Tag Archives: insects on Common fleabane

On Common fleabane: spiders and wasps

22 Saturday Aug 2026

Posted by in insects, spiders, wildflowers

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This is the penultimate blog about the creatures I’ve been seeing feeding on Drought-tolerant Common fleabane, aiding their survival during this summer of record-breaking heatwaves and drought. Today’s post features both spiders and wasps, starting with the spiders.

This first little cutie is a Flower crab spider, Misumena vatia, one of several of these sneaky creatures I found, not actually feeding on the fleabane but lurking around the edges of the flowers, ready to pounce on anything unsuspecting and tasty looking that was unfortunate enough to perch too close.

Nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis), quite a small specimen so perhaps one of this year’s brood.

Xysticus lanio is another crab spider, one that’s actually quite difficult to identify so I’m not 100% sure of this one.

These last two are Ichneumon wasps, not identifiable from these images but possibly from the subfamily Pimplinae. The one in the second photo is munching on a very tiny creature. There were also lots of common wasp species but they rarely stopped still so I didn’t manage any photos of them on flowers.

On Common fleabane: bugs and crickets

21 Friday Aug 2026

Posted by in nature

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The subjects of today’s blog about those insects managing to survive this over-heated summer by feeding on Drought-tolerant Common fleabane are bugs, and two examples of one cricket species, because I managed to find both male and female. Let’s begin with bugs …

Two Lucerne bugs (Adelphocoris lineolatus), pretty little things but both trying to hide from me.

I actually saw quite a few Common froghoppers (Philaenus spumarius), and in several of their wonderful variety of brown-and-cream pattern variations.

Clad in its brown armour-like skin and looking ready for a fight, a Dock bug (Coreus marginatus).

An adult Hairy shieldbug (Dolycoris baccarum). (I’ve found quite a lot of nymphs of this species recently and feel they deserve their own blog – you’ll see why soon.)

And now for the crickets. These are Long-winged cone-heads (Conocephalus fuscus), a type of bush-cricket. I’ve just realised that this species has only featured on this blog once before, in July 2020, when I included a photo of a nymph in the post 202/366 More misc minis. The first photo shows a female, though, unfortunately, her impressive ovipositor is mostly obscured; the second image is the male, with a much smaller appendage.