Spittle bugs - first survey

An initial drift around the garden, coaxing some of the nymphs out of their froth by wiping a bit of it away with a paper towel, was very easy. The nymphs weren't impressed, doing everything they could to hide or blow some more bubbles, so getting an in-focus photo was rather more challenging.

All the 'cuckoo spit' was on herbaceous or woody plants; Rosemary, Evening Primrose, Ribwort Plantain, Ragwort and Dock. The Pendulous Sedge had no cuckoo spit on it at all, and I couldn't see any on the Lilac or the Privet, or Grasses. Presumably we don't return records for plants where we haven't found something?

All the nymphs I found were green, so according to the BRIGIT Xylem-feeding insects website, (their ID section is great!) all are Philaenus spumarius, Meadow (Or Common) Froghopper. There were also some adults around, but they tended to ping off rather than sit for their photo. When I looked up the species to double-check identification, I was amazed at how variable the adults' colouration can be (so thank goodness the nymphs aren't!).

Philaenus spumarius Meadow Froghopper nymph on a paper towel rather than in foam

Philaenus spumarius Meadow Froghopper adult on Ragwort

Pretty cute! I hadn't realised, but the adults are covered in tiny hairs, so at certain angles, they appear to glisten.

By the time I'd wandered around getting some photos and generally getting distracted, the camera battery was dead, so I put it on charge and registered on iRecord, ready to edit a couple of photos and input the results the following day. Or sometime.

Ah, the joys of relational databases! This is where what I've noted collides with the way the records have been set up. In iRecord, it looks as though the records are numbers of insects at various stages (spit only, nymph, adult) for each host plant. Trouble is, there's a question about how long the survey took. I was out for about half an hour (probably more like 45 minutes, but I got a bit distracted by the blackbird chicks). Do I divide the survey time by the number of plant species? And an estimate of how many square metres. Well, the Rosemary is about one square metre, because it's huge, but I was drifting around in about 30 square metres of garden. Both time and area are mandatory questions. The Xylem-feeding insects website has a Survey Monkey driven survey (for those who don't want to tangle with iRecord), which doesn't contain the time and area questions and allows multiple plants to be listed, aggregating the total number of blobs of spit over all the plants. OK, surely I'm not expected to divide time and area surveyed per host plant, so same time of 30 minutes over 30 square metres it is. I can comment that they were all the same survey session if the database doesn't put the records together.

It took me a while to get used to what I was looking at. I found my way to instructions on the Xylem-feeding insects site on how to fill out the iRecord form and it looked simple enough, but it seems a bit glitchy.

The host plant is mandatory, and encourages users to look up the plant on the drop down list to enable the name to be spelled correctly for the database (data validation, very sensible!). Oh look, it doesn't recognise Rosemary, or Rosmarinus officinalis. Hmmm. Nor does it bring up a drop-down list for Evening Primrose, Oenothera. 'Other' it is then, to list the plants. Nope, a big red box appears saying 'unauthorised', and what I'd entered already was removed. Grrr! Oh well, if at first you don't succeed ... (go and hang out some washing, bring in the dry towels, coo at the blackbird chick in the Lilac, have a glass of water ...).

Having cleared the form, the drop down list for plants appeared. Strangely, it didn't recognise Other, (because it doesn't have Evening Primrose or Oenothera) and I had to scroll to the bottom of the list under O to find and select it, but otherwise it all went smoothly and the drag and drop for my few in-focus photos to be added against the record worked instantly.

It took me a while, but I was noticeably faster after my 8th record, finding that the less I typed into fields with drop-down boxes, the better.

Having entered my records, I decided to have a little explore and came across others complaining about how difficult the form was. I'm glad of my database knowledge and the time spent exploring the Xylem-feeding insects website, but I sympathise; not easy for someone new to iRecord and without knowledge of the spittle bug species.

Now I've got into this, I noticed some blobs on a patch of nettles, so I might go out to have a look at those.

There's a yellow warning for thunderstorms and heavy rain from Sunday (the day after tomorrow) to Tuesday. I wonder how resilient cuckoo-spit is to downpours?