Whilst we are not exactly falling over butterflies and bumblebees waking from their winter hibernation or seeing swarms of bats and packs of hedgehogs, as each days passes we are slowly starting to see more and more creatures and slowly chip away at the YETI's audacious 3,000 species target. When I say slowly I mean slowly, in fact 3 species but they all count and two of these are really indistinct species. As much as I want to be able to post full frame shots of sand martins and wheatears returning to their summer breeding grounds, we are going to have to hold on a little longer.
If we are going to manage 3,000 species its really going to come down to invertebrates and plants, such is the diversity of the first group that you could get 3,000 species in the recording area without seeing a single bird, mammal, amphibian or reptile. Impressive, but it makes identification an absolute mine field. The first species found is theoretically easy enough to identify. This is the common groundhopper Tetrix undulata one of two species found within this region (the other being slender groundhopper Tetrix subulata). As can be seen this is a smaller relative of the grasshopper, with perhaps more robust proportions. Unlike any of our native grasshoppers these two species can be found throughout the year.
Common groundhoppers do not sing (stridulate) like grasshoppers so are completely silent. The best way to find them is to look for small bouncing objects at your feet as you move through vegetation in suitable habitat. Common groundhoppers lay their eggs directly into the ground or in low growing vegetation, these hatch during the spring and early summer and go through 6 nymphal stages before becoming adults. Like grasshoppers groundhoppers are herbivores and this species feeds on a range of mosses and lichens during the day. Habitat typically comprises of dry or damp heath and woodland edge habitats in this region. Interestingly groundhoppers are quite good swimmers too.
The other two species are both (tiny c.5mm) beetles and both relatively uninteresting in terms of their life histories. One is a weevil (Curculionoidea) called Dorytomus taeniatus and the second a leaf beetle (Chrysomelidae) called Lochmaea suturalis. With so many species beetles tend not to do common names. The weevil is associated with willows particularly smaller sallow species like goat willow and grey willow. The leaf beetle is also associated with heather. I'm sure I am not the only one that finds weevils amazing looking creatures somewhere between a weird alien and a medieval plague doctor. The importance of such seemingly trivial species should not be overlooked as it is the larvae and adults of these kinds of species which ultimately form important early links within food-webs. As a naturalist I have always been fascinated with niches and how different species groups fit together, which has probably resulted in my inability to specialise.
In addition it was nice to find some frogspawn, the first I have come across this year. Undoubtedly even with the cold weather there will have been earlier laying dates than this. No such luck with adders yet though, however I have only really checked one site, the more low-lying hibernaculum will be checked over the weekend and hopefully will yield much better results. The temperature is still struggling to get above 6oC, we really look at 8oC to 16oC to observe basking adders.
Regardless there remains plenty of common lizard activity and the now maturing spiderlings, both of these keep providing me with more photography practice.
Common lizard (AGAIN!!!!)
Garden or Cross spider Araneus diadematus, after leaving a crack in a fence post, a typical overwintering location.
No comments:
Post a Comment