01 Tuesday Jun 2021
Posted in insects
Beautiful by name, beautiful in appearance, and really quite magical in their delicate fluttering around the bushes along the rides in my favourite local woodland. The Beautiful demoiselles (Calopteryx virgo) seem to have emerged en masse during last week’s warmer weather.
31 Monday May 2021
Posted in insects
Tags
Aberbargoed coal tip, Aberbargoed spoil tip, British beetles, Cicindela campestris, Green tiger beetle
Here’s another find from my visit to Aberbargoed, though not from the grasslands. My friend and I also had a good wander around the adjacent spoil tip, a huge reminder of the coal mining industry that used to dominate much of the Welsh Valleys and now home to an amazingly diverse range of flora and fauna.
Last week’s walk produced my first ever Green tiger beetle (Cicindela campestris), a species I’ve wanted to see since marvelling at the wonderful photos I saw on Liam Old’s Twitter feed. (Liam is the founder and force behind the Colliery Spoil Biodiversity Initiative, which promotes the environmental value of spoil tips and the immense biodiversity these sites support.)
29 Saturday May 2021
Posted in insects
Having lucked out last week, I was over the moon during this week’s visit to Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR to see my first Marsh fritillaries of the year.
Perhaps it was the company of my friend Sharon that brought me luck (it was our first meeting in almost nine months).
And, no doubt, bumping in to the ranger on site really helped, as he pointed out which field he’d just seen half a dozen butterflies in (the main field where they’re usually seen is still very waterlogged).
The day of our visit was the first really sunny day in a while, and, as most of the fritillaries were sitting quietly amongst the tussocks and clumps of grass, soaking up the sunshine and flexing their wings, I got the feeling that many had only just emerged from their pupae.
We saw nine Marsh fritillaries in total – I’m sure there were more we missed. They are such stunning creatures that I’m already planning a return visit.
27 Thursday May 2021
Tags
Brindled green, British moths, Case-bearing moth, Coleophora flavipennella, Coleophora lutipennella, Dryobotodes eremite, moth larvae, moth larvae on Oak, moths on Oak, Oak leaves
As you can see from the last two days’ blogs, there was much to be found on Oak leaves in my local woodlands on Sunday. These are two more finds, both relating to moths. This first was found on the same tree as the Purple hairstreak larva and, thanks to some help from Twitter moth-ers, I can tell you this is the larva of the Brindled green moth (Dryobotodes eremite) (you can see the adult moth on the UK Moths website here).
The wonderfully crafted cases in the photos below contain the larvae of either Coleophora lutipennella or Coleophora flavipennella – apparently, it’s not possible to determine the species without waiting for the adult moths to hatch and then dissecting their genitalia, which I’m not going to do. I’m happy just to admire their silk-weaving skills.
26 Wednesday May 2021
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly larva on Oak tree, butterfly larvae, Purple hairstreak, Purple hairstreak larva
While examining the galls on Oak leaves that I blogged about yesterday, I also made a very exciting find, my first Purple hairstreak butterfly larva. It was so well camouflaged that I’m sure I wouldn’t normally have noticed it.
This particular woodland contains some huge ancient Oak trees but also many younger trees planted to mark the turn of the millennium and I’ve always thought it would be good habitat for Purple hairstreak. Now that I know they’re definitely here, I’ll be looking for the stunning little butterflies when they emerge in a month or so, and also for more larvae in the meantime.
25 Tuesday May 2021
Tags
Andricus curvator, British galls, galls on Oak leaves, galls on oak trees, Oak gall wasps, oak galls, oak tree
With heavy cloud and occasional rain, Sunday was not a day for finding butterflies in the woodland. So, I decided to look more closely at Oak leaves to see what I might find, and that strategy paid off in spades as the next few days’ blog posts will show. First up, I found a gall I hadn’t seen before, which turns out to be the sexual generation of the gall wasp Andricus curvator.
When the adult wasps emerge in the spring from the agamic (asexual) generation galls, which are formed on buds in the autumn and fall to the ground to over-winter, they lay their eggs mostly on Oak leaves but also, sometimes, on twigs or catkins, so these galls can take several forms. The ones I found (and they were numerous) were all on leaves, causing malformations and swellings, as you can see from the photos above and below.
I was tempted to split a gall open to see what was inside but it turns out I didn’t have to, as something had nibbled away at one gall, revealing a second round gall inside (see below). The larvae within this inner gall will emerge in the autumn to lay its eggs on Oak buds, and so the process will continue.
24 Monday May 2021
Posted in insects
Tags
Brimstone butterfly, British butterflies, butterfly courtship, butterfly mating, Green-veined white butterfly, Orange-tip butterfly
Some recent moments of butterfly courtship I’ve managed to catch on camera …
The dance of the Brimstones: the butter-yellow male flies in to check if the paler female is ready and willing to mate. And he’s in luck, so their (to human eyes) romantic dance begins, with the male whirling around the female, wafting his pheromones in her direction to encourage her to settle and let mating begin. This ‘dance’ can continue quite a while, as I discovered while watching this pair.
Mating was already underway when I spotted this pair of Green-veined whites. And it is not just sperm that is passing between them. The Butterfly Conservation website reports that the male also transfers ‘a so-called “nuptial gift” of nutrients that the female can assimilate and use to increase egg production. Exceptionally, male Green-veined Whites may transfer 25% of their own body mass to females during mating, though typically this is more like 15%.’
Sometimes males don’t know when to take ‘No’ for an answer! By pointing her abdomen in the air, this Orange-tip female is refusing to mate, presumably because she has already mated and needs to get on with the important task of egg-laying. But the male simply wasn’t getting the message and continued fluttering around the female, even landing on her outspread wings. Eventually, she flew off at speed to escape his advances.
21 Friday May 2021
Posted in insects
This has been a strange spring, with frequent cool winds, a lack of rain that was restricting plant growth and cracking the ground, and now a couple of weeks of frequent rain that is saturating the land. This unseasonal weather has had a definite effect on wildlife, with some insects out and about early, but others emerging a week or more later than usual.
I would usually expect to see my first Common blue butterfly in mid May but this year’s first sighting came on Wednesday 19th and, somewhat surprisingly, it was high in the Welsh valleys, where the weather is often a few degrees cooler than my usual coastal patches. In fact, in between the sunny spells on Wednesday’s walk, I got hailed on. Go figure!
19 Wednesday May 2021
Posted in insects
Tags
Azure damselfly, British damselflies, British odonata, Common blue damselfly, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, damselfly
My first damselflies (still no dragonflies) of 2021 have been a long time coming but, finally, yesterday, at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, before a thunderstorm drenched both the insects and me, I saw a small number of both Azure and Common blue damselflies in some of the more sheltered places around the fields … and it was magical!
Azure damselfly
Common blue damselfly
18 Tuesday May 2021
Posted in insects, spring, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, buttercups, buttercups and insects, insects in buttercups, yellow wildflowers
It seems I’m not the only one who likes buttercups, judging by the quantity and variety of mini-beasties I’ve spotted in them in recent days: bees and hoverflies, earwigs and micro-moths, and even a slug.
