23 Wednesday Sep 2020
When I got home from today’s walk, I discovered I had a hitchhiker, tucked up snugly in the hood of my jacket. I presume this Hawthorn shieldbug got brushed off its bush and on to me as I pushed through the snagging branches of some young Hawthorns earlier in the day. After a couple of quick photos, I placed it on the window ledge and off it flew in search of the nearest Hawthorn.
18 Saturday Jul 2020
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly in Oak trees, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Favonius quercus, Oak butterfly, oak tree, Purple hairstreak
The key to where to locate this gorgeous butterfly, the Purple hairstreak, is in its scientific name Favonius quercus – quercus is the genus of the Oak tree – and I suspect that there are many more colonies of Purple hairstreaks living in our old Oak trees than we currently know about, as these butterflies spend much of their time unseen, high in the leafy boughs, feasting on honey dew.
There is a colony at Lavernock, and I’ve seen these butterflies at a couple of locations along the road that leads to Lavernock Point, but they were the only local sites I knew about. So, you can perhaps imagine my delight when, during Thursday’s walk at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, I came face to snout with a female Purple hairstreak, which had ventured down to head height, and was happily running her yellow proboscis over the honey-dew-covered leaves.
This was the closest I’d been to one of these lovely creatures and had previously seen neither the purple sheen on their open wings nor the yellow proboscis. I was in butterfly heaven!
28 Sunday Jun 2020
I’m not good at tree identification but I think this is most likely a Hybrid Black-poplar (Populus x Canadensis agg). It’s growing in a local park alongside the river – they like wet landscapes, and are frequently planted in parks and gardens but have also become naturalised in much of Britain.
What caught my attention with this tree was not the leaves or the bark or the shape but its seed fluff, which is so abundant at the moment that it’s covering the nearby path like snow in summer.
Poplar trees are dioecious, meaning there are separate male and female trees, and you can tell this one is a female because it’s producing the seeds, with all that fabulous white fluff attached.
22 Monday Jun 2020
When walking along a narrow path between fields last week, I turned to face into the neighbouring hedgerow so that two other walkers could safely pass behind me. In so doing, I noticed these galls, which I think are Aceria campestricola (also known as Aceria ulmicola).
These growths betray the presence of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of the tiny mites that have caused these galls to form.
These particular galls can only be found on specific elm species, which in Britain include English elm and Small-leaved elm.
09 Tuesday Jun 2020
Tags
Eriophyes mites, gall mites, gall-causing mites, galls on Lime leaves, lime galls, Lime trees, mites
These stopped me in my tracks!
I’d enjoyed a nice amble around a local park and was on my way home when I spotted these incredible galls and just had to stop for some photos. The galls are caused by tiny mites that spend the cool winter months huddling in cracks on the tree’s bark, then head out on to the leaves when they sprout in the springtime.
The mites are leaf-sap suckers, and their sap sucking causes a chemical reaction in the leaf, which in turn prompts the leaf to produce these small, conical, hollow growths. The mites are incredibly tiny – less than 0.2mm long apparently – so they’re almost never seen, whereas their cosy gall homes can grow to 8mm long and, when they’re as bright as these ones were, are very obvious on the leaves.
I’m not sure which mites these are as I’m not sure which tree species this is. One mite species, Eriophyes tiliae, is the gall causer on Large-leaved lime trees (Tilia platyphyllos), Common limes (Tilia x europaea) and some hybrid Lime species, and another mite, Eriophyes lateannulatus, causes very similar galls on Small-leaved Limes (Tilia cordata) and hybrid Limes.
25 Saturday Apr 2020
This must be the largest Oak apple gall I’ve ever seen – it was at least 1½ inches across, and it had attracted the interest of several small wasps, though these are not the wasps that created the gall in the first place.
I assumed that they were parasitic wasps about to use their long ovipositors to inject their own eggs into the gall, and it turns out my assumption was correct. Thanks to the British Plant Galls account on Twitter (@BritGalls), and to another Twitter user’s tweet, I’ve learnt that the tiny wasp in the photo below is a member of the Chalcis genus of wasps, probably one of the family of Torymidae. They are ectoparasites: their larvae feed on the larvae of the Oak apple gall wasp that created the gall in the first place.
21 Tuesday Apr 2020
It’s that time of year again, when the Hawthorn blossom scents the air with its distinctive perfume and carpets the ground with its snow-like blossom.
My Flora Britannica reminds me that Hawthorn, also known as the May tree, was ‘the ancestor of the Maypole, the source of May Day garlands … and one of the models for the foliage which wreathes the faces of Green Men carved in churches and inns.’
For lots more fascinating information on the Hawthorn, check out my previous post here.
16 Thursday Apr 2020
Tags
birding, birding out the window, birds in my tree, birdwatching, Blue tit, British birds, Cherry tree, Goldfinch, Willow warbler, Woodpigeon
It’s amazing how much time you can ‘waste’ trying to take photos of all the birds that spend time in a tree. I know because I’ve spent several hours doing just that. I can watch the tree as I sit at my desk/dining table or on my living room sofa (my kitchen/dining/living room is just one big room) so it’s easy to spot birds arriving or to hear them singing and calling, but it’s not so easy to sneak over to the open window to take photos because, obviously, if I can see the birds, they can also see me! So, my clothes drying rack was moved in to service as a not-very-effective bird hide.
First up was a Blue tit – always cute and very chirpy. As the tree – some kind of ornamental cherry – is now quite leafy, it’s hard to get a clear shot and, of course, the birds don’t exactly pose for me.
Next, and returning continuously throughout the day, a couple of Goldfinches. Their cheerful twittering has been a joy in recent days.
Surprise of the day was this Willow warbler, a real rarity in my urban setting. It visited on and off for a couple of hours then, presumably, continued its migration path, heading north to the Welsh Valleys to find a spot to breed.
And so to bed … this Woodpigeon had obviously had a hard day.
02 Thursday Apr 2020
By sheer coincidence, author Robert Macfarlane’s ‘word of the day’ today on Twitter is cat’s-paw.
He writes about them: ‘nickname for catkins of the smaller willows/sallows (Goat willow, pussy willow, grey willow); among the earliest signs of spring; first grey & silky, then growing a glowing aura of tiny flowers. Often brought into houses at Easter/on Palm Sunday.’
I had already decided that today’s post would be on this same topic so here are the photos I’ve been collecting over the past week or so. These are of different trees so it’s quite likely they are not all the same species of willow (and I’m useless at working out which is which), but I love the way the catkins develop from soft furriness to beautiful bursts of yellow, and the insects love them too.
07 Saturday Mar 2020
Dioecious: adjective; (of a plant or invertebrate animal) having the male and female reproductive organs in separate individuals (Oxford Dictionary).
My example today is the Yew tree (Taxus baccata), which has male and female flowers on separate trees. The male flowers are out now on a couple of trees in my local park – the female flowers may also be out but I didn’t look for them. The males are rather more showy and obvious, especially when they’re not soaking wet and their yellow pollen is blowing in the wind.
earthstar 
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