September 2014

Clean sheets

A fresh start today as I've been guilty of listing for the sake of listing. It's not a new phenomenon - when I was a keen birder I wanted to see 400 species before I was 30. I'm now nearly 50 and have still only seen 319 species as I completely lost interest in the futility of chasing around after birds found by other people. I admit that I was aiming to have seen 5000 species by the time I'm 50, but that's not going to happen either. Whilst I've seen some fabulous species this year thanks to the generosity of others sharing information, even Late Spider Orchid and Tansy Beetle have been...

Not often that preparing dinner provides a tick

neilmoths's picture

I was preparing dinner the other night and noticed tenanted mines on the sugarsnap peas I was about to cook! They were purchased from Tesco, Princes Risborough (Bucks, VC24) and originate from the USA. They are tenanted, and appear to be a Liriomyza species.  Following a post on the UK leafminers which seemed to confirm my initial diagnosis of genus.  As this is a potential notifiable pest species (and I wanted to find out what it was!), I sent the bag of peas to FERA, and Chris Malumphy has...