07 Monday Mar 2022
During Saturday’s walk I was delighted to spot my first Red-tailed (Bombus lapidarius) and Tree bumblebees (Bombus hypnorum) of the year. The only food source in a 20-square-metre area (except for a few daisies on a patch of grass) was a flowering Mahonia bush, which had attracted not only those two bumblebees but also a Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), as well as several species of fly, bee and hoverfly. It just showed how important flowers are for these early emerging insects.
28 Monday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
Though a cool breeze blew from the south east, yesterday was wonderfully sunny, so I planned my walk to check the more sheltered spots in the local landscape where I hoped I might find newly emerged flying critters. And I got lucky. As well as my first two butterflies of the year (Small tortoiseshell and Brimstone, both too distant for photos with the camera I had with me), I also found some solitary bees and a wasp.
Thanks to Liam Olds, of the Colliery Spoil Biodiversity Initiative, I can tell you the two bees above are both ‘female Lasioglossum sp. [species] (morio group but not possible to ID from pics)’ and the bee below is a ‘male Andrena flavipes by the looks’.
And the wasp I found basking on a tree trunk is a Vespula vulgaris.
26 Saturday Feb 2022
Not having been out walking for 12 days until yesterday means my first Springtime sightings are probably a bit behind many people’s. Still, it was an absolute delight yesterday to hear, three times, the buzzing of a bumblebee, and to watch this queen Buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) searching amongst the low vegetation for a place – perhaps the abandoned burrow of a vole or shrew – to create a nest for her first brood of the year.
23 Wednesday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
Tags
Angle shades, Angle shades larva, Angle shades moth, Angle shades pupa, British moths, moth pupa
Don’t worry – I won’t be posting too many updates on Colin the caterpillar, now chrysalis. I just thought it was interesting to see how quickly he has changed from looking like a caterpillar to looking like a moth-in-the-making. During Monday morning, after he’d just pupated, he squirmed around a lot, sometimes quite violently. By the end of the day, he had turned a wonderful golden brown colour and showed definite structural signs of the moth he will become, a process that will apparently take between two and three weeks.
21 Monday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
Tags
Angle shades caterpillar, Angle shades moth, Angle shades pupa, British moths, moth chrysalis, moth pupa
For various reasons (illness – mine, not his, and this run of stormy weather) I was not able to return Colin the caterpillar to the area where I think he must have been living before he hitched a ride home with me. So, I’ve been keeping him in a jar on my desk, where he’s munched happily on a diet of cabbage and Alexanders leaves. For the past 24 hours, I’ve been a bit worried as he’d stopped eating but this morning I discovered why – he’s pupated!
17 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
I’ve been log-diving again, checking under small rotting branches and logs to see what might be seen. Woodlice and slugs, small spiders and snails there were a’plenty but the only creature I found with even a modicum of colour was this little springtail. I think this is Neanura muscorum, an insect which couldn’t be less true to its name if it tried – no tail to be seen and certainly not very springy.
09 Wednesday Feb 2022
Tags
Aceria ilicis, British galls, gall mites, galls, galls on oak trees, Holm oak, mite galls, mite galls on Holm oak
During yesterday’s walk, when checking for leaf mines on the leaves of Holm oak (large numbers of Ectoedemia heringella present – you can see one in the photo below), I noticed a huge abundance of small bumps covering many of the leaves.
These are the galls caused by the miniscule mite Aceria ilicis. On the underside (though sometimes also on top), the depression in the leaf is filled with tiny brown hairs (an erineum) where the mites make their home. The galls can be seen throughout the year, so next time you spot a Holm oak, check out its leaves.
08 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
The screensaver on my laptop is a slideshow of my best butterfly photos, one per species, and every time it plays, my heart yearns for butterflies. I know some people have already seen the odd butterfly that’s emerged from hibernation on a particularly warm day but I’ve yet to see my first. Maybe I need to change my screensaver.
07 Monday Feb 2022
Tags
British leafmines, Creeping cinquefoil, Fenella nigrita, Fenella nigrita larval mines, leafmines on cinquefoil, sawfly larvae, sawfly leafmines
When reviewing my leafmine records yesterday and comparing them to those I’ve blogged, I realised there are several I’ve yet to cover here. Most are spring- and summer-time finds so I’ll post about them at the appropriate time but this is one I found in December – I didn’t cover it then as I was in the middle of my A-to-Z end-of-year countdown.
These are the leafmines of the sawfly Fenella nigrita. Its larval mines can be found on Agrimony and on the various cinquefoils – I found these on Creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans). Though the British Leafminers website reports that the mines are normally seen in summer and autumn, I found these on 3 December and the mines are occupied (I’ve added a pointer to one of the larvae in the photo below right). Presumably the mild weather meant a longer breeding season for these sawflies, as with many other creatures.
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in insects
I thought I would explain about Colin the caterpillar (<click to see yesterday’s video). He appeared on my living room carpet about a week ago (I almost stood on him!) and I can only assume he somehow hitched a ride home on some part of my clothing or my backpack. Like the Winter caterpillars I blogged about on 15 January, Colin is an Angle shades moth larva. At the moment, he’s living in a jar on my desk – I wasn’t sure how long he’d been on the carpet so wanted to feed him up before I took him back to the wild. He’s just been through a moult, from 2nd to 3rd instar I think, so he’ll need to be released soon so he can pupate in more natural surroundings.
earthstar 
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