14 Friday Apr 2023
Posted in fungi
When I first spotted this little orange tube poking out of the liverwort, mosses and a smattering of other tiny plants growing at the edge of a brick footpath, I wasn’t sure what it would develop into.
Two days later all became clear. The tube had developed in to a lovely little fungus, an Orange mosscap (Rickenella fibula), and once I’d spotted that one, I found two more growing nearby. A delightful and unexpected surprise!
13 Thursday Apr 2023
Posted in insects
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, Pieris rapae, seasonal dimorphism, Small white, spring butterflies
I think I was probably a little later to the Small white party than most locals this year, possibly because they have gardens and/or allotments, which the Small white butterfly (Pieris rapae) very much enjoys (though, I hasten to add that the Small white is not as destructive as many gardeners might think and it is actually the Large white, which lays its eggs in batches rather than singly, whose larvae can quickly strip those precious cabbage leaves to their veins).
This particular Small white, one of my first three seen on 7 April, has the typical markings of a female hatching from her over-wintering pupa in the springtime, with very pale grey markings on her wing tips and a small pale grey dot on her upper wings. The butterflies that hatch in the summer will have much darker, almost black markings. These differences are known as seasonal dimorphism.
12 Wednesday Apr 2023
Meet Nematus lucidus, a sawfly that can be recognised both by the reddish-brown markings on its mostly black body and the torpedo shape of its abdomen.
Nematus lucidus can be seen around Blackthorn and Hawthorn, as those are the plants its larvae feed on, and the adults can be seen any time from April to June. It’s thought to be common though there aren’t a lot of records in the national databases, probably because it’s under-recorded.
11 Tuesday Apr 2023
Posted in birds
In Welsh the Blue tit is Titw Tomos Las. Titw presumably translates as tit and las is blue but I’ve no idea what tomos means. If there are any Welsh speakers out there who can explain the name, I’d appreciate hearing from you in the comments.
10 Monday Apr 2023
Posted in insects
I hadn’t really wondered why these insects are called craneflies but have just been reading that the name comes from their resemblance to a crane – the long-legged bird, not the machine. These particular craneflies, the male above, the female dangling below, are Tipula vernalis, not a species I’d seen before, but my springtime habit of keeping a keen out for insects on Dandelions paid off. Spring is when this cranefly species first appears (hence the vernalis epithet, from the Latin vernus meaning ‘of the spring’), and it continues to float about its woodland and damp grassland home for several months, till June.
09 Sunday Apr 2023
Posted in plants, spring, wildflowers
Another week, another new plant – I’m on a roll!
This hairy little annual, with the sweet white flowers, is Rue-leaved saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites). Its three-lobed leaves (hence the tridactyl in its name) are quite distinctive and are often tinged with red, as are the plant’s stems.
In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey writes that this saxifrage is widespread but declining, though the book is now 25 years old so I’m not sure if that is still the case. Certainly, it’s not a plant I’ve come across before in my meanderings and these few were growing on the much-overgrown route of a former railway line so could originally have been carried this way by a train.
08 Saturday Apr 2023
Posted in birds
This was a rare moment of silence and stillness in a bird that’s rarely either of those things, and it didn’t last long. Perhaps it was curiosity about me and my camera that caused this Goldfinch to pause, momentarily, but it was soon off to flit with the flock, chattering all the while.
07 Friday Apr 2023
Posted in plants
Tags
British grasses, British rushes, Field wood-rush, Good Friday grass, Luzula campestris, Sweep's brooms
I wasn’t aware of the alternate common names for Field wood-rush (Luzula campestris) until I saw someone tweet about it earlier this week, saying it was flowering a little early this year.
Turns out, this little grass, found wherever short grass grows – so in fields and downs, even in the lawn around your house, usually comes in to flower around Easter so has earned the name Good Friday grass.
Flora Britannica also lists the vernacular name Sweep’s brooms, which apparently comes from its ‘dark, brush-like flowers’. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a pretty little thing.
06 Thursday Apr 2023
The weather effect? By 1 April last year, I’d clocked 63 butterflies of 7 species. This year I’d only recorded 13 butterflies of 4 species. As well as our very wet and cool spring, it seems that last year’s hot dry summer is also having a prolonged effect on butterfly numbers. Butterfly Conservation has warned that
Drought impacts the offspring of the butterflies that are flying during the hot dry weather by causing the plants that caterpillars rely on for food to wither and die. Without sufficient food, many caterpillars will fail to survive, leading to lower numbers of butterflies in the next generation. For some of the UK species that have more than one generation in a year, the resulting major decline in numbers has already been seen. However, for others, the next generation isn’t on the wing until this summer, meaning there could be noticeably fewer butterflies around in 2023.
Imagine my delight then, when I finally spotted not one but my first two Speckled woods of 2023, a week later than last year. Let’s hope this year’s weather is a little more kind to our insect neighbours, though climate change is already affecting and will continue to affect them.
05 Wednesday Apr 2023
Tags
Bee-fly, Bombylius major, British bee-flies, dandelion, Dark-edged bee-flies, value of Dandelion flowers
Apparently, today is #NationalDandelionDay. Dandelions are brilliant for so many reasons (I’ve blogged about their value to insects previously – see Delicious Dandelions, April 2022) but what better reason than the food they provide to all the gorgeous little bee-flies that are currently emerging all over the country.
These are Dark-edged bee-flies (Bombylius major), the only bee-fly species we have locally though there are other species in Britain. The top bundle of fluff is a male and the bottom is a female. The way to tell the sexes apart is to look at their eyes – if there’s a gap between the eyes, it’s a female. The males usually emerge first, with the females following a week to ten days later.
earthstar 
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