Sawfly larvae

Strictly speaking caterpillars are the larvae of butterflies and moths.  They have three pairs of true legs at the front and up to five pairs of stumpy pro-legs along their body.

The characters below have SIX pairs of pro-legs.  they are the larvae of a sawfly, so-called because the female has a saw-like organ at the end of her body to cut a slit in a leaf and lay her eggs inside. 

When alarmed, the larvae stick out their tails to scare the predator off.  You can see in the photo on the left above that one of them is a bit slower to react but in the right hand photo it has joined in the alarmed position adopted by its siblings - a good photo-opportunity.

Another clue to suggest it's a sawfly larva:  the black dots along the back and sides.  These photos are of the rose sawfly (Arge pagana)

These fine photos supplied by Alan Watts.

A similar sawfly larva (Nematus pavidus) gobbles pussy willow leaves.

You may also be familiar with the larvae of the gooseberry sawfly (Nematus ribesii), which is pale green with black spots rather than yellow.  They feed in gangs and can quickly defoliate your gooseberry bushes.

The solomon's seal sawfly (Phymatocera aterrima) larvae will defoliate a solomon's seal plant even faster.  They are white with black spots but you don't usually notice them until they have devoured the plant and moved on.

Sawflies are nearly all specific to one particular plant species.

Tree planting

 In early April Jim and Derek planted three trees up near the viewpoint.  They were an oak, a hornbeam and a birch.  April is rather late to plant trees but as they were in pots there was a good chance of survival as long as we kept watering them.

Derek had rather a hard time as he encountered rock just below the surface. 

  

Here's Jim planting the oak, donated by Robin and Stephanie Cole-Morgan

It looked a bit better with a few leaves on in May. 

Not much change since then but  .  .  .  .  .

.  .  .  .  . new buds at the top presage a second flush of growth in July

The hornbeam from Dave Rowley was a more substantial treelet. 

Looking a bit thirsty in May but Jim kepts watering it assiduously.  Newly planted trees need watering in their first year.

Still hanging in there in late June.

The birch,which Jim had received from the Woodland Trust, was rather smaller!

Can you see that thin brown line up the middle of the above picture?

Birches are tasty to rabbits so in late May it was given a tree shelter for protection.  The leaves were  just poking out of the top.

And now it is growing well.

Birches will put up with anything except shade and drought.

More clearance

 Bracken again: this time overwhelming the path near post 10 and the flower-rich slope above it.

An hour or so with two scythers and all is clear again - for now 

Notice, in the picture above, that we left a couple of clumps of St John's Wort with its starry yellow flowers.

And on the far side by post 10 is our one Wild Service Tree.

The leaves are a bit like maple leaves .  .  .  .  .

 .  .  .  .  .  but you can tell it isn't a maple because the main veins don't all originate from the same place; they are spaced up the central vein.

Take a nap by a knapweed

Keep your eyes open but stay very still by a knapweed plant and you may see a variety of creatures coming to visit the flowers.

While mowing with a scythe I chopped the top off a tussock of grass and found that I had accidentally taken the roof off a nest of yellow meadow ants.  You don't often see them because they live underground, feeding on the honeydew produced by aphids feeding on grass roots.

I had exposed the pupae, so the little yellow workers scurried round, taking the helpless pupae underground again.

While taking a photo of this I saw a white crab spider (Misumena vatica)on the neighbouring knapweed.  But it also detected me and quickly hid under the flower head.  

You can just see a trace of a white body with red marks, under the petals on on the right hand side of the flower. 

I waited for quite a long time but it didn't come out on top again so I gently tipped the flower to get a picture.  These spiders usually sit on white flowers, waiting to grab a pollinating bee, fly or beetle.  This individual seems to have had a poor idea of camouflage.

Then a bee arrived - or was it a hoverfly.  I'm not sure.

The next visitor was a marbled white butterfly.

 Other butterflies, ringlet and meadow brown, came by but were too easily disturbed for me to photograph.

And then I noticed lots of what looked like orange flies drifting past.  When they landed I saw not only that they were soldier beetles, but also what they were up to.  

What an entomological bonanza display, just by standing still.

The Agrimony and the Ecstasy

A couple of photos taken by Simon Harding, showing the beauty of a simple little flower like Agrimony.

Formerly used as a cure-all medicinal herb, agrimony leaves are 'still used as a stimulating alternative to tea'. (Reader's Digest Field Guide to Wild Flowers).  I've not tried it myself.

It was thought to be magic and so was called 'fairy's wand' or 'fairy's rod', which was later changed to 'Aaron's rod' when the early church was discouraging pagan beliefs.

Once the flowers are over, the seeds develop into little burr-like balls, similar to goosegrass fruits.  They attach themselves to the fur of passing animals or human socks and shoe laces, and so the seeds are distributed widely.

Bracken

One of the half dozen ferns we have at Filnore, bracken is distinguished by being the only one to grow with a 'stalk' like a tree.  Here it is, growing again just inside the entrance, after having been cut down earlier in the year. 

It spreads by underground creeping roots, travelling a metre in all directions in a season, and it exudes allelopathic chemicals which prevent many other plants growing, though bluebells don't seem to mind it.

We therefore need to control it by cutting but not to eradicate it - even if we could.  A number of insects feed on it. 

Bracken is the most ancient of ferns.  It has been found in fossils over 55 million years old.

Last Tuesday Simon and Pete, from South Glos Council, mowed out a section of bracken while on their monthly machine mow of the flatter areas at Filnore.

and the following day, which was unfortunately rather drizzly, five of us cleared the rest of the ground along the hedgeline with scythes.  We got soaking wet in the rain but have now cleared another area for wild flowers to fight back against the stifling bracken and brambles.

The hump in the foreground is one of several made many years ago by mountain bikers as ramps.  This also resulted in severl pits (marked by stakes), which we now use to deposit the arisings from our clearance activities.

Thick-legged beetle

Photo: Simon Harding

Simon's photo of a field scabious flower shows a male thick-legged beetle (Oedemera nobilis).  You can see the swollen femurs on the hind legs, which shows he is a male.  Look at the patterning on his irridescent green thorax and the length of his antennae.

My rather inferior cropped image of a yarrow flower head shows a female of the same species, without those enlarged femurs.