Mark Gurney

@markgurn.bsky.social

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I’m here for birds, insects, plants, and kind people. 🏳️‍🌈 he/him

Four lines of sonograms from Kleidocerys bugs caught in floating frames. All have long vertical lines at about the same spacing. Top two from heather away from birch had colouration of ericae. Bottom two from birch or heather next to birch had colouration of resedae. I expected the ericae to have twice as many lines as the resedae, reflecting 16 Hz rather than 8 Hz.
Nine brightly coloured birds arranged in three rows of three. They are all facing left in the same pose. Seven are bright yellow and blue or black, two are black and scarlet with patches of sky blue. All are superb.
Illustrations of five identical looking small black weevils next to their dissected aedeagus. There are also illustrations of three dissected aedeagi, none of which is an exact match for the illustrations of the five species.
A tiny black weevil with its head ticked under its head and large eyes on the top of the head. The antennae look like they come out in the front of the eyes. It is a Rhamphus flea weevil, but we do not know which species. They are cute but difficult.
Twelve warblers with rather long cocked tails and fiery red eyes, all facing left. The top row has Sardinian with a dark grey head, white throat, and brown underparts; Ruppell's which is mostly pastel grey with white edges to wing feathers; and Cyprus which is like a dingy version of Ruppell's with a few dark speckles on the underparts. The second row has the long-tailed species: Dartford with wine-red underparts and dark blue-grey upperparts; Balearic, which is mostly greyish, but slightly brown-tinged on the sides; and Marmora's, which is very like Balearic, but less brown and a slightly darker throat. The third row has three identical subalpine warblers, with grey heads, pale rose-pink underparts, and brownish backs. They look the same apart from the right hand one, Eastern Subalpine, which has very slightly longer wings. The bottom row has Spectacled Warbler, which is brown with a rusty wing panel and a white throat; Common Whitethroat, which like a large Spectacled Warbler with blacker centres to the wing-coverts; and Lesser Whitethroat, which has a grey head, darker ear-coverts, a cold brown back, and black legs.
An illustration of twelve warblers. Each row has three similar species. The top three are grey with black heads and varying amounts of black below; the next row has three with long tails, two are all grey, one is wine-red below; then there are the three subalpine warblers, which are grey above and red or orange below; and the bottom row has three with white throats and brown backs, two have rusty wing panels and the other is rather different with dark legs and a rather cold tone. The birds are all facing left and in the same pose so it is easier to compare the differences between them.
A drawer of museum specimens of weevils. Above the species label for Hypera ononidis there is a hand-written label in red ink from Richard Thompson, a prolific weevil expert, dated 1987.