Four Hebrew Characters and a couple of Common Quakers were soon released leaving the more 'exciting' stuff which included this very worn and obviously overwintered Common/Smoky Wainscot - didn't know they did that!
A bit of gentle teasing with the paint brush got it to reveal its underwing but that too looks to be just about scale-free.
Suggestions as to which species anyone? And have any other moth-ers out there known either of these species to over winter?
A Grey Heron being chased by a few gulls over the garden was garden bird no. 27 for the year.
After some errands an hour was spent on a very busy beach with Frank.
In the meantime let us know who's spark out in your outback
Our Extreme Photographer was out on the North Blackpool Pond Trail, without his 'proper' camera (dohh) and found this Tortoise Beetle, we think it's a Thistle Tortoise Beetle, Cassida rubinosa; if it is it's a first for the Fylde and pretty scarce/under-recorded in Lancashire as a whole...and they shouldn't be out til May. The Common Green Tortoise Beetle doesn't have the brown on the scutellum.
Thoughts anyone.
He also had 27 Small Tortoiseshells, a Comma, a Speckled Wood and two Peacocks - not a bad butterfly haul!
4 comments:
Dave - re the Tortoise beetle - I don't know what a scutellum is - but if it's the brown bit at the top of the wing cases I've got a couple of shots from our garden that are very similar - of course these were also photographed not too far from the NBPT.
I'm not sure if the links work on blogger, but if so here are the pics - the 1st from May 2006
http://www.fyldecoastwildlife.co.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=18
& the next from April 2011
http://www.fyldecoastwildlife.co.uk/gallery/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=1
As suspected Cliff - under recorded rather than rare or scarce.
Thanks for those records - pics weren't there - I'll pass the dates on to LERN.
Cheers
D
Dave, One of Cliff's pics of the beetle is on page 19 of his last uploads (at bottom of page.
I did think I'd seen it before but couldn't be sure it was around here.
I have a feeling that many people are misidentifying Rubiginosa as Viridis,looking on Google images. Viridis is the one that's in most books and very few books show other species, so they think that must be the one!
Viridis does not have the rusty patch around the scutellum or the rusty line along the suture and the rear angles of the pronotum are not as pointed.
We should be able to sort this out don't think there's more than 40 species of leaf beetle in Europe.
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