Category Archives: insects

101/366 Little wrigglers

10 Friday Apr 2020

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I took my exercise walk early this morning, hoping to avoid any Easter crowds along the coastal path and my strategy worked a treat. Well, mostly – I’d just spotted a locally rare bird and was taking some photos when a jogger came along and scared it off. That was the bad news (though I did still get the photos – and see the bird – for the curious, a Crossbill). The good news is that during my second encounter, with some dog walkers, when I snuggled off the path between some bushes, I spotted these little wrigglers.

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They’re Lackey moth larvae, quite recently hatched judging by their small size, and now safely cocooned in their self-woven web. They were warming up under the sun’s rays before crawling off for their daily munching of the surrounding leaves of Blackthorn and Hawthorn. At night they return to snuggle together in silken comfort. I’ve seen these larvae several times before but today was the first time I’d noticed their egg cases.

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99/366 Small whites and Speckled woods

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Actually, that title should really be three Small whites and a single Speckled wood but it’s a bit long-winded for a blog title. Suffice to say, my butterfly list for the year has grown by these two new species in the past two days.

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I think this Speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) is a female – their markings are, apparently, larger and more distinct – but I’m not entirely sure. Working out details like this is something I’m aiming to improve this year.

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The Small whites (Pieris rapae) here are two females and a male (below, right). The males only have one spot on their wings and, in this first brood of the year, the wing markings of both sexes are lighter than they will be in the later, summer broods.

I am dizzyingly delighted to be seeing more butterflies flying now. They bring me comfort and joy, something I’m sure we could all do with at the moment. I hope you are all managing to find small moments of comfort and joy in your daily lives as well.

97/366 Wild word : stylopised

06 Monday Apr 2020

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Stylopised: Entomology; (of a bee or other insect) parasitised by a stylops (Oxford Dictionary).

200406 Stylopised Andrena bee (1)

As with most tales about parasites, this one is both extremely fascinating and more than a little revolting. My photos here show a mining bee, one of the Andrena species, possibly Andrena scotica (thanks to local entomologist Liam Olds for that identification). The bee has been stylopised – the two small orange-ish bumps protruding from its abdomen are parasites, females of the Stylops family of Twisted-wing flies (though, due to the strangeness of these insects, there is some dispute about whether they’re really part of the fly family at all). Though the male flies do hatch and fly around, the females spend their entire life inside their host – the males inseminate them in situ and the females lay their eggs inside their host. Once the eggs have hatched into grubs, those grubs leave the host and wait on a leaf or flower for an unsuspecting bee to arrive, climb aboard and burrow into the bee, and the cycle begins again.

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I had never heard of these Stylops parasites until I saw an incredible close-up image of them on Twitter last week, and then just happened to photograph them myself while out walking on Saturday. If you’re on Twitter, Ed Phillips’ amazing photo can be seen here  and you can read more about Stylops on the Royal Entomological Society’s website.

94/366 Curiosity

03 Friday Apr 2020

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This Common wasp (Vespula vulgaris), which was enjoying the warm sunshine on the front of the house this morning, seemed to be as curious about me as I was about it.

(Yes, the windows are a mess – I live in a flat in a Grade II listed building that’s well over 100 years old, and the windows, most of which still have Victorian glass in them, with all its imperfections, are in need of major repair. It’s a long and ongoing story.)

92/366 The Devil’s butterfly?

01 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Today’s fascinating information on the once common, now less so Small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) is taken from Peter Eeles’s magnificent publication Life Cycles of British and Irish Butterflies (Pisces Publications, 2019). If you like butterflies and don’t have this book, you really should get it, as it’s jam-packed with amazing detail and fabulous photos.

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In the section on the Small tortoiseshell, Eeles reports on the variety of names it has had over the centuries: the Lesser Tortoise-shell Butterfly (James Petiver, Musei Petiveriani, 1699); Small Tortoiseshell (Benjamin Wilkes, Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies, 1742); and Nettle tortoiseshell (William Lewin, Twelve Papilios of Great Britain, 1795).

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Eeles also notes that, in Scotland, in the past, this lovely creature was called the Devil’s butterfly and the Witch’s butterfly, though he doesn’t explain how it got those unfortunate names.

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This particular Small tortoiseshell was the highlight of yesterday’s exercise walk around Grangemoor Park (luckily, Cardiff’s parks are still open, though this is the only one in walking distance for me). It was a joy to see, as we don’t get a lot of these butterflies in my local area, and I was delighted when it settled in a couple of places so I could get some photos.

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86/366 Dandelions and Brimstones

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in insects, nature, spring, wildflowers

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Here’s why it should be an offence to cut, spray or otherwise destroy blooming wildflowers – in this case, Dandelions, in particular.

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During yesterday’s daily exercise walk around Grangemoor Park I saw at least five Brimstone butterflies. These were all males, newly emerged from hibernation and already flying frantically back and forth along their chosen path-sides and hedgerows, seeking out females to mate with.

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As there aren’t yet many wildflowers in bloom at Grangemoor, when it came time to refuel for their next patrol flight, every single one of these Brimstones stopped and supped on Dandelion nectar. In fact, once I twigged to what they were doing, I took to checking every Dandelion I saw, just in case it held a butterfly. So, please, PLEASE, leave your Dandelions for the insects to feed on.

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83/366 Fabulous flying fuzzballs

23 Monday Mar 2020

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I wish I could take the credit for that title but it came from a tweet I read earlier today by the social media team at Buglife, The Invertebrate Conservation Trust.

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The tweet was reporting how the sunshine of the past couple of days has brought out the bee-flies and so it has been in my area too. Yesterday, on the sheltered slopes of a local park which, luckily, I had almost to myself, I saw my first four bee-flies of 2020.

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These are Dark-edged bee-flies (Bombylius major), the only species I’ve ever seen, and they were feasting on a glorious carpet of Lesser celandine and Speedwell.

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There are several other species of bee-fly, and a couple of similar non-bee-fly species. The BRC (Biological Records Centre) website has a most excellent photo identification guide that can be downloaded here. Good luck with finding some fabulous flying fuzzballs in your locale.

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