17 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, autumn migration, bird migration, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Stonechat
The Autumn migration flow of birds continued through Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, with several species reported: a Redstart, a Whinchat, a Spotted flycatcher and several Stonechats, two of which very kindly popped up in the hedge right in front of me.
14 Saturday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, insects, nature, plants
I heard them before I saw them.
I’d been smelling the ivy flowers all day, as I walked one of my local circuits, though Cosmeston along to Lavernock and back to Penarth along the coastal path. But I hadn’t noticed any open flowers until I heard the loud buzzing coming from the ivy ahead of me on the path. It was alive with various species of bee and fly and hoverfly. And then I spotted what I was looking for – the ginger fluff and black-and-yellow-stripes of Ivy bees (Colletes hederae), my first for 2019.
You can find out more about these handsome creatures in my previous blogs here and here.
13 Friday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, birds, nature, plants
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Reed bunting, umbellifers
This is not the setting I would normally associate with Reed buntings – not a reed to be seen – but this little beauty seemed perfectly at home searching for insects amongst the umbellifers in Cosmeston’s west paddock this afternoon, and the colours made for good camouflage as well.
11 Wednesday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, insects, nature, plants
Tags
#365DaysWild, autumn fruit, blackberries, bramble, British butterflies, butterfly, Red Admiral, Red admiral on bramble
I think everyone would agree that blackberries, the fruit of the bramble bush, are delicious. I’m not one of those people who risks the almost obligatory scratches to go blackberrying at this time of year – I prefer to leave them to the birds and minibeasts. But, at Cosmeston yesterday, I’d been walking longer than I anticipated and my stomach was rumbling so I thought I’d grab a few to keep me going.
Well, if looks could kill, I would never have made it home because these Red admiral butterflies were absolutely certain the blackberries belonged to them. And they weren’t going to relent, letting me get my hand really close to them without moving a millimetre. One even flew out and ‘buzzed’ me before re-settling on its chosen fruit. I got the message and left them to their feast.
10 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Flies are fascinating!
This bristle-backed orange-and-black beauty, Tachina fera, is commonly seen in Wales and England any time between May and October. These flies produce two broods over the summer months but their life cycle is perhaps not what you might think. Like almost 300 other fly species in Britain, these are parasitoids – the eggs they lay on plant leaves hatch as larvae that burrow their way inside the bodies of other larvae, the caterpillars of several species of moth, which they then proceed to eat to death. It’s a larvae-eat-larvae world out there, folks.
09 Monday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, fungi, nature, trees
While sneaking up on a juvenile Green woodpecker at Cosmeston, I spotted these lovely examples of Alder tongue (Taphrina alni).
I’ve covered these intriguing galls in a previous blog post so, just briefly, they’re the result of a fungus that chemically alters its host. One of Nature’s oddities!
08 Sunday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, flowers, insects, nature, wildflowers
Tags
#365DaysWild, Bog hoverfly, British hoverflies, Devil's-bit scabious, hoverfly, Lavernock Nature Reserve, pink scabious, Sericomyia silentis
It looks a bit like a wasp but this black-and-yellow-striped minibeastie is a hoverfly with the rather tongue-twisting name Sericomyia silentis. Perhaps Bog hoverfly would be easier but, in my opinion, its common name doesn’t do this little beauty justice.
I spent a couple of hours today at Lavernock Nature Reserve, where the Devil’s-bit scabious is looking simply stunning and is attracting myriads of insects. I took lots of butterfly photos but thought to post one of the other little critters today. The Devil’s-bit is usually a lilac colour but some at Lavernock are this subtle shade of pink instead. Its nectar obviously tastes just as good!
07 Saturday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, insects, nature
I know the Large white butterfly is the bane of gardeners who like to grow their own cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli but you can’t deny how lovely it is – or, rather, she is: the two spots and a dash on the upper forewings mean this is a female. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Large white with such black markings before – she must be newly hatched, which means she may be from a third brood. She was simply perfect!
06 Friday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, nature
Water, and the way it interacts with other materials, can be fascinating. Take the water droplets on this feather, for example.
Considering there weren’t any droplets on the surrounding dirt or grass, I’m not exactly sure why the water is clinging to the feather in this way. Presumably it has something to do with the structure of the feather itself, the miniscule hooks and barbs that hold the feather together and help to keep a bird waterproof. It certainly was lovely to look at.
05 Thursday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, blackbird, British birds, moulting bird, moulting Blackbird
As I’m sure most of you know, birds undergo a moult of their feathers after breeding, which is why everything goes very quiet for a few weeks: they’re vulnerable to predation while their new feathers are growing in. This Blackbird appears to have completed its moult of body feathers but not yet its head. Either that or it has some kind of infection or parasite, perhaps, that’s caused this partial loss.
Fortunately, the bird’s baldy look is not affecting its ability to get about or feed. As I watched this morning, it cleared away a big pile of leaves and snaffled down the fat juicy worm it found.
