Exciting!!

On 14th September, Christine (Whitehead)  went exploring and photographing in the conifer woodland.  She took the photograph below, a yellowish fungus, sort of fan shaped with wavy edges and a sort of stem.  She identified it as Yellow Fan - Spathularia flavida - exciting!   Another new species!

But on identification and further research, wait for it, she found out the following - Foxglove Covert is only the third site recorded in Yorkshire with a possible further three sites in the North East and understood it to be on the Red List of Rare Species.

What an exciting find.  It was still in the woodland this week.

On Thursday when David, Elizabeth and Tolly (dog) were attempting to return to the boardwalk a 'caterpillar' was found on Water Figwort.  It was examined, and photographed with difficulty as he would not stop crawling around and trying to get underneath the leaves.  We attempted to identify this 'caterpillar' to no avail.

Once the photographs had been downloaded and enlarged it was noted that it has more than 4 pairs of claspers and so was not the larva of a butterfly or moth but that of a sawfly.  Further investigation revealed that this was Figwort Sawfly, Tenthredo scrophulariae.

And yes, another new species for the list!