Small heath

20 Monday Jun 2022

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Aberbargoed Grasslands, British butterflies, butterfly, Coenonympha pamphilus, Small heath

As well as the Heath spotted-orchids pictured in yesterday’s blog and the Small pearl-bordered fritillaries featured last Thursday, another of the stars of the Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR is the Small heath (Coenonympha pamphilus). Fortunately, this lovely little butterfly has adapted to life in a wide variety of habitats, not just damp grasslands, so, although it is still classed as vulnerable in the most recent conservation status report released last month by Butterfly Conservation, it is in a much better position to cope with environmental changes that those butterflies that require more specialised habitats.

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Counting spots

18 Saturday Jun 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects

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14-spot ladybird, 22-spot ladybird, 24-spot ladybird, British ladybirds, Cream-spot ladybird, ladybird, ladybug, Orange ladybird

I love the bright pops of colour ladybirds (or ladybugs, as they’re known in some countries) provide on the leaves of trees, shrubs and grasses as I’m meandering through the landscape. And they’re usually easy to identify, simply by counting their spots, which is always a bonus with insects. These are a few I’ve recently encountered: 14-spot (Propylea quattuordecimpunctata) and 22-spot (Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata); a new species for me, the 24-spot ladybird (Subcoccinella vigintiquattuorpunctata) (recognisable by its red head, even if you can’t count the spots); and two that are named for their colours so no spot counting required, the Cream-spot (Calvia quattuordecimguttata) (okay, this could be confusing as it has 14 spots and isn’t really cream, more of a red-brown) and the Orange ladybird (Halyzia sedecimguttata).

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Moths are amazing

17 Friday Jun 2022

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British moths, moth

At the risk of stating the obvious, moths are amazing! And I’ve been lucky to find some gorgeous examples in recent weeks. As I’m running out of image storage space on this blog, the easiest way to share my photos is via a slideshow video. Here, then, is a short tribute to moths, a celebration of their incredible diversity of shapes and sizes, patterns and colours.

Pearls in the grass

16 Thursday Jun 2022

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Aberbargoed Grasslands, Boloria selene, British butterflies, butterfly, fritillary, Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary

I can’t think of a nicer way to spend a day than to enjoy a lovely catch up with my friend Shar while wandering around a grasslands reserve looking for butterflies. Having a second pair of sharp eyes was also a bonus as the weather was quite dull, the butterflies few and mostly inactive. Still, we managed some good close sightings of Small pearl-bordered fritillaries (Boloria selene), a butterfly that thrives in the damp grassland habitat of Aberbargoed Grasslands NNR and, though one of the reserve’s largest fields was burnt recently, there are promising signs that both the violets required for this butterfly’s larvae and the thistles, bramble and bugle that provide food for the adults have survived the fire. Let’s hope both the plants and the butterflies bounce back from what could so easily have been a truly tragic event.

220616 small pearl-bordered fritillary

Grass bugs

15 Wednesday Jun 2022

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British bugs, grass bugs, Leptopterna dolabrata, Miridae

The Miridae family of plant / leaf / grass bugs is huge, with thousands of species worldwide. This one, Leptopterna dolabrata, is a species I often see in the local meadows at this time of year and, during a recent walk, I found a little colony of them, with several adult males and females, mating adults, and nymphs that I have tentatively identified from looking at their colouring as male and female, though I may be wrong about those. So, the photos below are, I think, female nymph (left) and adult (right), male nymph (left) and adult (right), and, most obviously, a male and female mating.

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The fluttering browns

14 Tuesday Jun 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects

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British butterflies, butterfly, Maniola jurtina, Meadow Brown, meadow butterfly

Weaving their way amongst the long grasses, fluttering delicately up and down, meandering through the meadows – the Meadow browns are out and about.

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Leafmines: Orchestes signifer

13 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects, leaves, trees

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British weevils, leafmines on Oak, Orchestes signifer, weevil, weevil leafmines

From my previous posts, including the recent A weirdness of weevils, I’m sure it’s obvious that I’m a huge fan of weevils, but I’d never given a thought to their life cycle until I found these leafmines. The mines are the work of the larvae of the weevil Orchestes signifer. The gallery mines follow the edges of Oak leaves before terminating in a small blotch. At that point, the larvae make themselves a case by cutting out the circular blotch, and, snugly encased, they drop to the ground to pupate. You can find a photo of the black-and-white adult weevil on the British Leafminers website.

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Cheeky little flitters

10 Friday Jun 2022

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British butterflies, butterfly, Large skipper, Large skipper butterfly, Skippers

The skippers are here! I spotted my first Large skipper of the year on Wednesday 1 June but that butterfly flitted quickly past a couple of times before disappearing, seemingly by magic, and it wasn’t until last Friday, a hot sunny day, that more skippers appeared. On that day’s walk I saw six in total, in four different locations, and the cheeky little flitters even posed obligingly for photographs.

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Of course, they weren’t actually posing for me. Male Large skippers like to find themselves a perch from which to survey their domain and keep a look out for any passing females. Even after flitting up to scare other males off their patch or to follow females in the hopes of mating, they will still return to their chosen perch. So, if you’re having trouble getting a good look at these glorious golden butterflies or taking their photographs, it can be a good idea to just stand still and watch a while until you work out their perching spot.

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Rose leaf galls

09 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by sconzani in insects, leaves

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Blennocampa phyllocolpa, British galls, British sawflies, galls caused by sawflies, galls on roses, insects on roses, leaf-rolling sawfly larvae, rolling leaves on roses, Rose galls

I was alerted to the possibility of finding these galls by a post I saw on Twitter – social media certainly is good for spreading the word about what to look for when and where.

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These galls, these downward rollings of the leaf edges on rose species, are due to the larvae of the sawfly Blennocampa phyllocolpa. Presumably, they cause the leaves to roll in order to create shelters for themselves, as the leaves seem otherwise unharmed, though, when I carefully unrolled perhaps 10 leaves, I only found a larva in one of them. The adult sawfly is a tiny black creature, photos of which you can see on The Sawflies (Symphata) of Britain and Ireland website. If you have roses in your garden, you may already be aware of this sawfly’s activities on your plants.