07 Wednesday May 2025
Posted in insects
I’m not a coffee drinker but perhaps the person who gave this moth its common name was. Meet The Mocha (Cyclophora annularia), a gorgeous moth that’s described as scarce on the UK Moths website, though it seems from looking at the NBN Atlas for this species that sightings are concentrated in southern Britain so scarce the further north you go. Perhaps surprisingly, I found this one sitting on a house wall as I walked past this morning.
05 Monday May 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British cicadellidae, British leafhoppers, Issus coleoptratus, Issus nymph, Issus species, leafhopper, leafhopper nymph
I’ve found two of these little leafhopper nymphs recently but was waiting for verification from the national recorder before posting about them. I recorded them as Issus coleoptratus but the recorder has changed them to Issus species.
The recorder is the expert, I certainly am not an expert but, in this case, I do think these are Issus coleoptratus, and here’s why. According to the Naturespot website entry for this species, there is only one confusion species, which is the much rarer Issus muscaeformis. Naturespot also includes excellent macro photographs of the identification features to look for on a nymph, which are more than 7 sensory pits on its back and pale horizontal bands on the frons (face), both of which I can see in my photos.
I will just have to look for the adult leafhoppers when they appear between June and November and hope that they will convince the national recorder. Meantime, I’m still really pleased to have found a new-to-me leafhopper species.
03 Saturday May 2025
Posted in insects
Some of the creatures I encounter when leaf fossicking are off in the blink of an eye and I get no more than a tantalising glimpse of something intriguingly colourful disappearing into the undergrowth. For a horrible moment this morning, I thought that was going to be the case when I spotted the stripey underbelly of this Wasp beetle (Clytus arietis) heading behind a leaf.
Luckily for me, it re-emerged on the other side, then proved remarkably tolerant of me and my camera as I took lots of photos. I’ve only seen this wasp-mimicking beetle once before and that was back in 2016, so I was particularly pleased it proved co-operative for me today.
02 Friday May 2025
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, Common blue, Common blue butterfly, Dingy Skipper, Large white, Small copper, Spring colour
Just as it’s always magical to see my first butterfly of the year, so is it just as special each time I see the first of each new species. These are the four most recent beauties that have made me smile.
On 25 April my first Large white of 2025 flitted along the footpath next to me, sipped on a Dandelion, then settled on a Bramble leaf long enough for me to photograph.
The next butterfly species to appear for me locally, on 27 April, was this lovely Dingy skipper at an unexpected location – a bonus!
The last few days of hotter than usual temperatures have presumably triggered the early emergence of some species. This stunning male Common blue popped up on 28 April, five days earlier than my previous earliest date.
And, this very morning, eight days earlier than I’ve ever seen one before, I caught a flash of brilliant orange and there sat this gorgeous Small copper, always a treat to see.
30 Wednesday Apr 2025
I have one of you to thank for the inspiration for this post; through his comments on my recent post about Wild garlic, Philip Strange (who, if you don’t already know and follow him, produces a really interesting science and nature blog) reminded me to look for the hoverfly associated with that plant. And so I did. And here it is.
For those of you who don’t live in Britain, we are currently experiencing a week of high (for us) temperatures (this is probably our summer, and normal conditions will resume shortly), so, yesterday, a walk through a shady woodland seemed like a good plan. When I arrived at Cwm George, in the nearby town of Dinas Powys, I was delighted to find it was peak garlic time and, when I stood watching those patches of flowering Wild garlic on which sunshine streamed through the tree canopy, I was even more delighted to spot several small grey-patterned hoverflies, both perched on and hovering around the plants.
These are Portevinia maculata hoverflies, and they have a very strong association with Wild garlic (aka Ramsons), as their larvae mine the bulbs and stem bases of those plants. My guide book says that ‘Where Ramsons is abundant, this hoverfly is usually also abundant’ but Philip and I might both dispute that statement. In my local park, where I took the photos for my recent blog and where Wild garlic is prolific, I’ve never seen this hoverfly. So, I was really pleased to find it in good numbers at Cwm George.
29 Tuesday Apr 2025
Tags
bugs on Stinging nettle, Common nettle bug, insect on Stinging nettle, Liocoris tripustulatus, Miridae, plant bugs
I’ve been finding a few new insects recently and this is one of them, the supposedly common Common nettle bug (Liocoris tripustulatus). Perhaps I’ve never noticed them because they tend to live mainly on Stinging nettle (and you know by now that I find nettles challenging – those stings!). This month I’ve seen them twice and they can, apparently, be seen all year round. And, fortunately, with their three yellow dots, these little (4 to 5 mm long) plant bugs are easy to identify.
28 Monday Apr 2025
Tags
British leafmines, British weevils, leaf-mining weevil larvae, leafmines on Wych elm, Orchestes alni, weevil leafmines, weevils on Elm species
It seems, from my online research, that some of my North American readers may consider today’s creature a pest (see, for example, this web page from The Morton Arboretum in Illinois) but, here in Britain, sightings are few and far between; my find was the first in my local 10km area since 1916, and only 20 records are showing in the Welsh biodiversity database.
Making a change from the usual moth and fly larvae leafminers, today’s mines were made by the larvae of a weevil, Orchestes alni, also known as the European elm flea weevil. The adult female weevil lays her eggs inside the midrib of a leaf on one of the Elm species, in this case on Wych elm (Ulmus glabra); you might just be able to make out the scar in the midrib of the underside of the leaf, shown in the photo on the right above. Once hatched, the tiny larva burrows into the leaf, initially creating a gallery mine running towards the leaf edge, then the mine widens out to a blotch. When it’s eaten its fill and the time is right, the larva spins itself a cocoon and pupates within the mine. The hole in the leaf shown above indicates that the adult weevil has emerged from its cocoon and exited the mine.
I found several mines on this one Wych elm, and most were already empty – this leafminer starts early in the season – but a couple were still occupied. As I didn’t think I would be damaging the weevil population and, yes, I was curious – I’d never seen a weevil larva before – I opened one of the mines. So, now you get to see a tiny weevil larva as well.
There is another weevil that also mines the leaves of Elm species, Orchestes betuleti, but, as I wrote above, Orchestes alni starts early in the season, whereas O. betuleti doesn’t usually begin egg-laying until May.
26 Saturday Apr 2025
Tags
Fine streaked bugkin, Fine streaked bugkin nymphs, Miridae, Miris striatus, Miris striatus nymphs, plant bug nymphs, plant bugs
At first glance, I thought these little creatures were fancy ants but a closer look took in the striped waist, the longer antennae and the generally larger size, and I knew they definitely weren’t ants. But what were they?
At this time of year, many insects are still in their early stages of development, particularly those that have over-wintered as eggs, so they can be tricky to identify. Usually, some well-focused internet research produces an answer, or a clue I can then follow, and, luckily, that was the case with these tiny creatures.
These are the nymphs of Miris striatus, a plant bug that has the wonderfully descriptive common name of Fine streaked bugkin – although these nymphs have their small yellow stripes, the streaking actually refers to the adult bugs, photos of which you can see on Naturespot by clicking this link.
That website entry states that these insects are usually associated with Oak and Hawthorn but, as I often find, creatures don’t read websites, and these bugkin nymphs were all on a single willow sapling (though there were Hawthorn bushes nearby). I’ll have to keep an eye out for the adults from May through to July.
24 Thursday Apr 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, declining butterfly populations, Green-veined white, Green-veined white butterfly, Pieris napi
The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme recently released its latest report on how our butterflies are faring, and, for the majority of the 58 British butterfly species, the news is not good.
The latest butterfly to emerge in my locale has been the Green-veined white (Pieris napi), which is described by the UKBMS as ‘stable’ but I’m not sure I’d agree with their definition of stable when these are the statistics they list:
Status since 1976 is Stable with a change of -23.1% since monitoring began for this species.
Status over the last 20 years is Stable with a change of -20.8%
Status over the last 10 years is Stable with a change of -35.7%
In fact, on social media, the Head of Science at Butterfly Conservation wrote: ‘One of the big shocks of last year’s UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme results was that, after its worst year on record in 2024 and a run of six below average years, Green-veined White (Pieris napi) is now in long-term decline.’ This seems a far better summary of the situation. So far, I’ve only seen these two Green-veined whites this year; fingers crossed I manage to see more.
23 Wednesday Apr 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British midges, Cecidomyiidae, Cecidomyiidae cocoon, cocoon on Pine tree, midge, midge emerging from cocoon, midge on Pine tree
Earlier this month I blogged about the mysterious ‘things’ I had discovered on the needles of some local Pine trees (Mystery: on a Pine tree, 10 April). Well, the mystery has now been partly, but not entirely solved.
Last Friday, the 18th, I was making a sandwich for lunch when I noticed a change in one of the ‘things’. A creature had obviously made itself a hole in one end and was very slowly squeezing its way out. I quickly grabbed a camera, though it was neither easy to get photos looking in to the little jar, nor through the glass sides.
The tiny creature crawled unsteadily across the bottom of the jar then climbed one side, where it clung as its wings slowly dried and unfurled. Its bright pink colour was a lovely surprise.
So, the ‘thing’ was a pupal case or cocoon but I’m still not completely sure what the creature was. Some online research led me to think it was some kind of midge or gnat, and that was later confirmed by the Dipterists forum folk on social media: ‘one of the midges in family Cecidomyiidae’. I researched further, trying to find a similar-looking external cocoon or an association with Pine trees within that family of midges but found nothing in the UK that seemed to fit. I did find some US references to Cecidomyia piniinopis, which looks very similar, but that species is not listed in the taxonomy for Britain.
Still, I’m pleased I managed to at least partially solve the mystery and seeing the adult midge emerge was quite special. It, and the other cocoon, have been returned to where I found them to, hopefully, live their best lives.
earthstar 
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