28 Wednesday Jun 2023
Posted in insects
I saw my first Small tortoiseshell butterfly for the year on the first day of May and then none at all until this one, on19 June. During those six weeks, things were happening: eggs were hatching, family groups of caterpillars were munching happily on Stinging nettles, larval skins were being shed when they got to bursting point, metamorphosis was happening within pupae. And then, as if by magic, the next generation of Small tortoiseshells emerged to begin the process all over again.
27 Tuesday Jun 2023
Posted in birds
Among the many frazzled parents and demanding fledglings I’m seeing around me during my daily walks, I was delighted late last week to spot a family of Blackcaps feeding in a nearby tree. Though the youngsters were attempting to feed themselves, they were also following their parents very closely, watching what they were finding, hopping over quickly to beg for whatever delicious titbits might be on offer.
26 Monday Jun 2023
Posted in insects, plants, wildflowers
Tags
British moths, Enchanter's nightshade, leafmines on Enchanter's nightshade, leafmining moths, Mompha terminella, moth larvae in leaf mines
Just look at all these leafmines on Enchanter’s nightshade (Circaea lutetiana); you can hardly see the leaves for the mines.
Back in July 2021, I blogged about these mines, made by the larvae of the tiny moth Mompha langiella, in Leafmines: Enchanter’s nightshade but, when I was looking at these nightshade plants on Wednesday, I noticed one that looked different – the mine started as a spiralling gallery before widening out into a blotch. This was later confirmed as the larval mine of Mompha terminella, another tiny moth whose adult form can be seen on the UK Moths website. The mines are usually seen between August and September but, as with many things this year, this larva was active much earlier than usual.
25 Sunday Jun 2023
Posted in flowers, wildflowers
In my Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey relates
Monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus, was first discovered and brought to English gardens from the damp and foggy islands off the Alaskan coast in 1812. But it crops up in damp places right down the west coast of America, as far south as the mountains of New Mexico, and it has been just as catholic in its choice of British habitats since it was first naturalised in the 1820s. It now occurs by the banks of burns, streams, lowland lakes, rivers and canals throughout Britain.
Given that last sentence, I can’t believe it’s taken me so many years to see Monkeyflower for myself but, during Wednesday’s walk around Cardiff’s Roath Park, I saw several of these plants, both around Roath Lake and along Roath Brook.
24 Saturday Jun 2023
Posted in insects
Tags
Autographa gamma, British moths, Burnet companion, Chrysoteuchia culmella, Euclidia glyphica, Garden Grass-veneer, moth, Silver Y
During my recent wanders, particularly through areas of long grass, moths tiny and large have been flitting up and flying a short distance, before fluttering back into the grass. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the moths have seemingly disappeared, so capable of stillness have they been and so well camouflaged. Fortunately for me, in the other one percent of instances I’ve managed to get photographs. Here are some of these flitters …
– Burnet companion (Euclidia glyphica)
– Silver Y (Autographa gamma)
– Garden grass-veneer (Chrysoteuchia culmella)
23 Friday Jun 2023
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Coot, Coot family, cootlet, turtle
I was concerned this situation was going to end badly for the tiny cootlets – one snap of that turtle’s jaws and they’d be goners!
I should’ve had more faith in the Coots – after all, these birds are known for their stroppy attitude. These Coot parents were quickly on the turtle’s case, jabbing at its legs and tail to move it away.
22 Thursday Jun 2023
Posted in insects
In his magnificent publication Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, Peter Eeles quotes the words of James Tutt, from his 1906 work A Natural History of British Lepidoptera, about the flight pattern of the beautiful Brown argus (Aricia agestis)
This species may be called the ‘zigzagger’, for it darts swiftly to and fro in flight, showing first its grey underside and then its black upperside, so that one can hardly follow it with the eye.
Tutt describes the Brown argus’s movement perfectly. If you take your eye off this tiny butterfly for a second, it disappears, and I’ve spent many a minute, or ten, waiting patiently for it to move again before being able to get a good enough view first to identify the butterfly and then to edge close enough for photos. It’s certainly worth the wait though.
21 Wednesday Jun 2023
Posted in insects
Whenever you see aphids (those shown below were on a willow species and on Elder), it’s always worth a look to see what other insects are nearby, particularly those that find aphids delicious! There’s usually a ladybird or two in the vicinity, and, as I’ve been finding, plenty of hoverfly larvae of various species. Their appetite for aphids is yet another reason to love hoverflies, if one were needed.
20 Tuesday Jun 2023
Tags
During yesterday’s walk around the local country park I witnessed something I’ve never seen before. I took a path through an area of woodland to escape the heat of the sun and found myself having to watch where I placed my feet to avoid stepping on the toadlets that were sitting in the dirt all along the path. There weren’t huge numbers all together in one place but every three or four strides a tiny Toad, disturbed by my approach, hopped across the path. It was certainly good to see such good Toad numbers but I have no idea why they had chosen yesterday to move en masse through the woodland.
19 Monday Jun 2023
Posted in insects
I was bending down to return my camera to my backpack as I was leaving Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR last week when I noticed something small and fuzzy flying over the earth below. Not a bee, not a hoverfly, too small for the one bee-fly (Dark-bordered) I recognise but its actions were typical of that bee-fly – hovering very low to the ground, taking particular interest in a small hole in the dirt and, as I continued to watch, seeming to flick its rear end towards that hole, the usual action of a bee-fly flicking its eggs into the hole of an unfortunate mining bee. Once home, I checked online and found an excellent resource from the Soldierflies and Allies Recording Scheme (‘Identifying bee-flies in genus Bombylius‘, compiled by Martin C. Harvey, version 3, May 2019), which pointed me towards Western bee-fly (Bombylius canescens). My identification was later confirmed by a representative of the Scheme, and an entomologist pal, when I posted photos on Twitter. A first for me!
earthstar 
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