Monthly Archives: June 2022

Small heath

20 Monday Jun 2022

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As well as the Heath spotted-orchids pictured in yesterday’s blog and the Small pearl-bordered fritillaries featured last Thursday, another of the stars of the Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR is the Small heath (Coenonympha pamphilus). Fortunately, this lovely little butterfly has adapted to life in a wide variety of habitats, not just damp grasslands, so, although it is still classed as vulnerable in the most recent conservation status report released last month by Butterfly Conservation, it is in a much better position to cope with environmental changes that those butterflies that require more specialised habitats.

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Counting spots

18 Saturday Jun 2022

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I love the bright pops of colour ladybirds (or ladybugs, as they’re known in some countries) provide on the leaves of trees, shrubs and grasses as I’m meandering through the landscape. And they’re usually easy to identify, simply by counting their spots, which is always a bonus with insects. These are a few I’ve recently encountered: 14-spot (Propylea quattuordecimpunctata) and 22-spot (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata); a new species for me, the 24-spot ladybird (Subcoccinella vigintiquattuorpunctata) (recognisable by its red head, even if you can’t count the spots); and two that are named for their colours so no spot counting required, the Cream-spot (Calvia quattuordecimguttata) (okay, this could be confusing as it has 14 spots and isn’t really cream, more of a red-brown) and the Orange ladybird (Halyzia sedecimguttata).

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Moths are amazing

17 Friday Jun 2022

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At the risk of stating the obvious, moths are amazing! And I’ve been lucky to find some gorgeous examples in recent weeks. As I’m running out of image storage space on this blog, the easiest way to share my photos is via a slideshow video. Here, then, is a short tribute to moths, a celebration of their incredible diversity of shapes and sizes, patterns and colours.

Pearls in the grass

16 Thursday Jun 2022

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I can’t think of a nicer way to spend a day than to enjoy a lovely catch up with my friend Shar while wandering around a grasslands reserve looking for butterflies. Having a second pair of sharp eyes was also a bonus as the weather was quite dull, the butterflies few and mostly inactive. Still, we managed some good close sightings of Small pearl-bordered fritillaries (Boloria selene), a butterfly that thrives in the damp grassland habitat of Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR and, though one of the reserve’s largest fields was burnt recently, there are promising signs that both the violets required for this butterfly’s larvae and the thistles, bramble and bugle that provide food for the adults have survived the fire. Let’s hope both the plants and the butterflies bounce back from what could so easily have been a truly tragic event.

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Grass bugs

15 Wednesday Jun 2022

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The Miridae family of plant / leaf / grass bugs is huge, with thousands of species worldwide. This one, Leptopterna dolabrata, is a species I often see in the local meadows at this time of year and, during a recent walk, I found a little colony of them, with several adult males and females, mating adults, and nymphs that I have tentatively identified from looking at their colouring as male and female, though I may be wrong about those. So, the photos below are, I think, female nymph (left) and adult (right), male nymph (left) and adult (right), and, most obviously, a male and female mating.

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Leafmines: Orchestes signifer

13 Monday Jun 2022

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From my previous posts, including the recent A weirdness of weevils, I’m sure it’s obvious that I’m a huge fan of weevils, but I’d never given a thought to their life cycle until I found these leafmines. The mines are the work of the larvae of the weevil Orchestes signifer. The gallery mines follow the edges of Oak leaves before terminating in a small blotch. At that point, the larvae make themselves a case by cutting out the circular blotch, and, snugly encased, they drop to the ground to pupate. You can find a photo of the black-and-white adult weevil on the British Leafminers website.

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Yellow rattle

12 Sunday Jun 2022

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Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), the meadow-maker, the miracle-working semi-parasitic plant that weakens the overwhelming grasses in our fields by feeding on their nutrients, thus allowing more delicate wildflowers their chance to thrive. The rattle in the name comes from the noise of the ripe seeds in their pods and, according to the Plantlife website, cattle love its taste – ‘when let into a field it is the first thing they will eat’, so it’s a win for the cattle, and a win for wildflowers.

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