21st November 2021
Yet another rainy weekend, but this time I met up with Vanna Bartlett to have a look at some of the interesting invertebrates that she has been finding in Earlham Cemetery recently. We started off checking some gravestones for longhorn beetles (without success), but did find a couple of Orsillus depressus, a bug associated with Lawsons Cypress, along with the spider Zygiella atrica. In a different area we saw a very unusually patterned Eyed Ladybird (the biggest UK ladybird), the first time I'd seen this species since childhood. We then moved on to checking branches amongst leaf-litter for my main target, the harvestman Dicranopalpus larvatus. This species was new to Norfolk when first found here by Vanna and is still the only county site for it as far as I know. We managed to find both male and female specimens, which was good.
Exploring the rest of the cemetery I added another new species, Brown Larch Aphid (Cinara cuneomaculata) from Larch branches. A Parrot Waxcap (usually green) had started to turn pink, which apparently is something that happens after a frost. Across the other side of the ring road we followed some directions from Ian (mostly OK with the exception of a left/right mix-up!) to find a group of Grooved Cavaliers (Melanoleuca grammopodia). This was the first time I'd seen this species since 1995!
No comments:
Post a Comment