Author Archives: sconzani

Mignonette

31 Sunday Aug 2025

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As I’ve never sniffed their flowers, I’m not sure whether the Mignonette plants I see in various locations around Cardiff Bay are Wild Mignonette (Reseda lutea) or the escaped and naturalised garden variety Reseda odorata (the latter, a plant that’s more at home in Mediterranean countries, has a musky scent apparently).

Both species are common throughout the UK, in a wide variety of locations – along the edges of railway lines, on areas of waste ground, bordering car parks and garbage tips, around arable fields – in general, anywhere the ground has been disturbed and is mostly dry. You can see in the photos below how well the Mignonette plants are coping with the current drought conditions here in south Wales, compared to most other plants that are shrivelled, crispy and dying.

A good year for Jersey tigers

30 Saturday Aug 2025

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In the summers of 2018, 2019 and 2020 one of the local nature reserves near me held what seemed like a healthy population of Jersey tiger moths (Euplagia quadripunctaria), then they vanished. I don’t know why this was but several people have looked for them at the reserve in the intervening years and, though the occasional single moth has been sighted, the healthy population is no more. Away from that reserve, I would struggle to see any Jersey tigers, and saw none at all in 2021 and 2022.

So, this year, it has been an absolute delight for me to have enjoyed many, seemingly random sightings of these beautiful moths. By random, I mean that there haven’t been any large numbers concentrated in any specific location or area; instead, either I’ve spotted them lurking on trees and bushes, or my passing has disturbed them, there’s been a flash of their vibrant orange underwings as they’ve fluttered out and I’ve seen them once they’ve resettled.

And it seems my experience of seeing greater numbers of Jersey tigers this year has not been unique. This is a species that is included in Butterfly Conservation’s Big Butterfly Count, and, even before the count had ended, with 7 of the count’s 24 days remaining, that organisation had noted a ‘whopping 78%’ increase in reported Jersey tigers this year compared to last year. Butterfly Conservation’s blog post speculates that the dramatic increase was due to this summer’s record-breaking high temperatures.

As Dr Richard Fox, BC’s Head of Science is quoted as saying

The increase we’re seeing in Jersey Tiger moth sightings is a striking example of how climate change is reshaping the distribution of wildlife.
While it’s a delight to spot such a vibrant moth in gardens, parks and green spaces, it’s also a reminder of how rising temperatures are altering our natural environment.

Fungus: Cercospora depazeoides

29 Friday Aug 2025

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Given our recent, seemingly never-ending high temperatures, I’ve been surprised to find fungi flourishing, though they’ve not been the mushroom-shaped life forms you might expect when you read the word fungi. Take today’s fungus, for example. I didn’t immediately realise these very distinctive marks on the leaves of an Elder tree (Sambucus sp.) were caused by a fungus.

These marks are caused by Cercospora depazeoides, and it seems the fungus can be quite destructive. According to the European Forest Pests website, this fungal pathogen leads to ‘premature leaf drop and reduced photosynthesis’. When the spots merge, dominating the leaf surface, they cause defoliation, which can ‘weaken the plant, impacting its growth and fruit production’. Fortunately for those who harvest the berries to make Elderberry cordial, according to iRecord, this fungus has thus far not been recorded in many locations in the UK.

Smart Magpies

28 Thursday Aug 2025

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A pair of Magpies live in the same field as ‘my’ crows. In fact, I frequently see them perched in the tree tops when I enter the field, and they often see me before the crows do.

When the crows do notice me and fly down for food, the Magpies fly across to the nearest trees or bushes to watch and wait.

Once the crows have filled their crops and beaks with suet pellets, they fly off to cache their food under bushes, amongst clumps of long grass, and in various other hiding places.

Seizing their opportunity, the Magpies nip in to grab what they can while the crows are absent. They used to just eat what they were able to grab but they’ve obviously learnt from watching the crows and they now cache their own food. How smart is that?!

Emerald damsels

27 Wednesday Aug 2025

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This is the final blog in my short series about the dragonflies I saw during last week’s rail journey up the south Welsh valleys to Maesteg. Today’s subject is the Emerald damselfly (Lestes sponsa), a species I’ve seen only twice before, in August 2017 and in September 2021. I’ve looked for them a couple of times at the 2021 location, Parc Penallta, but the small ponds there quickly dry out in hot summers and dog walkers allow their charges to splash about in them, displacing more water and polluting the water with the dogs’ chemical flea treatments. These are probably some of the reasons why the population of this damselfly species has been in steady decline since the 1990s.

Emeralds are relatively large for damselflies and rest with their wings outspread, hence their European common name, Common spreadwing. Their bodies are metallic green, though the colours of some parts of their abdomens vary depending on whether they are male or female, immature or aging. Emeralds favour shallow standing waters, like bog pools and ponds, especially when these are surrounded by tall grasses, rushes and sedges.

Keeled skimmers

26 Tuesday Aug 2025

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Here’s another of the stunning dragons I saw at the ponds in Maesteg last week. And this is another species I’d only seen once before, back in 2017 on a birding day out to the Lliw Reservoirs north of Swansea.

These gorgeous dragonflies are Keeled skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens), also known in Europe as Heathland skimmers, which gives a very clear indication of their preference for the acidic conditions of heathland waterways and the drains and ponds of peat bogs. The Maesteg ponds provide the perfect habitat for them, except perhaps for the locals who allow their dogs to swim there.

These beauties were quite easy to find when I wandered around the ponds as, according to my guide book, the males hold quite small territories, with a favourite perch from which they flit out to see off any intruders. So, once I found their perches, I was able to stand a little way off to watch their flights and grab photos once they settled again.

I only saw male Keeled skimmers during this visit to the ponds, so I’ve yet to see one of golden yellow females. These dragonflies are usually active from mid June to mid August so I may have missed seeing the females this year but I will certainly be visiting this location again next year.

Leafmines: Stigmella lemniscella

25 Monday Aug 2025

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I discovered today’s new leafmines the same day as I found last week’s (Leafmines: Stigmella viscerella) and, considering how much time I spend leaf-fossicking and simply staring at trees, was also amazed I’d not noticed these very distinctive mines before.

The larvae of the moth Stigmella lemniscella munch away within the leaves of Elm trees (Ulmus species), in this case Wych elms (Ulmus glabra), and their galleries often follow the edge of the leaves, looking like a zigzag pattern. These moths are bivoltine so are active during July, and again in September – October. The adult moth is a pretty little thing – there’s a photo on the UK Moths website, which has the common name of Beautiful elm dot.

Soapwort and smut

24 Sunday Aug 2025

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During a walk around Cardiff’s Bute Park last week, I spotted a wildflower growing alongside my path that I couldn’t ever recall seeing before. It had pink flowers and looked a lot like Red campion so I wondered if it might be a cultivated variety of campion that had escaped from someone’s garden.

A look through the appropriate section of my wildflower guide when I got home proved me half right and half wrong. It was definitely a member of the campion family but this was Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis), no garden escape but not native either. It’s classified as an archaeophyte, which means this extremely useful detergent-plant was introduced to Britain in ancient times, prior to 1500 AD.

A few snippets from Flora Britannica:

Simply rubbing a leaf between the fingers will produce a slight, slippery froth. Boiled in water, the plant produces a green lather with the power to lift grease and dirt, especially from fabrics. … due to the presence of saponins – chemicals which, like inorganic soaps, appear to ‘lubricate’ and absorb dirt particles.
… cultivated for laundering woollens in Syria … and in Britain employed as a soaping agent by medieval fullers … because vegetable saponins are so much gentler than soaps, Saponaria has been used much more recently for washing ancient tapestries … Victoria &Albert Museum it was last used for cleaning fragile fabrics in the 1970s. The National Trust have also used it, for bringing up the colours in antique curtains.

Now, the keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed something a little odd about the flowers in some of my photos; the centres of the flower heads look black. This is because many of the plants I found were suffering from anther smut, in this case caused by the fungus Microbotryum saponariae. The pollen in the flowers’ anthers has been replaced with fungal spores, meaning the plant is unable to reproduce. This may be a recent infestation as I found plenty of plants growing along the path as I walked further. I often see something similar on Red campion flowers, though that is caused by a different fungal species, Microbotryum silenes-dioicae. So, two for the price of one today: a fascinating plant and an equally fascinating fungus.

Black darter

23 Saturday Aug 2025

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Before Thursday’s trip to Maesteg, I’d only ever seen a Black darter (Sympetrum danae) once before, and that was a fluke sighting at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park back in 2017. I say fluke because, like yesterday’s Common hawker, the Black darter is a dragonfly that prefers the acidic conditions of peat bogs, moorland ponds and ditches. How one got to Cosmeston I have no idea.

I was lucky to find several male Black darters at Maesteg ponds and, as you can see, they really are almost entirely black, with just a few yellow markings on the sides of their thorax and abdomen, and on top of their lower abdomen.

I was also extremely lucky to find a single female, basking on a patch of grass. As the photo below shows, she looks very different from the male, with much more yellow than black. At around 30mm long, both of these darters are quite small, about 10mm smaller than the Common darters that most of us are very familiar with. Now that I know about this location, I’ll be back to visit them again next year.

Lifer: Common hawker

22 Friday Aug 2025

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Yesterday I took myself off on a little adventure, on an hour’s train journey from Cardiff to Maesteg, high up in the south Welsh valleys, a place I’d not been before. I decided to go after seeing a post on social media about some ponds in a Maesteg park that held dragonflies that thrive in acidic heathlands and bogs so these are not species I see in my coastal location.

Despite a favourable weather forecast, when I first arrived it was mostly overcast and there was a cool wind blowing – not ideal conditions for seeing dragonflies. Remaining hopeful, I thought I’d use the time until the clouds cleared to explore and try to find dragonflies that might be perched around the area.

Almost immediately I heard the tell-tale rustle of dragonfly wings and saw movement amongst the reeds in the nearest pond. Dragon! And not just any dragon – this was a female Common hawker (Aeshna juncea), and she was moving slowly around the ponds, stopping here and there to lay her eggs amongst the vegetation. She was my first ever Common hawker, so I was over the moon to have found her so quickly and easily.

Later, when the sun did come out and the dragonfly action got a bit frantic, I saw another large dragonfly cruising back and forth over the ponds. I think it was a male Common hawker but he wasn’t stopping for photos, and soon disappeared. Having enjoyed such excellent views of the female, I wasn’t too disappointed about missing him, and I saw several other dragon and damsel species, which I will feature in forthcoming blogs.