NORWICH: Earlham Cemetery insects

13th August 2018

After work I went for a short walk in Earlham Cemetery as part of a rather long walk home. I found an interesting looking little chalcid wasp, certainly a Brachymeria, I'm fairly confident it's Brachymeria tibialis although I've left it to the county recorder to decide if he is happy to accept that. A couple of Rhopalids were also good to find - I've seen Stictopleuron punctatonerosus before, but Stictopleuron abutilon was new for me. I'll be leading a leaf mine and plant gall walk here in September, so I had a quite recce, finding the mine of Stigmella ulmivora on Elm (the exit slit was on the leaf underside separating from another similar species).

 Stictopleuron abutilon

 Stictopleuron punctatonerosus

WHITLINGHAM: Parent bugs and a chalcid wasp

31st August 2017

An hour at Whitlingham, and as a singing Chiffchaff was the only bird of note I spent my remaining time checking the trees. One of the first Alders I checked had a brood of late-instar Parent Bugs clustered round in a ball, which was nice to see.

I managed to record three new moths for my patch list, although unfortunately I didn't see any of them as they were all from vacant mines. These were Stigmella tiliae (on Lime), Stigmella lemniscella (on Elm) and Bucculatrix bechsteinella (on Hawthorn). The harvestman Paroligolophus agrestis was one I'd not recorded before, but apparently it is one of if not the commonest harvestman in the UK, so I'm glad I rectified that. The highlight of the walk was a tiny but beautiful chalcid wasp, Ormyrus nitidulus. For scale, it is sitting on half an Oak Knopper Gall.

 Ormyrus nitidulus