08 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
The screensaver on my laptop is a slideshow of my best butterfly photos, one per species, and every time it plays, my heart yearns for butterflies. I know some people have already seen the odd butterfly that’s emerged from hibernation on a particularly warm day but I’ve yet to see my first. Maybe I need to change my screensaver.
07 Monday Feb 2022
Tags
British leafmines, Creeping cinquefoil, Fenella nigrita, Fenella nigrita larval mines, leafmines on cinquefoil, sawfly larvae, sawfly leafmines
When reviewing my leafmine records yesterday and comparing them to those I’ve blogged, I realised there are several I’ve yet to cover here. Most are spring- and summer-time finds so I’ll post about them at the appropriate time but this is one I found in December – I didn’t cover it then as I was in the middle of my A-to-Z end-of-year countdown.
These are the leafmines of the sawfly Fenella nigrita. Its larval mines can be found on Agrimony and on the various cinquefoils – I found these on Creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans). Though the British Leafminers website reports that the mines are normally seen in summer and autumn, I found these on 3 December and the mines are occupied (I’ve added a pointer to one of the larvae in the photo below right). Presumably the mild weather meant a longer breeding season for these sawflies, as with many other creatures.
06 Sunday Feb 2022
Posted in flowers, wildflowers
Despite being battered by drenching rain and storm-force wind gusts these hardy daffodils were still looking gorgeous.
In fact, the remaining water droplets seemed only to add to their beauty.
05 Saturday Feb 2022
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay birds, Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve, Mute swan, swan
The pair of Mute swans that reside in the pond at the Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve are always on the lookout for food. No pressure, but that stare!
04 Friday Feb 2022
Posted in lichen
Here’s another lush miniature landscape, this one from a walk along the coastal path this morning, the lichen growing on a wooden fence post, exuberant in the clean fresh salty air.
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
I thought I would explain about Colin the caterpillar (<click to see yesterday’s video). He appeared on my living room carpet about a week ago (I almost stood on him!) and I can only assume he somehow hitched a ride home on some part of my clothing or my backpack. Like the Winter caterpillars I blogged about on 15 January, Colin is an Angle shades moth larva. At the moment, he’s living in a jar on my desk – I wasn’t sure how long he’d been on the carpet so wanted to feed him up before I took him back to the wild. He’s just been through a moult, from 2nd to 3rd instar I think, so he’ll need to be released soon so he can pupate in more natural surroundings.
02 Wednesday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
Tags
Angle shades, Angle shades caterpillar, Angle shades larva, caterpillar eating, moth caterpillar
Is there anything more relaxing than watching a caterpillar eating?
01 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in birds
In mid December I spent a couple of hours watching and taking lots of photos of Marsh tits, as I was keen to try to work out how many there are living in our local woodland. Two separate birds came to seed at one end of the woodland ride and a single bird came to seed at the other end of the wood. The distance between the two locations, and my photos, led me to believe that these were three different birds. And I had previously seen another bird with a slightly deformed left claw, which had been photographed by a local birder just a week earlier. This all leads me to believe there are now at least four Marsh tits in the woodland, which is excellent news for their ongoing survival.
earthstar 
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