Category Archives: insects

Ivy bees, and friends

17 Saturday Oct 2026

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I simply can’t let the season pass without a mention of my favourite bee, the bee I find most attractive, and one of the easiest – for me, anyway – to recognise. This is, of course, the Ivy bee (Colletes hederae).

These bees are usually on the wing from early September through to November, though I think those dates can be affected somewhat by factors like the weather and the availability of their food source, Ivy pollen and nectar. And the male bees tend to emerge a couple of weeks earlier so they are ready to pounce on females as soon as they appear.

I had wondered what would happen if they emerge before the Ivy flowers are open but an article on the Sussex Wildlife Trust website explains that they will also take nectar from other flowers, though the females gather the pollen they deposit in their nest burrows for their larvae to feed on exclusively from Ivy.

As it is a relatively late flowering plant, Ivy is also popular with many other insects, and those shown here are just a tiny sampling of the many species of flies and hoverflies, bees and wasps, and butterflies like Red admiral that I’ve been seeing on our local Ivy this year.

Late Dorset dragons

06 Tuesday Oct 2026

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The dragonflies were a little disappointing during my most recent visit to Dorset but that was really only because I had been spoilt by the wonderful dragons I had seen during my mini-breaks earlier in the year; in later September the flight season for the majority of British dragonfly species is already over. There were still a lot of very active Migrant hawkers, I suspect there were a couple of Emperors in the mix, as well as a sprinkling of Common darters, and there may possibly have been Southern hawkers, as I’m still seeing those in south Wales, but, as is the way with hawker dragonflies, they weren’t stopping for photographs. It took about 30 minutes of patiently standing watching and waiting to get the photo of the Migrant hawker shown below.

My odonatan highlight came on the afternoon of the Spoonbill sighting. I’d caught the bus to Portland, walked the western coastal path, and was about to wander the footpaths through the fields north of Portland Bird Observatory, when I spotted Observatory warden Martin taking a photo of something in the field nearest the road. Curiosity aroused, I wandered over for a chat. I’m an Obs supporter and I’d stayed there a couple of times on bird club trips but I hadn’t really talked to Martin. We chewed the birding fat, then I asked what he’d been photographing. Turns out, he’d just caught a Lesser emperor in the mist nets they use to catch birds for ringing. He obviously has a way with wildlife, as the creature had allowed him to place it on a dried stalk and was still perched there, right in front of us. So, of course, I also took the opportunity to get some close-up images of this handsome migrant dragonfly.

Small, yellow and very spotty

28 Monday Sep 2026

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Walking along a footpath, scanning the shrubs, the bramble, the plants – green, brown, green, green, green, brown, green, YELLOW! Not a red light but exactly the same effect: immediate stop. There, sitting on a Stinging nettle, making it particularly tricky to photograph, was a tiny 22-spot ladybird (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata). Stunning!

Aphid: Aphis hederae

27 Sunday Sep 2026

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Yes, I’ve once again been staring at trees and shrubs, leaf fossicking, turning over leaves to see what lies beneath, though, in this case, I didn’t have to – the aphids were right there in front of me, so many of them clinging to the developing flowers of Ivy that the stems appeared black instead of green.

And, once again, I’m not absolutely certain of my identification but I’m fairly sure that these are Aphis hederae, Ivy aphids. They definitely resemble the images shown on the Influential Points website, though that website does mention that 12 aphid species can be found on Ivy in Britain.

And, once again, the iRecord database is showing a relatively small number of records for this species; mine is just the sixth Welsh record, and all the rest are scattered across southern England, with none showing in Scotland or Northern Ireland. This tends to support my theory that few people bother to check for or record aphid species. (If my record is, at some subsequent date, determined to be wrong, I will update this blog.)

 

Moth: Nut-tree tussock

21 Monday Sep 2026

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It’s not often that I manage to see both the adult and larva of a moth species, and I’ve seen both of these this year for the first time, the adult appearing first, on 1 May, and the larva more recently, on 4 September. These are Nut-tree tussocks (Colocasia coryli) and both, I think, are stunning.

The adult and larva were in completely different locations, many miles apart, the adult roosting for the day on the side of a stucco-covered building, the larva sitting underneath a willow leaf. Both locations are atypical, according to the information about this species on the UK Moths website, which states that this moth mostly frequents woodland, and the larvae ‘feed on a variety of deciduous trees, mostly Birch and Hazel, but also Sycamore, Hornbeam, Oak and others’.

In southern Britain, these moths are bivoltine; the adult moths can be seen between April and June and then again between July and September. In the north, the moth has a single brood, the adults on the wing in May and June.

Aphid: Pterocallis maculata

20 Sunday Sep 2026

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Though my record hasn’t yet been verified, I’m sure these tiny creatures, on the undersides of Alder leaves, are the Pterocallis maculata species of aphid, also known as the Green-barred alder aphid.

It’s the green colour and barred markings that make me fairly certain of my identification, particularly after checking the images and information on the Influential Points website.

According to iRecord, mine is only the third Welsh record, with the other two being found in October 2024, in Merthyr at the head of one the south Wales valleys, and October 2025, in an industrial area north-east of Cardiff Bay. Outside of Wales, this species has been found at just ten locations in England, one in Northern Ireland, and none in Scotland. I can’t help but wonder whether these aphids are really as rare as those records imply or whether it’s simply the case that most people just don’t record aphids.

Sawfly: Athalia rosae

18 Friday Sep 2026

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These orange and black sawflies can be tricky to identify, and I got this one wrong when I first recorded it, failing to take proper note of its distinguishing features: orange abdomen and legs, black head and shoulder pads, black front edge to its wings. (I rather like its stripey ‘socks’.)

Fortunately, the national verifier is patient and understanding; he ‘redetermined’ my record rather than just refusing it, as one or two less generous verifiers have been known to do. (I do understand that they must get fed up with some of the crazy records they see.)

So, I can state with absolute certainty that these two beauties are Turnip sawflies (Athalia rosae); they are also known by the common name Turnip tigress, which I rather like, though the name is a clue as to why this species is not well liked by farmers – their larvae, which are a very dark grey-green, feed on cruciferous plants (Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Radish, and Turnip, amongst others) and can have a devastating effect on crops.

Caddisfly: Mystacides longicornis

12 Saturday Sep 2026

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I mentioned in yesterday’s blog that I’ve visited Cardiff’s northern reservoirs a few times in recent weeks. When I have, I’ve usually completed a circuit of the two reservoirs than walked from there down through fields and woodland to Roath Park Lake before heading to the nearest station for the train home. During one of these walks I spent some time turning over the leaves of several willow trees in a field next to the reservoirs, and this is one of the creatures I found during that fossick, the stunning caddisfly Mystacides longicornis, my first of this species.

Some caddisflies are tricky to identify but I struck lucky with this one, as the patterns of its wings – those stripes of brown and gold – and its red eyes distinguish it from other species. I presume this caddisfly spent its larval stage, in its case constructed of tiny chunks of grit and sand, in the adjacent reservoir. The adults are usually seen between May and September, so I was lucky to see this one, almost at the end of its season.

Hoverfly: Eupeodes latifasciatus

10 Thursday Sep 2026

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Until last week I’d only seen this hoverfly species once before, almost ten years ago to the day.

This is almost certainly Eupeodes latifasciatus; it has been verified as ‘considered correct’, which usually means the verifier is 99% sure the identification is right but there is some room for doubt. That’s because, as my trusty guidebook points out, ‘the most reliable character requires a microscope’.

The guidebook also notes that ‘Abundance varies considerably from year to year suggesting that it is at least a partial migrant’. Perhaps that’s why it’s been ten years since I saw my first of these, and why it’s taken our record-breaking summer weather this year to see another.

Aphid: Chaitophorus tremulae

08 Tuesday Sep 2026

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In the same area where I recently found colonies of Chaitophorus populeti aphids on Poplar, there is a small stand of Aspen trees. By turning over a few of their leaves, I easily found another aphid species, a cousin of those I had found on the Poplar trees, this one most common on Aspen (Populus tremula) though sometimes also found on Poplar.

This is Chaitophorus tremulae, a species that was first recorded in Wales in 2009, according to the Influential Points website. As you can see in the image above, these aphids are tiny, and I found various stages living together. If I’ve understood correctly (I find aphid life cycles very confusing!), the larger blackish specimens are apterae (wingless adults); the pale aphids with darker, triangular markings on their bodies are sexuales (sexual forms; males, and females that lay eggs rather than live young); and there are also lots of nymphs, the smallest pale specimens.

Interestingly, the Influential Points web entry says that the honeydew produced by these aphids is not very attractive to ants as it contains a lower amount of the sugar melizitose than other honeydews. As one of my images shows, there were ants on the Aspen leaves but they weren’t as focused on the aphids, and weren’t exhibiting the behaviour I’ve noticed in other ants, where they appear to stand over, even protect ‘their’ aphids and try to ‘persuade’ me to remove my fingers from the leaves, even crawling over my hands, though not biting.