I found this brown tortrix moth in our kitchen a few days ago. It is either Acleris notana or Acleris ferrugana. Deciding which would require microscopic examination (see here).
Photo taken in Reading, Uk, on 2009-11-20.
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I found this brown tortrix moth in our kitchen a few days ago. It is either Acleris notana or Acleris ferrugana. Deciding which would require microscopic examination (see here).
Photo taken in Reading, Uk, on 2009-11-20.
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The magpie ink cap mushroom, Coprinopsis picacea (family Psathyrellaceae). This species is also often referred to by its old name Coprinus picacaeus.
Photo taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-11-13.
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A red kite (Milvus milvus), photographed from our living room window. As I have probably said before, they are fairly common in the Reading area, but this is the best photo I have managed in several years of trying. I just never seem to have the camera ready when they appear.
Photo taken in Reading, UK on 2009-10-24.
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A pygmy moth (family Nepticulidae, order Lepidoptera) on a bramble leaf (Rubus sp.). Most pygmy moths are leaf miners, that is their larvae eat their way through the insides of leaves. There are several species that have this single white stripe across dark grey wings, with white legs and and an orange head, but I suspect this specimen is probably Stigmella aurella (=Nepticula aurella=Stigmella fruticosella). Firstly, S. aurella is widely quoted (eg: here and in Insects of Britain & Northern Europe by Michael Chinery, Collins, 1993) as being one of the commonest of this type of moth in the UK and, secondly, it specializes in mining Rubus. The matches for the following species are not as good: Stigmella pretiosa (found in Scotland but not in England), Stigmella plagicolella (mines blackthorn and other Prunus trees, but not Rubus), Stigmella salicis (mines broad-leaf willows, but not Rubus), Stigmella obliquella (mines smooth-leaf willows, but not Rubus), Stigmella tityrella (mines beech trees, not Rubus), Stigmella microtheriella (mines hazel and hornbeam, but not Rubus), Stigmella luteella (mines birch trees, not Rubus), Ectoedemia occultella (mines birch, not Rubus), Ectoedemia heringi (mines oak leaves, not Rubus). Of course, it is possible that this moth was only on the bramble leaf by accident, and that its larva had mined a leaf on a nearby tree.
Photo taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-07-16.
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From an overcast day back in August, a male Leucozona glaucia hoverfly (family Syrphidae, order Diptera).
Photo taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-08-06.
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Over the past few months I have seen and photographed lots of grey and grey-green flies like this one, but have not had much success with identifying them. However, the orange abdomen of this one gave me hope that I might be in with a chance of identifying it down to the genus or even species level. And, yes, a search through diptera.info showed a fairly good match with several species of Phaonia, in particular P. rufiventris, P. subventa and P. bitincta (all family Muscidae, order Diptera). I also came across some posts by Joke van Erkelens in this thread at diptera.info which indicate how to distinguish these species. But, unfortunately, my photos are not clear enough to allow me to do this, so I will have to stick with Phaonia sp. for the time-being, at least.
Photos taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-10-25.
]]>At Google, we generally program in three languages: C++, Java, and Python. None of them are functional languages: all are state-heavy, imperative, object-oriented languages. But the more I've read and written code in this code-base, the more I've found that functional code is the best way of building large things. When I look at a piece of code, if the code is basically functional, I've found that it's much easier to understand, much easier to test, and much less likely to produce painful bugs. It's gotten to the point where when I see code that isn't functional, I cringe a little. Almost everything that I write ends up being at least mostly functional - the places where I use non-functional code, it's because the language and compiler aren't up to the task of keeping the code efficient.
Read the whole article here.
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From back in the middle of the summer, an orange and black sawfly. At first I thought this was Arge sp. but I have just noticed that it has too many segments in its antennae (about 8, as opposed to the 3 that Arge have), so I now think it is Athalia sp. (family Tenthredinidae, order Hymenoptera). The black coloration on the thorax does seem to be quite variable in these orange and black sawfly species.
Photos taken in Reading University grounds, Reading, UK, on 2009-07-14.
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