16 Tuesday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Dragonflies feature in three of my countdown blog posts this year as I’ve been fortunate to have seen several new species, and others that I had only seen once previously. Keeled skimmers, blogged about on 26 August, were one of the latter species, and what a delight it was to watch them skimming back and forth around the ponds at Maesteg, a new site for me that I plan to revisit next year.
15 Monday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British moths, climate change affecting wildlife, Euplagia quadripunctaria, Jersey tiger, Jersey tiger moth, moth
As I wrote on 30 August, after a lull in sightings over the past couple of years, 2025 was A good year for Jersey tigers, and it seems very likely that our changing climate has a lot to do with this year’s notable increase in sightings of this stunning moth.
14 Sunday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British ichneumons, British wasps, Campopleginae pupa, ichneumon, Ichneumon pupa, Ichneumon wasps, Pimpla species
This has been a good year for sightings of Ichneumon wasps, and I have written a couple of posts about some I’ve found: Three Ichneumon wasps, on 19 August, featured my first Ctenichneumon panzeri record (now verified); Heteropelma amictum, found on the same day but not yet verified (the national Ichneumon recorder is currently working his way through what must be a huge number of national records – these voluntary verifiers do an incredible job!); and Ichneumon stramentor, a species I’d seen previously and which has been verified. Another first sighting, the handsome Tromatobia lineatoria, whose identity has also now been confirmed, featured in a second blog, Ichneumon: Tromatobia lineatoria, published recently, on 13 November.
There have, of course, been other Ichneumon sightings. One that I didn’t write about because I was rather unsure of its identification is shown above; it has now been verified as one of the Pimpla species. And in July I found a cocoon, which I recognised as having been created by an Ichneumon wasp but has now been confirmed as belonging to the subfamily Campopleginae. I’m hoping my luck at finding new Ichneumon species will continue in 2026.
13 Saturday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British dragonflies, British odonata, Common hawker, dragonfly, Hawker dragonflies, Norfolk hawker, Odonata
What a grand year 2025 has been for dragonfly sightings, partly because, since downsizing my home situation, I’ve finally been able to afford to venture further afield – nothing too adventurous, no trips abroad, but four lovely little mini-breaks in English locations to look for wildlife I’m not able to see closer to home.
That’s how, during a wonderful week in Weymouth in June, I saw my first ever Norfolk hawkers (see Lifer: Norfolk hawker, 18 June) (above). However, my second ‘first-ever’ hawker species sighting (see Lifer: Common hawker, 22 August) (below) was here in Wales, in a small town high in one of the south Wales valleys that I hadn’t previously visited and didn’t know was home to a pond that held some very nice dragonfly species. That visit was a good reminder to explore more widely here in Wales next year, as well as in England.
07 Sunday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British beetles, British bugs, Juniper shieldbug, Kleidocerys resedae, new beetle finds, new bug finds
One of my wildlife aims this year has been to try to find as many new species, of all kinds, as possible, and I’ve been extremely lucky to have found many new-to-me bugs and beetles. These include Lesser thorn-tipped longhorn beetle, 4 January; My first Pine ladybird, 10 March; My first Eyed ladybird, 22 April; Fine streaked bugkins, 26 April; Cyllecoris histrionius, adult and nymph, 12 May; Cantharis decipiens, 13 May; Cacopsylla ambigua, 29 May; Rhopalus subrufus, 6 June; Rhabdomiris striatellus, 10 June; Bug: Deraeocoris flavilinea, 28 June; Beetle: Grammoptera ruficornis, 30 July; Beetle: Four-banded longhorn, 2 August; and Bug: Megacoelum infusum, 12 September.
I was particularly chuffed to find my first Juniper shieldbugs (Juniper shieldbug, 3 June) and, now that I know to look for them on some other tree species, I’ve managed to find them on four separate occasions, three of those in the same location as my initial find, on a Cypress growing in a local park, and the other on a different Cypress species growing in one of Cardiff’s oldest cemeteries, alongside Llandaff Cathedral.
Another new bug that I think is particularly attractive is Bug: Kleidocerys resedae. I wrote about that on 27 June, and this is another species that I’ve managed to re-find, on 15 November, when I spotted three different adult bugs within a few metres of each other.
06 Saturday Dec 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
Arocatus longiceps, Arocatus longiceps / roeselii, Arocatus roeselii, British bugs, bugs on Alder trees
Another year of wonderful flora and fauna sightings is drawing to a close and, as I’ve done for a few years now, I’m going to do an alphabetical countdown of some of my more memorable moments in Nature. I’m very proud to have added three more first-for-Wales sightings to my list in 2025, and this beautiful bug was one of them (as reported in Bug: Arocatus roeselii, 12 July).
01 Monday Dec 2025
Tags
American blight, aphid, aphids on Apple trees, aphids on Firethorn, aphids on Pyracantha, British aphids, Eriosoma lanigerum, galls on Firethorn, galls on Pyracantha, Woolly apple aphid
When I set out on my walk last Saturday, I wasn’t intentionally targeting aphids but up they popped. At this first location I wasn’t completely certain that what I saw was caused by aphids but, as soon as I poked one of the fuzzy white lumps on this Firethorn (Pyracantha species) and my finger came away stained red, I knew I’d just inadvertently squashed an aphid (this has happened to me before when I grabbed a willow branch without noticing the aphids perched on it).
After a little research when I got home, it quickly became apparent that these were Eriosoma lanigerum, also known as Woolly apple aphids and American blight. The sap-sucking feeding of Eriosoma lanigerum causes deformation and swellings on the branches, trunks and roots of their host plants, as you can see from the lumpy growths on the branches of this Firethorn bush.
The white ‘wooliness’ is a wax substance the aphids produce in specialised glands and excrete as filaments from various parts of their bodies. The Influential Points website, which is an excellent resource for information about aphids, summarises the various reasons scientists have reached for this wax secretion:
Smith suggests that the primary role of the secreted wax is to prevent the aphids becoming contaminated by their own honeydew … and that of other members of the colony…. Other secondary roles of wax may include individual microclimate isolation, protection from fungi, parasites and predators plus waterproofing and frost protection.
Though their primary plant hosts are Pyracantha and Cotoneaster species, as the Woolly apple aphid name suggests, their secondary host is Apple and, on the various species of Apple trees, they are considered a major pest, often having a severe economic impact on Apple crops. If you’re interested in reading more about this, the Influential Points website has a long list of various scientific research papers from around the globe on the subject of these aphids, their reproduction habits, their seasonal movements, their genetics and population dynamics, as well as ways to control their infestations.
28 Friday Nov 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British moths, Erannis defoliaria, moth, moths attracted to lights, Mottled umber, Operophtera brumata, Winter moth
Over the summer months I discovered how productive the solid fencing around this building site alongside the River Taff was for insect finds. A section of the fence along the access track to the site was where I saw my first Large white butterfly pupae and, subsequently, the parasitic wasps that preyed on them and were, in turn, the victims of other parasitic wasps (see Large whites and parasitism, part 1, 23 June and Large whites and parasitism, part 2, 24 June).
The interesting finds have continued with the changing seasons. Yesterday, when I walked slowly past, though there were several different creatures (including at least one Noble false widow spider), the highlights were moths, drawn to the wall, no doubt, by the lights that illuminate the wall at night. Yesterday’s finds were four Winter moths (Operophtera brumata) and a Mottled umber (Erannis defoliaria).
25 Tuesday Nov 2025
Yesterday’s walk took me past the location where I found A female Vapourer last week. She was still there, but dead. I knew the females died soon after laying their eggs but I presume she had emerged too late in the year to attract a male (the UK Moths website says ‘the adults are out from July to September, sometimes October in the south’) as there were no eggs. I know this is just the way Nature works sometimes but I still felt a little sad that this lovely moth hadn’t been able to complete her purpose in life.
18 Tuesday Nov 2025
Posted in insects
Tags
British moths, female Vapourer, flightless female moth, moth, Orgyia antiqua, The Vapourer, Vapourer cocoon, Vapourer eggs
The highlight of my walk last Saturday was finding my first female Vapourer moth (Orgyia antiqua), sitting on her cocoon, presumably newly emerged.
Now, you might look at her and think ‘That doesn’t look like a moth. Where are the wings?’ That’s the amazing thing about a female Vapourer – she’s almost wingless; her wings are so tiny that she’s unable to fly. Once she hatches, the female sits on her cocoon, as this one was, emitting pheromones and waiting for a male to fly by, notice and mate with her. Then, she’ll lay her eggs on the outside of her empty cocoon (as you can see on the other cocoon I found very close to the female, and which I also blogged about earlier this year: Vapourer pupa and eggs, January 2025). As she can’t fly, the female can’t feed, so she will die soon after laying her eggs.
Ominously, there were tiny parasitic wasps hanging around the female, presumably waiting to inject her eggs, so some of those eggs may not produce caterpillars come the spring.
earthstar 
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