27 Sunday Oct 2024
On Thursday I caught the train in to Cardiff, to the station nearest Roath Park, specifically to immerse myself in the gorgeous colours of Autumn, and I was not disappointed. Here are some of the glorious scenes that caught my eye around the lake.
26 Saturday Oct 2024
I was wondering how the Nuthatch (Sitta europaea) got its name when I flicked on to the Woodland Trust website and there was the answer: ‘The nuthatch’s habit of hacking at these nuts to retrieve them from their hiding place is thought to have earned the species its name.’ The comment refers to this bird’s practice of stashing nuts in gaps and crevices in the bark of trees as a safeguard against the leaner days of winter, much as squirrels and Jays do.
25 Friday Oct 2024
Tags
autumn fungi, British fungi, Clustered bonnet, Common inkcap, Coprinopsis atramentaria, inkcap fungi, Mycena inclinata, Oak bonnet
For Fungi Friday, here are just a couple of the little flocks of fungi I’ve found during recent walks hither and yon.
These, I think, are Common inkcaps (Coprinopsis atramentaria) that had sprung up beneath the trees near the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay. There one day, gone the next, as is usual with these transient fungi.
And, as they were growing from an old fallen Oak tree in Cosmeston’s Cogan Wood, I think these are the appropriately name Clustered bonnet, also known as Oak bonnet, (Mycena inclinata).
24 Thursday Oct 2024
Posted in insects
Tags
British cicadellidae, British leafhoppers, Cicadellidae, Idiocerus decimusquartus, leafhopper, leafhoppers on Poplar, Rhytidodus decimusquartus
Though we missed the worst of it here in south-east Wales, last Sunday was a miserable day, the rain and gusty winds of Storm Ashley blasting across the British Isles. Luckily for me, the gloom was much cheered by an email verifying my recent record of this leafhopper, Rhytidodus decimusquartus.
It’s always good to have records of new species identified but, in this case, I was particularly chuffed as this was a rare sighting. The Aderyn biodiversity database shows no previous Welsh records, though, when I checked the NBN Atlas to see how many other British records there were, I found one record from 1985 in north Wales (I’m not sure why that’s not showing in Aderyn), and just 30 other British records.
I’m sure you’ll agree that Rhytidodus decimusquartus (previously known as Idiocerus decimusquartus) is a handsome little beastie, just 6-7mm long. The British Bugs website warns that leafhoppers in this group can be very tricky to identify but ‘This species has one unique feature that allows definitive identification: the vertex and pronotum have fine transverse ridges’, and these ridges were clearly visible in my photographs. I’ve now found at least four species of leafhopper on the Lombardy poplars where this little one was lurking so I’ll be heading back very soon to see what other wonders I might discover amongst their leaves (if the leaves are still on the trees after all that wind).
23 Wednesday Oct 2024
I sometimes wonder if I give the impression on here that I always find what I go searching for. That is very far from the truth as today’s blog illustrates.
This year, there’s been a much larger than usual influx of Yellow-browed warblers to the UK from their breeding grounds in Siberia. The only time I’ve seen one of these was back in 2020 and there have been none locally since then, until this past two weeks, when at least four birds have been sighted within walking distance of my home. Have I seen them? Not even a distant feather! And I’ve been looking four times, for two of the birds in two different locations, for over 30 minutes at a time, standing staring at trees and listening in vain for their distinctive calls. Nada!
I ‘celebrated’ my third time dipping (birder-speak for not seeing) these birds with the following tongue-in-cheek post on social media:
My birding day in 3 photographs, which I have entitled ‘Not a Yellow-browed warbler’, ‘Not a Yellow-browed warbler’ & ‘Definitely not a Yellow-browed warbler’.
These are those photos – the birds, in case you’re wondering, are all Chiffchaffs.
22 Tuesday Oct 2024
Here’s another new-to-me seaweed, which the British beachcombers amongst you have probably seen many many times already, as it’s very common and found all around the coasts of Britain and Ireland.
This is Toothed wrack (Fucus serratus), also known as Serrated wrack, named for the sharp-looking toothed edges of its fronds.
As seen here, it is a brownish-green in colour, grows from a short stalk (shown in the photo at left), and its fronds are flat, with no air bladders.
21 Monday Oct 2024
Tags
British leafminers, leaf-mining moth larvae, leaf-mining moths, leafminers, leafmines on Poplar, Stigmella trimaculella
My leaf-mining contacts on X/Twitter and now on Bluesky were posting their lovely images of a mine on Poplar leaves that I hadn’t seen before so, of course, I went looking. These photos (and many more) are the result.
Though the UK Moths website information on their distribution states that this moth can be found ‘throughout England, where it is fairly common except in the west’ and that ‘there are records from Scotland and Wales, but very few’, there are, in fact, over a hundred Welsh records and they are scattered throughout the country.
This is Stigmella trimaculella (I love its common name: Three-spot dot), whose larvae munch on the leaves of Populus species – that’s all the various types of Poplar, as well as Aspen. The mine starts out as a thin gallery, widening as the larva grows in size, eventually becoming a silvery blotch. As you can see in the photo below left, the larva is a greenish-yellow in colour and has a brown head. The mines can be found twice each year, between June and July and again from September to October.
20 Sunday Oct 2024
Posted in autumn, wildflowers
These are some of the wildflowers I missed from last Sunday’s mid-autumn wildflowers-still-in-flower video and have found during this past week, many found during a thorough walk around Cardiff Bay where the vetches, in particular, but also plants like Viper’s bugloss are still in bloom.
Goat’s-rue
Bush vetch, Common chickweed, Common cornsalad, Common stork’s-bill, Creeping cinquefoil, Crown vetch, Dove’s-foot crane’s-bill, Honeysuckle, and Lucerne.
Mayweed, Old man’s beard, Petty spurge, Prickly sowthistle, Scarlet pimpernel, Sun spurge, Tansy, Viper’s bugloss, and Wavy bittercress.
And, last but certainly not least, Rosebay willowherb, which I had to use my long lens to capture as it was growing down a riverside embankment.
19 Saturday Oct 2024
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay birding, Common Gull, Larus canus, over-wintering birds
Another bird sighting that brightened a dull Tuesday was that of my first Common gulls (Larus canus) of the autumn – this is one of them trying to keep its balance on the yellow buoy behind the Black-headed gulls.
According to the BTO website, these beauties breed ‘in the north and west of both Britain and Ireland with a preference for upland areas’, which is why we don’t see them around Cardiff Bay or along the adjacent coastline until the temperatures begin to cool.
At first, I only spotted the one sitting on the yellow ball but then it flew towards the adjacent string of orange buoys that mark the entrance to the Barrage locks and upset another of its species that had been sitting on the ‘Keep clear’ sign. That was a bonus as it helped me get flight shots of the two of them.
18 Friday Oct 2024
The damp gloom of Tuesday’s walk around part of Cardiff Bay was much improved by the birds, in particular the presence of species that disappear to breed in other parts of the country before returning to spend their winter days in the local area.
One such species is the Goosander, though they’re not yet looking in their best condition. These birds are still in what is called eclipse plumage, where it’s difficult to tell which is male and which is female, as the male birds assume a kind of in-between plumage after they finish breeding and before their full winter plumage grows in. So, the redhead above might be a female but, equally, it might be an eclipse male, whereas the Goosander below is definitely a male.
earthstar 
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