Toft Churchyard Lichens

Today's post definitely a preliminary look at what is growing on the walls and gravestones in our village church. They were very difficult to photograph handheld in not very good light. I will try again with some type of lighting to get sharper images for ID, The summary image at the end shows the IDs that various apps suggested - further shoots and comparisons of images should confirm or not these first attempts and then to check with other sources.

Toft Churchyard Insects

A few bees and friends from a very windy session at Toft Churchyard. There were mining bees everywhere - Andrena cineraria, the Ashy Mining Bee, males have emerged in very large numbers along with  Andrena flavipes and Andrena scotica. I recorded two species of Nomad bees Nomada goodenia (male and female) and N. flava which parasitise the species of mining bees present at the moment so all fits. Bombus pascorum and Andrena fulva complete the sightings. Good to see two other insects that were here at this time last year - the Pied Shieldbug and Rhingia campestris hoverfly.

Toft Churchyard 30th March: Shieldbugs!

Warm sunshine brought out a number of Shieldbugs including two new species for my list, Bronze Shieldbug and Bordered Shieldbug.

Toft Churchyard 27 March: Bee-flies!

First Bee-flies seen yesterday - quite late compared with other years. These two were newly emerged from their burrows and took a time to fly off. Their appearance no doubt linked to more bee species appearing. My favourite image is the very delicate lacewing inside a daffodil.

Toft Churchyard 24 March

I am trying to find a good way of keeping visual plus species detail records of the survey that I am doing of the insect and other invertebrate etc life in Toft Churchyard this year. So far this is the best of have been able to come up with that doesn't involve any steps outside Lightroom which I use for cataloguing