Saturday 22 July 2017

Lletty Brongu Lanes

After three days rain and people mentioning that there are very few hovers about after the rain, I waited till the afternoon and better weather to take a walk. It was quite warm at 20c and very little wind but was overcast on times.  When not expecting much you always end up with a good day, I realized this when I got out of the car and the first hogweed plant has 7 species of hoverfly on it. In  a 1 mile round walk hoverflies were everywhere and in huge numbers. I recorded over a 1000 flies of 45 species on the Hogweed and supporting plants, which was a new daily record for me beating last years 43 at Blaencaerau around the same time of year. With so many hoverflies I didn't notice much else except for a couple of longhorn beetles Rutpela maculata and some tortrix moths in Pammene aurana.


 Chrysotoxum species - a large individual showing characteristics of both "cautum" and "elegans" [the 2 larger ones of the genus]. For cautum it shows on the antennae seg 1 is shorter than seg 2, but also shows seg 1 + seg 2 is longer than seg 3 which should not be in cautum but in elegans. Also the thoracic hairs are pale and not as long as the antennae are wide again favouring elegans. The second picture shows that the yellow on tergite 2 bends down and thickens to the lateral margin like on elegans, on cautum it should be straight to the margin. I kept the specimen and it keys out to elegans. I'll send the photos to Roger Morris of HRS to see if he can add anything on the ID. Otherwise we will have to wait until the end of the year when the specimens are assessed. I'll update with his thoughts when I get a reply.  update - From photos Roger Morris reckons it's Chrysotoxum cautum [worth a try though 👮]
 Chrysotoxum bicinctum
 Dasysyrphus albostriatus
 Epistrophe grossulariae
 Eupeodes latifasciatus - key'ed out
 Leucozona glaucia
 Myathropa florea
 Platycheirus granditarsus
 Scaeva pyrastri

2 comments:

Paul tabor said...

Martyn, Had a good day up the forestry tracks top llan and garnwen too i recorded a record for me of 11 scaeva pyrastri in a single session they seemed to be everywhere at the moment including a large influx of eupeodes on the wing mainly corollae and luniger. 35 species altogether in a couple of hours between showers. I recorded a tree wasp species that i havent had before either Dolichovespula norwegica don't know if you've come across one of these before i'll send you a picture

Martyn Hnatiuk said...

yes it was a good day some of the bigger numbers included

300 Episyrphus balteatus
50 Eupeodes species
30 Eupeodes corollae
20 Eupeodes luniger
13 Scaeva pyrastri
200 Syrphus
50 Cheilosia illustrata
80 Chrysogaster solstitialis
100 Neoascia tenur/meticulosa
50 Neoascia podagrica/obliqua
50 Sphegina clunipes/elegans
150 Eristalis pertinax

Tree wasp is quite common around the forests, I see it regularly and there are photos of it somewhere on the blog.