner on the Pyracantha in the garden which was new. Earlier in the week I had found Orpine Sedum telephium in a hedgerow in Cumbria and Hart's Tongue Rust Milesina scolopendrii which means five new PSL ticks taking me onto 1075. 

Getting Panned

A thread on low hanging fruit on the Pan-species Listing facebook page had me opening my eyes for a couple of lichens and a couple of fungoid plant pathogens which are pretty easy to see. All I had seen before or so I thought but I couldnt remember where or when. These are things that are everywhere but easy to ignore. First up was Bracken Map which is a fungoid plant pathogen which occurs on Bracken and is easily seen on dead stems due to its near ubiquity. Sadly my first patch of Bracken was one of the few where it is absent but soon I had seen many patches of it including in the photo below.

The other fungoid organism was a parasite of Rubus sp. and a quick look at the remaining leaves on a bramble (didnt look like typical Rubus fruticosus) saw some small circles with pale centres, Phragmidium violaceum.

The brace of lichens were both very straight forward and you will have seen them too. You know when it looks like there is chewing gum on the floor but its not a lichen. If it is circular then on every untrodden bit of path ever meet Lecanora muralis. And that greenish wash that appears on damp brickwork that never really resolves into anything. Thats Psilolechia lucida. Not the four most inspiring PSL ticks but like Pokemon, you have to catch them all. I quite like Bracken Map as well...