A pair of Goldeneyes

04 Thursday Dec 2025

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Local birders have this week been treated to the appearance of a pair of Goldeneyes (Bucephala clangula) in Cardiff Bay, though they have occasionally been elusive, disappearing from their favoured area in the bay behind the Ice Rink for long periods, then reappearing as if by magic. When present, they also dive very frequently, so it’s easy to blink and miss them.

The male is a particularly handsome duck. He looks black in his upper parts and white below, though his head is actually a very dark green, and he has white cheek patches. As is usually the case with ducks, the female is more plain, her body patterned in shades of grey, though the brown colouration of her head is a warm rich hue. Both sexes have the golden-coloured eye they are named for.

Ever watchful

02 Tuesday Dec 2025

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Despite my being partially concealed by low trees and tall shrubs, moving as quietly as possible over the uneven ground, and pretending not to have noticed this stunning Kestrel (I always think it’s better not to meet their eyes when trying to be stealthy), I still didn’t manage to get close enough for a very good photograph. It was almost as if the bird was teasing me, leading me to think I could get closer, before it flew up and away to hover several times over the neighbouring field while searching for unfortunate small mammals.

Aphid: Eriosoma lanigerum

01 Monday Dec 2025

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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.

Autumn trees: Whitebeam

30 Sunday Nov 2025

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Whitebeam (Sorbus aria) is a tree I’ve overlooked until now, though I did take a few photos earlier in the year, of its smooth grey bark and its berries, before they ripened. (According to the Woodland Trust website, the berries ‘are known as chess apples in north-west England and are edible when nearly rotten’, which doesn’t make them sound very appetizing to me.)

Whitebeam’s leaves are quite distinctive: elliptical in shape with serrated edges, the upper sides a shiny dark green, the under sides light grey and hairy. In the autumn, they aren’t particularly spectacular, simply changing to yellow, orange, and brown as they lose their chlorophyll.

The Woodland Trust site has some interesting facts about this handsome tree:

Whitebeam timber is fine-grained, hard and white. Traditional uses included wood turning and fine joinery, including chairs, beams, cogs and wheels in machinery.

And

Whitebeam is native to southern England, though widely planted in the north of the UK. It is common in parks and gardens, but is quite rare in the wild.

And

The leaves are eaten by caterpillars of a number of moths, including Parornix scoticella, Phyllonorycter corylifoliella and Phyllonorycter sorbi.

All three of those moths have leaf-mining larvae, none of which I’ve yet seen, so I must keep an eye out next year.

Location location location

28 Friday Nov 2025

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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).

A disabled Coot

27 Thursday Nov 2025

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Call me heartless but, when I first noticed this Coot in Cardiff Bay yesterday, I laughed out loud. Then I felt ashamed of laughing and couldn’t help but admire how tenacious the bird was. Despite having something wrong with its left leg, it was swimming strongly, and clearly not letting its disability limit its determination to get where it was going.

Hawthorn flowering in November

26 Wednesday Nov 2025

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The Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is also known as the May-tree, the only British tree to be named for the month in which it usually blooms. And, though its blossom does frequently appear a month or so earlier in the year, it does not normally flower in late autumn. Yet, this is what I saw on Sunday’s walk around the edge of my town, a Hawthorn in bloom and bearing berries. Mine is not the only sighting of this unusual phenomenon; when I posted a photo on social media, I was alerted to reports of at least three similar sightings across the UK, and I’m sure there must be more. If anyone ever doubts how much our climate is changing and how this will affect our natural environment, our flora and fauna, occurrences like this should be enough to banish those doubts.

A Vapourer update

25 Tuesday Nov 2025

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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.