Signs of new life even in the depths of winter...

January 14th 2015 and at long last a chance to have a scoot around the woods to see what's happening at this time of year. You would expect everything to be well and truly shut down for winter, with little or no signs of life? Not the case this year, as I soon began to realise when after entering Comfort's Wood from the Swattenden Lane entrance, I hadn't walked more than a few metres when I stopped to look at how the hazel trees were doing and spotted this little fly...

I think this is Episyrphus balteatus, sometimes called the marmalade hoverfly, a relatively small hoverfly of the Syrphidae family and one that I don't recall ever seeing in January before.

 The hazel itself seems to be quite advance, as well as the male winter catkins there are already female flowers, which appear before the leaves...

I am still finding fungi in the woods and spotted this one which I haven't seen before and haven't managed to get an identity for yet...

This bracket fungus was growing on a coppiced tree stump that also seemed to be a favourite spot for rabbits...

There is also lots of fantastic lichen to be seen, especially on ash...

New growth appearing on some of the trees as well..

Some of the blackthorn is bursting into leaf already...

This bluebottle fly (above) was sunning itself on the ash along with a couple of chums.

I found a few strings of bryony berries hanging in the bare branches of some saplings beside the seasonal pond...

I wasn't at all surprised to find hibernating green shieldbugs in the leaf litter...

Palomena prasina-The Common Green Shieldbug

Palomena prasina-The Common Green Shieldbug

But then I came across something that you don't see every day, a hairy snail! Yes, I did say hairy...

Now this isn't the usual type of hairy snail that I see, namely Trochulus hispidus which is quite dark and plain looking compared to this one. I am wondering therefore if this could be Pseudotrichia rubiginosa, or the German Hairy Snail as it is sometimes called? I think this species is possibly more related to water and so I am not too sure but will try and do a bit more research on it.

This little caterpillar was my last find of the day and again, was in leaf litter...