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.

Meet Beaky

24 Monday Nov 2025

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Let me introduce you to Beaky the Carrion crow. It lives at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, in the area around the visitor centre and car park at the southern end of the east lake. I’ve heard about Beaky from other park visitors and know some elderly gents who throw it some bread whenever they visit but, as I don’t often walk in that area (too many people for my liking), I hadn’t met Beaky until last Friday. I had some bird food with me so threw it into the water at the lake edge for the Tufted ducks then was sitting on a bench, putting away my bins and camera in preparation for heading home, when this crow landed in front of me and stared, as if to say ‘Where’s my food?’ And, of course, I couldn’t help but notice its deformed bill so knew immediately this must be Beaky. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any food left but I’ll definitely save some for this characterful bird next time I head that way.

And, just in case you’re wondering, ‘my’ crows are well, and still/always hungry. I don’t go to Cosmeston as often as I used to (too many people for my liking, and that’s only going to get worse, as the Welsh government has just approved a development of 576 new homes on the land opposite) but, as soon as I walk in to my crows’ territory, they come flying in to see me.

The male, above, usually lands right by my feet, whereas the female, below, more wary, perches in a nearby tree. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt a close connection to a wild creature but it truly makes my heart sing when these birds fly in, feed near me, and often walk around the field with me.

Autumn trees: Ash

23 Sunday Nov 2025

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My Flora Britannica contains a myriad of fascinating information about the Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) but nothing that specifically relates to the tree in autumn. So, I googled “Ash keys”, thinking that might turn up some interesting facts. The AI overview produced this rather bizarre result:

“Ash keys” can refer to the winged seeds of an ash tree, which are used in poetry collections, or a caravan park in Yorkshire, UK. The ash tree seeds are a common sight in autumn and are also used to make pickles.

Yes, I was expecting the ‘winged seeds of an ash tree’ but ‘used in poetry collections’? (Turns out, there’s a book of poetry called Ash keys.) And, yes, ‘ash tree seeds are a common sight in autumn’ but are they really used to make pickles? (Turns out, this can be done but is an incredibly long-winded process, using a lot of electricity for multiple cooking stages and spices to create flavour, and is surely neither environmentally friendly nor worth the effort.) You may have guessed I’m no fan of AI!

So, here’s one of the much more interesting pieces from Flora Britannica instead:

In Britain, up until the end of the eighteenth century, it was regarded as a healing tree, and Gilbert White knew Hampshire villagers who, as children, had been through an Ash ritual as a ritual as a treatment for rupture or weak limbs. It was an extraordinary ceremony, a relic of pre-Christian sympathetic magic. A young Ash was split and held open by wedges, while the afflicted child was passed, stark naked, through the gap. The split was then ‘plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together … the party was cured; but, where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove ineffectual.

The Black redstarts are back

22 Saturday Nov 2025

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I wrote that title in an optimistic frame of mind a week ago, when planning forthcoming blog posts and after seeing my first Black redstart of the autumn/winter season in a nearby seaside town. This female / immature bird – it’s impossible to tell whether they’re male or female at this time of year when they haven’t yet acquired their adult plumage – was moving between the rooftops of local houses and an adjacent newly planted park.

This was apparently one of two birds, and, a few days later, two males were also seen. I had intended to go for another look but the park also held a children’s playground very close to where the birds were feeding and it’s not really a good idea to linger near a playground with binoculars and a camera. Then, yesterday I heard that no Black redstarts have been seen at all this week so it looks like they’ve moved on. Fingers crossed we’ll get some local over-wintering birds, in a more suitable location.