20 Sunday Sep 2020
Posted in autumn, plants, wildflowers
‘The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.’
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Chapter 6: Nature, Essays, Second Series, 1844.
18 Friday Sep 2020
It was early Tuesday morning and the landscape was muffled by a dense layer of fog but there was magic happening in the fields, amongst the plants, as the power of fog droplets illuminated the industrious efforts of the spider kingdom.
13 Sunday Sep 2020
Tags
British butterflies, British insects, Common ragwort, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, importance of ragwort as food plant, insects on ragwort, Ragwort
My title says ‘inspection’ but I was tempted to invent a new word and write ‘insection’, as my inspection was really a personal challenge to see how many different insects I could find on the copious number of Common ragwort plants currently in bloom at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. All except three of these photos were taken during one 45-minute period on Wednesday – the Small copper and two flies were seen the following day. The broad diversity of species just shows how important Ragwort is as a late summer food plant for insects.
12 Saturday Sep 2020
‘Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangling herb and tree.’
‘… the childhood of the day has kept,
Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.
Come, and receive them while the light
Hangs on the dew-locks of the night’
~ lines from the poem ‘Corinna’s Going a-Maying’, Robert Herrick, Hesperides
10 Thursday Sep 2020
I was in seventh heaven yesterday because I found seven Small coppers, my favourite butterflies, at Cosmeston, the most I’ve ever seen in one place on one day. Here they are, the little beauties.
09 Wednesday Sep 2020
Yesterday I wrote about being reminded twice of the value of stillness – this was the second time. With a couple of fellow birders, I’d been enjoying a feast of migrant action all in one field – a Whinchat, a Spotted flycatcher, four Stonechats and these two Redstarts – though, as usual, the birds were a little too distant for my camera to get good photos.
Then, the unforecast rain came down in earnest, blowing across the field in vertical waves. The two chaps headed off but I figured I’d wait out the worst of the weather in the shelter of a large Oak tree growing along the hedgerow. Once again, my partial camouflage and my stillness – I waited 30 minutes or more – was rewarded, as one of the Redstarts came very near where I was standing. I couldn’t risk the camera being out in the rain for long but I was delighted with the couple of images I took and with being able to get such close views of this lovely bird.
05 Saturday Sep 2020
Tags
beetles, British insects, Brown-tail moth caterpillars, Brown-tail moth webs, Buff-tailed bumblebee, Emperor dragonfly, Knopper gall
Actually, it rained before my walk, during my walk and after I got home, but ‘Small creatures between showers’ was a bit long for a title. Here, then, are the said creatures …
First up, these beetles were cosying up in an umbellifer flower head. I couldn’t see enough to identify them and wasn’t going to disturb their comfort to find out more.
This is a web of Brown-tail moth larvae, the ones some people freak out about because their hairs can irritate the skin. The solution to that problem is, of course, easy: look, enjoy, wonder, admire, but don’t touch!
There weren’t many flying critters about but bumblebees will fly whatever the weather, as shown by this gorgeous queen Buff-tailed bumble.
Perhaps the littlest creature, though I didn’t look in to investigate, was the one that was lurking in this Knopper gall (spot the antennae!).
And, the prize for the most magnificent, was this male Emperor dragonfly. I had to linger a while, waiting for him to settle, and then sneak up behind the bushes, but His Imperial Majesty was definitely worth the wait. What a handsome creature he is, despite his somewhat ragged wings.
29 Saturday Aug 2020
I don’t know about you but, when I’m out walking at this time of year, I’m often tempted to pluck and devour one of the luscious-looking blackberries growing on the bramble-covered fences and hedgerows.
Well, not any more. Not now I’ve seen how many flies like to suck at them and run their dirty little feet all over them. Just look at all those fly bottoms!
And let’s not even mention the very real possibility of getting stung by a wasp that’s jealously guarding ‘its’ berries. From now on, the berries are all for the beasties!
28 Friday Aug 2020
Tags
autumn migration, bird migration, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Spotted flycatcher
It’s over a month since I saw my first Spotted flycatchers for 2020, the family group I encountered on my visit to Slade Wood back on 21 July. But, now I’m seeing them much more regularly, in ones and twos, as they pass through my local area on their autumn migration. I spotted my first migrant on 5 August, then had to wait a week until my second sighting on the 13th but, since then, have seen them almost every time I’ve been to Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, with 2 on the 17th, 4 on the 18th, 1 on the 20th, 3 on the 22nd, 2 on the 24th, and 3 on the 26th. In fact, I tend to go to Cosmeston much more often at this time of year specifically to see what migrants I can find, and I look especially for these stunning little birds, as I love to watch their fly-catching aerobatics.
25 Tuesday Aug 2020
Posted in autumn, insects, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
British galls, British insects, British wildflowers, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, galls on wild carrot, Kiefferia pericarpiicola, midge gall, Wild carrot
I was looking around at the various wildflowers yesterday at Cosmeston, seeing what insects might be about, when I noticed these odd growths on some of the Wild carrot flower heads. I split one open with my finger nail and a miniscule orange blob fell out; turns out that was the larva of a midge with the long-winded name of Kiefferia pericarpiicola.
The galls start off green (below left), before turning pinkish and eventually brown. According to the Nature Spot website, these galls can be seen from late summer through to autumn, after which the larvae will leave the gall and drop down to the soil to pupate. The midge only occurs in southern parts of Britain at the moment – and I only found two previous records in the Welsh biodiversity database – but perhaps that will change as our climate continues to warm and the midge flies further afield. It’s also possible, of course, that this insect is under-recorded – it seems the midge itself is almost never seen, only its gall creations.
