30 Friday Sep 2016
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This little Harlequin ladybird was just one of the many insects – flies and hoverflies, honey bees, bumblebees and wasps, and a Red Admiral butterfly – that were enjoying the nectar and pollen to be found on these ivy flowers, an important source of food for so many insects in the autumn months.
29 Thursday Sep 2016
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Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly, Gatekeeper, Gonepteryx rhamni, Pyronia tithonus, Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta
Though I love many things about the coming of autumn, it is also a time when many other things I love disappear for the year. The butterflies are one of those things. Gone now are the gorgeous Gatekeepers (Pyronia tithonus) that kept me company during my frequent wanders around my local cemetery.
Gone too is the pale, subtle beauty of the Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni). Though I searched for more, I saw only one this year, at the Parc Slip Nature Reserve.
I have noticed, over the past couple of weeks, a little resurgence of Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta), as they feast on the ivy flowers that are just beginning to bloom here in Cardiff and are providing a late season banquet for bees, hoverflies and butterflies. All too soon, these creatures will also fade away, hopefully to come again in the springtime when the temperatures begin to rise and the days to lengthen.
28 Wednesday Sep 2016
I’ve not been able to find out anything about the star of today’s world wildlife Wednesday post but I know one thing for sure – it’s a master of disguise!
It’s a Coconut grasshopper (Pseudophyllanax imperialis) and I encountered it while on a brief holiday in the seaside town of Kep in Cambodia. Apparently, it’s one of the largest species of grasshopper in the world and can be found in other coconut-growing locations, like New Caledonia, in the Pacific.
I’m not sure in what ways it’s associated with coconut trees because its patterning and colouration make it look more like the leaf of an ordinary tree rather than the palm fronds of a coconut. Mind you, those jaws look like it could quite easily crack open a coconut. Though it looks rather fierce, these grasshoppers are harmless to humans, otherwise I wouldn’t have had it sitting on my hand!
27 Tuesday Sep 2016
I’m on a roll! Yesterday I told you about my fifth recorded sighting in Wales of a Mugwort Case-bearer moth; today I am thrilled to report a first recorded sighting for Wales!
Now I must admit that I didn’t actually recognise this little creature when I first saw it at my local cemetery on 16 September and, as it was so tiny and my photos of it are not crisp, I almost didn’t record it. And, when I did, I wrongly recorded it as a nymph of the Rhododendron leafhopper (Graphocephala coccinea).
Luckily, Alan Stewart, the national recorder for Auchenorrhyncha, realised my mistake and corrected my record. In his notification email, Alan wrote, ‘In fact, it’s more interesting because this is a species that arrived in Britain only recently and has gradually been spreading. Very interesting that it has arrived in Wales.’ That last sentence made me sit up and pay attention and, sure enough, when I checked with the team at SEWBReC, they confirmed that there were no recorded sightings so far in Wales. So, let me introduce you to Zyginella pulchra – it may be tiny but it is certainly not insignificant. When / if I can get better images, I will post them.
26 Monday Sep 2016
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Artemisia vulgaris, biodiversity in Wales, British moths, Coleophora artemisicolella, mugwort, Mugwort Case-bearer moth, UK moths, Welsh biodiversity
A few weeks ago, when I walked his butterfly transect with my colleague Dave Slade of SEWBReC, the South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre, Dave stopped to inspect the seed heads of each mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) plant we passed. Of course, I had to ask why and he explained that he was looking for signs of the rarely recorded Mugwort Case-bearer moth, Coleophora artemisicolella. As the UK Moths website explains, ‘The larva forms a case very closely resembling a seedhead, and moves from seed to seed leaving diagnostic small holes in the side of each one.’ Though it flies during the months of July and August, the moth itself is seldom seen (I certainly haven’t spotted it) and has previously been considered quite rare. It may be, however, that it is actually just rarely recorded as who but moth fanciers would know to look for it!
I am not one to turn down a challenge and, after thoroughly checking every mugwort plant I found (not that many, to be honest) for the following three and a half weeks, I finally hit the jackpot at one of my local biodiversity hotspots, the Howardian Local Nature Reserve! These photos may not look exciting to you, but this is only the fifth recorded sighting of the Mugwort Case-bearer moth’s seed-head holes in the whole of Wales!
25 Sunday Sep 2016
It’s fungi time! Well, strictly speaking, it’s fungi time all year round but autumn, with its rainy days and cooler night-time temperatures, always seems to be the time when fungi are most apparent, their colourful and plentiful fruiting bodies popping up wherever you look. One of the most colourful and plentiful, which can actually appear any time from April through to the time Jack Frost starts leaving his icy crust on the ground, is Sulphur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare).
As you might guess from its name, its cap is usually quite a bright sulphur-yellow, though it sometimes has an orange tinge and a white band around the cap edge. It grows in large tufts or clumps, sometimes numbering several hundreds of individual mushrooms. Sulphur tuft is a wood-rotting fungus that happily devours both conifers and broadleaf hardwood trees, so can usually be seen in mixed woodland areas clustered on old stumps or bursting out of the cracks in the bark of fallen trees. As well as being very common in Britain and much of Europe, it’s also a frequent sight in North American woodlands. Sulphur tuft is poisonous so a feast for the eyes but not the belly.
24 Saturday Sep 2016
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Yesterday I discovered I now have 100 followers on this blog – not a patch on those blogs that have thousands, even millions of followers, but I am utterly delighted just the same. Yesterday I also discovered these two gorgeous and very fresh Earthstar fungi (Geastrum sp.) while out wandering along an old railway cutting, now walking track, at a local nature reserve. I have blogged about Earthstars before and they are part of the reason behind the name of this blog, though my idea was also to make our Earth and all her wondrous creatures and creations the stars of my photographs and writing. I presume that you, my followers, are also charmed by the natural world around us, so I would like to dedicate this blog and these Earthstars to you. Thank you all most sincerely for your likes and your comments and for following along with me.
23 Friday Sep 2016
Tags
American nightshade, American pokeweed, berries, berry, Bute Park, Phytolacca americana, pokeweed
It’s toxic! If the sap touches your skin, it can burn. If you ingest the leaves, you might suffer a severe reaction. If you think these berries look delicious, think again – they will poison you. I think you get the picture – but what a beautiful picture it is, don’t you think? I am just entranced by the colours and shapes of the berries.
This is Phytolacca americana, the American pokeweed or American nightshade or just plain pokeweed, and I found it growing alongside the hydrangeas and rhododendrons in Cardiff’s Bute Park. It’s a herbaceous perennial that grows to a height of about 8 feet (2 metres) and is native to the USA, where it’s apparently considered a weed by the agricultural community. However, several species of bird and some small beasties are unaffected by its toxicity so enjoy an autumn feast on the berries. And, according to Mrs M. Grieve’s 1931 A Modern Herbal, various parts of the plant can be used for a range of natural remedies, from drenching cattle to treating chronic rheumatism and haemorrhoids. I think I’ll stick to admiring the berries!
22 Thursday Sep 2016
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I sometimes get asked how I come up with enough ideas to post a blog every single day. This post goes some way to explaining how it works for me. I walk … a lot, and my camera is my constant companion, and I am by nature curious about … well, everything, really … and I’m also quite an observant person. So, for example, I went out for a wander around one of my local parks on Monday afternoon, thinking I would see if there were any fungi about, and also to get some photos of berries for a future blog. In the process of taking those photos, I noticed how many galls there were on this one particular oak tree so also took some photos of those … which then led me to check the neighbouring trees for galls. (If you’re not sure what galls are, there will now be a blog post on them as well!)
When I got home and started going through my photos, this particular image really grabbed my attention because, for me, this is such a good example of one of Nature’s whodunnits. I look at this and my brain is immediately flooded with questions: how were these galls made? Why are they that shape? What is the creature that’s dead on the leaf? Is it a wasp? Did it make the galls? What killed it? It looks like it has white strands around it – a spider’s web or some kind of fungus? What created the bare patch where the leaf’s veins are showing? Was it the larvae of the wasp? What created the almost perfectly round hole in the leaf? Was that a leafcutter bee or something else? Was it the wasp? And what is the teeny weeny white thing? The shed skin of a larva perhaps?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions … yet. But, if I find out and if I can get more images related to the story, the result could be a blog or three from just this one photo. And so it goes on …
21 Wednesday Sep 2016
Tags
Andean fox, Andean wolf, Bolivia, Bolivian Altiplano, Culpeo, fox, Fuegian dog, Lycalopex culpaeus, Red Planet Expedition
For world wildlife Wednesday we head back to Bolivia for a closer look at this character, the Culpeo, Lycalopex culpaeus, also known as the Andean fox or wolf. True to the characterisation of foxes as wily, this one knew a tourist vehicle when it saw it and, though its normal diet would include rabbits, birds, rodents and whatever other small beasties it could hunt down, this fox obviously equated tourists with food. And it was not disappointed. On our Red Planet Expedition, in 4-wheel-drive vehicles deep in the remote regions of the Bolivian Altiplano, we carried food with us and our drivers prepared our lunches each day. El culpeo dined on chicken bones as we drove slowly off to our next destination.
The Andean fox can be found in many South American countries, ranging from parts of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia in the north down to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in the south, though is mostly found on the western side of the mighty Andes mountain range. Just as today’s domesticated dogs all have a common ancestor in the wild wolf, there was once a breed of domesticated dog (the Fuegian dog) that was derived from this fox, but it became extinct some time in the late 19th or early 20th century.
earthstar 
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