5MR Fife

 After reading Seth's 5MR post (here) it occurred to me that last year, apart from a trip to Skye, I basically already live in 5MR! My office was already within 5MR before I started working from home. Pretty much all of my patches, too, are within 5 miles. In fact so much so that my intention in retirement was to potter about principally by bicycle (partly so I don't become a widening blob).

Here's a map of my patches within 5 miles of my house. Which is ... mmmm ... all my patches. I'm not sure whether that's a bit sad or good luck. It does have a very good range of habitat, from Emperor Moth to Pilot Whale.

Oh, and for the moment I'm not allowed to go out of Fife (why would one ever want to?)

Calais Muir: mixed wood. Very good, but being surrounded by new housing. Dogtown.

Fordell: old estate and Boy Scout Central in Scotland. Lovely wet woodland, largely unexplored.

Dalgety Bay: coastal loveliness. >2k spp. recorded

Inverkeithing: Bay, brownfield, disused quarry - calcareous coastal (Otter, Pilot Whale, Leach's)

Carlingnose Point - more calcareous grassland, classic seawatching point (Dropwort, Skuas)

Mossmorran - bog, heather, etc., muddy pool edge is unpublicised autumn wader spot (shhhh!!)

Cullaloe Hills - Conifer plantation, blaeberry

Cullaloe LNR - if you don't know ... >2k spp. recorded

Humbie Wood - historic Lobarion site, lovely damp wood. Bit doggy. Largely unexplored.

This was the entirety of my recording last year, so if you remove some Munro bagging with minimal (but nice!) recording you'd basically end up with my already-existing world.

And this is how we do it...

Braefoot Point NT178832 - vismig point 1

Inverkeithing NT137822 - vismigpoint 2 (old bike)

The coastal path can zip me through lots of prime habitat. Everything else is a bit uphill. Inverkeithing vismig point is 15 mins west, Braefoot 15 mins east. Cullaloe's 25 minutes, but uphill. And 15 mins back! Everything else is contained by a loop between my old house, my new house and my old office, which would take me about 1.5 hours to get around. Even the hills have access roads/cycle trails.

I didn't scribble my map, since I mostly use ViewRanger app on my phone,. But it did remind me that after some infuriating years of living on the edge of an OS map I ended up getting this!

In defence of iRecord

Since I feel like I end up writing this over and over I think it's better to put it in one place (maybe I already did it and forgot!)

Why we should all be using iRecord all the time for everything

1. The record is a record

Sounds obvious, right? You’d be surprised how many people give you some information which doesn’t constitute a record. iRecord won’t let you do that – you’ll have to make a properly constituted record (as a minimum date, location, species, recorder). And you don’t have to try to read iRecord’s handwriting then enter that into some kind of database.

 

2. One record for everyone

Anybody can make a copy of this record for their own use but one record is one thing. It shouldn’t, ideally, be one record on my PC and one record on the CMR’s and one record on the next CMR’s and so on. A record from an SWT reserve be accessed by SWT. A local records centre can automatically access your records too. A record can be accessed by a recording scheme (which is why so many recording schemes choose iRecord as their preferred method).

 

3. All info about a record can be held with that one record

In the old days – let’s say spreadsheet rather than the even older days of actual cards – a spreadsheet record might be queried. Then there’s correspondence where the recorder has to find voucher photos or provide additional info. Instead of that all being on one person’s personal email it’s with the record. That’s where it should be. Anyone querying the record forever going forward can look in this one location. Perfect.

 

4. A record is easily verified

A spreadsheet record will be assumed to be true if it’s reasonable. But it might be rubbish! I know because my CMR has corrected mistakes of mine which were within reasonable bounds. No spreadsheet method would ever have caught this. Instead accompanying photos allowed the error to be corrected easily in situ and all the data on that correction was with the original record. Including my own daft mistakes, sadly - a small price to pay.

 

5. Auto flagging of records

iRecord is perfectly capable of auto-flagging questionable records IF the recording scheme is not obtuse about sharing records. In fact, properly set up and accumulating verified records over time it will inevitably be the best way of doing this – no manual intervention required.

 

6. Recording lists of records is as easy as pie

Many people aren’t aware that you don’t have to type in a whole name to get a record in iRecord. If you type, for instance “sc she” in the species box it will offer you Scalloped Shell. If you type “l b b y u” it will offer you … the right species. And your OS gridref won’t end up in the North Sea because you’ll spot any error immediately when it shows it on the map.

 

7. “I don’t have time for this …”

If, as I do, you record across a wide range of taxonomic groups you will be very relieved that most recording schemes choose iRecord as their preferred method. Because instead of, come 1^st of January, figuring out 100 different ways to submit records to 100 different schemes you don’t have to do anything. All your records are already submitted. Hurray! They’ll also have been verified and downloaded by the scheme if they’re on top of it – which it’s much easier to be when you deal with records in real time and not on 1^st January (or March, or whenever they finally get to you). What’s more they won’t be trying to deal with records in 100 different formats from 100 different recorders which, I know from experience, is  a massive pain in the rear. I’ve downloaded all verified iRecord records in one minute followed by spending a month chasing handwritten records with incomplete info supplied.

Altica olerace ..... uhhhh. No. Altica palustris at Cullaloe LNR

From a grass pile sieved at lunchtime, and for the first time in the history of the world, I sieved a MALE Altica (Flea beetle, a specialist leaf beetle in the Chrysomelidae).

It would be easy, at last, to see then that this was Altica olerace ..... uhhhh. Not oleracea, then.

It seems to be A.palustris, though since NBN is playing up I'll have to be happy that it's as widespread as the book suggests. This makes it probably the most likely to encounter in Fife (along with oleracea, which this isn't).

This is a cracking site for comparing Altica boy bits: here

And presumably so much more, though I've just found it and haven't explored it yet.

Habitus - distinct humeri ("shoulders")

Bits

Limnellia fallax(Ephydridae) new to county from Cullaloe LNR

 After a 5 day campaign of tussocking and a (very small) bit of sieving of leaf litter and grass-piles my first new to county fly for 2021 is the delightful Limnellia fallax. Naturally, it's also new to Cullaloe LNR and to me.

Bembidion mannerheimii

 Bembidion mannerheimii is very close to Bembidion guttula. Closer, in fact, than traditional keys suggest, with recent publication indicating whether a specimen is winged or not is not 100% surefire way to separate the two - including in the same locations. This, from yesterday, I am taking to be mannerheimii until I can find the relevant article. It has two things which are separating it from B.guttula.

A new one for Cullaloe, but not for me.

Lacking two subterminal spots on elytrae

Wingless

On finding the Coleopterist article it seems that short-winged guttula nevertheless does still have more wing. I'm still happy with this as mannerheimii

Pt. II - Coleopterophilia

Most of the year has been spent actually looking for beetles, although it's a given that leaf litter sieving, tussocking and beating gorse and conifers will produce plenty of other inverts.

I've only found two Stenus species so far this year though there are 8 on the reserve list. The one below, S.juno, is more or less identifiable from this picture - all black legs, keeled tergites, ridge on the head with channels either side and the relative lengths of back leg bits. That's one of two beetle additions to the list so far, the other being Carabus problematicus (I actually thought both of these were already on the list). You can almost always get more than one species of Stenus out of a tussock and depending on the location (woodland/pondside) the species make up will differ. Maybe a worthwhile study if I ever stopped racing about trying to look at everything (so probably never, then).

Stenus juno

The beetles so far

Arachnophilia

 A couple of early year sessions at Cullaloe spent mostly tussocking and sieving leaf litter was bound to throw up a good variety of invertebrate specimens, but grabbing the limelight quickly have been the arachnids. Numerically it was always going to be the beetles, both in number and variety, and that's held true. However spiders, harvestmen and pseudoscorpions were quick in on the act (and mites, to be fair, but I can't do nowt with 'em). This shelf has been getting a bit of action (might resemble a different view of another blog not so far away).

A special find today was this female Drassodes cuprea, not new to reserve but new to me, which has a bonus guest. With a bit of luck, the guest may also be identified. Well, maybe a lot of luck, though I have a nice paper on wasps and their spider hosts that might help.

This is what "leisure time" means for me in January!

dry-ish leaf pile in the corner of the hide

Deschampsia tussock in the woods - one of 1000s

I had originally hoped I would have ten spider species by end of January, but it's probably reasonable to expect over 20. I haven't even rooted around for a grass pile yet or dropped a single pitfall trap.

2021 arachnid list at 3/1