BASTARD SERVICE

 This the Bastard Service Tree (that's its name - really), growing in Chapel Street, Thornbury has one of the most spectacular displays of berries.

  

  Unfortunately they do not last long.  

You can also identify it by the leaves, which are lobed like the Swedish Whitebeam or even a bit like an oak, BUT . . . the first two or more lobes are separate from the rest of the leaf.

  

The back of the leaf is paler, showing that it's a member of the whitebeam group of the Sorbus genus, Sorbus thuringiaca, and so also related to rowan trees.

DELICATE TOADSTOOLS

This flush of tiny grooved fungi on long thin stalks, probably a Mycena species, was emerging from the woodland floor in the New Plantation at Filnore Woods.

 

META BUT NOT ZUCKERBERG

Meta segmentata is the name of this pretty little spider, although it is more often called Metallina segmentata (little meta).  Yes it is pretty!  If you found a flower with this patterning you would be delighted. 

It's  the legs, isn't it, that puts people off spiders.

This one was sitting on a yellow flag iris leaf.

Spiders have two sections to their bodies: an abdomen containing most of their internal organs and a cephalothorax which combines the head functions (eyes, jaws, etc) with the thorax, which is where all the legs are attached.

Metallina's abdomen has an attractive oak leaf pattern called a folium, with two darker triangles in front of them.  The cephalothorax has a dark shape like a tuning fork.  You can also see a row of black eyes at the front.

Meta/ Metallina segmentata is very common in late summer and autumn, when males wait quietly in the corner of a female web until a big enough fly gets caught.  Then they will race to the fly, wrap it up and present it to the female while mating with her.  Cunning eh?

It's dangerous though.  There may be other bigger males that come along and duff the smaller ones up, AND the successful male may be gobbled up by the female.

This one had a body only about 5mm long, so an average male. 

SPARROW HAWK

Alan spotted this sparrow hawk on his lawn.

What's it up to?  Well these bird remains were all that was left of her prey when the hawk had gone.  Sparrow hawks chase small birds such as sparrows, finches and tits, through bushes and across gardens.  They are very fast and manoeuvrable.

This is what they look like close to.  The female is larger than the male, about the size of a blackbird and a feral pigeon respectively.

Photo source unknown

 

FIRE DAMAGE

We were surprised at how quickly our leaflets were disappearing from the leaflet dispenser, but when we looked behind the wreckage of the big den at the top of the new plantation. 

  

We discovered the remains of a fire

In fact there were three large fireplaces . . . .

. . . . and the fire raisers had clearly used leaflets as kindling.

Starting fires can be fun, of course but in a wood it damages foliage, bark and especially roots.

   

 

WASPETTE

Pretty flowers, furry mammals and birds get lots of likes, but when I post something with more than four legs it does not seem to be so popular.  This is a pity because (a) there is a lot of beauty in the invertebrate world if you can reconsider your prejudices and (b) insects, especially, are an essential ingredient in the ecosystem that we are part of.

This one had flown in from the garden and was perched on the fridge door, probably wondering wherever she had found herself.  'Nasty fly in the house' could have been the reaction, but a closer look revealed a delicate and rather elegant member of the wasp tribe.  I managed to coax her on to a piece of paper and placed her outside on a cosmos flower.

Ancistrocerus parietum is the name of this small wasp - no English name generally accepted.

The clue to her waspishness is the very narrow 'waist' which you don't get in e.g. hoverflies.

As well as the yellow and black stripes on the abdomen, notice the two yellow bands on the thorax and the bright yellow legs.  Very smart.

After a short exploration she decided to fly off gracefully to a more appropriate home.

A BIT LATE

 I was just thinking it was about time for a ten year anniversary of this blog so I looked back in the archive to see when I started it.

I looked back (on the right of the home page there is a column of years) and discovered it was December 2011 😮 

There were posts about hazel catkins, oak buds, holly berries and old man's beard, amongst others.  

Nature is always changing but always the same.

That's why I seem to write about more or less the same things every year, I suppose.