What Lies Beneath

After yesterday's long walk, I was pleased to find that my legs still worked just fine and I wasn't suffering any throbbing, stiffness, aches, pains or blisters whatsoever. In fact, I felt that I could walk for miles and miles again today - but I knew the weather was meant to deteriorate this afternoon, so I kept it local. 

I headed down to Uig Wood and set to heaving over boulders and rubble behind the community hall car park area, always good for large numbers of Tandonia budapestensis and Deroceras invadens amongst smaller numbers of Deroceras reticulatum and the odd Boettgerilla pallens or Limax maximus, neither of which I saw today, though plenty of the others were present. Slugs aside, I was mainly looking for beetles in an attempt to bump up the tally for my Challenge 2019.

I managed just one beetle. Not one species, I mean just one individual! Dunno where all the carabids were today, all I found was this one staphylinid

Quedius fuliginosus - 13mm in length and one I've recorded from here before

My first impression was that it was going to be somewhere in the Philonthus/Quedius area, and indeed it keyed through to Quedius fuliginosus, one I've had here before and already known from the Inner Hebrides.

I also found a few fly larva on the underside of boulders, which was a bit surprising. Usually I only ever find these things in leaf litter. Or perhaps I'm just getting better at finding them, now that I'm actively looking for them?

Syrphidae hoverfly larva - possibly from the genus Epistrophe 
Edit confirmed now by Nicola Garnham on the UK Hoverflies Larval Group Facebook Group

Fanniidae (lesser housefly family) larva. Something like 60 species in Britain (Fannia and Piezura)

Some sort of mysterious fly larva, I guess?

I also found this tiny thing beneath a boulder in long grasses at the top of the beach

An ensign scale, probably an Arctorthezia sp.

It appears that Arctorthezia cataphracta is the likely species, but I found this online paper which has added a couple of species to the genus. I need to grill this beast properly under the microscope to be sure. Newsteadia floccosa is the only other confusion species as far as I can tell, but this doesn't appear to be anywhere near as 'ornately' scaled as that species. Going through the keys, this doesn't happily drop out anywhere, either I'm being a dolt (likely) or it's not on the British list (unlikely!)

One last insect of interest (to me, at least) was this hopper nymph found beneath a bit of mossy bark laying on the woodland floor

I still have absolutely no idea what it is, but I find these fluffy-tailed beasts quite often, always beneath large trees in established woodland. And invariably sheltering beneath debris/boulders part buried in the soil.

SO...basically a whole bunch of unidentified/unidentifiable stuff - this is not the way it was supposed to be! It's a pity the fly larvae aren't quite so readily identifiable. Maybe I should attempt to rear a few through.

Today's song is very special to me. Not because I'm a huge Beverley Hills Cop fan, but because about ten days back the plumber cut off the hot water and heating to my annex. Today he's fixed it, I have warmth again! This means I can finally start using my microscope again, it had expanded internally in the cold temperatures, rendering it completely unusable. After a brief nervous breakdown, I put it into storage in a heated building elsewhere on site. Much to my relief (you have no idea just how much!) it realigned itself once warmed up, but it's stayed offsite until now. Happy days indeed :)