A mirid bug

 Now this is a mirid bug, but as I am not an expert b*gger I'm not totally confident which species.  

It is a predatory bug, hunting and eating other insects, or rather sucking them dry with its rostrum or hyperdermic syringe carried under the abdomen..  I'm afraid the shadows make it look as if it has 9 or 10 legs but no it has the usual six for an insect

Like the shield bugs it is heteropteran with wings that overlap at the rear and some pretty impressive antennae.

I think it may be Campyloneura virgula but my Latin is not up to translating that.  Anyway, it's a bit too dark in colour.  Any advice welcome.

Red-legged Forest Bug

Here's a little fellow who likes to live in trees and suck the juice out of them.  The Forest Bug (Pentatoma rufipes) also known as th red-legged shield bug.

Shield bugs are so called because of their shape.  In the photo above you can see the distinctive square shoulders of this particular species.

And in the image below you can make out the light and dark brown pattern round the rear edge and perhaps the reddish tone of the legs.

These are not beetles but true bugs: instead of jaws to bite they have a rostrum tucked under their tummies, a sort of hyperdermic syringe to suck out juice from either plants or other insects.    True bugs are either homopterans where the wings do not overlap, such as froghoppers and aphids, or heteropterans where the wings do overlap at the back and usually show up as transparent.  You can see that the Forest Bug is a heteropteran.  They are quite good flyers, these, and apparently quite friendly!  This one seemed in no hurry to leave.

Mid-life beard crisis

Not yet ripened into the fluffy 'Old Man's Beard', the flowers of Wild Clematis have given way to delicate spidery seedheads waiting to pop.

A third name for the plant is Traveller's Joy: a joyful sight indeed.

Daddy or Mummy Longlegs?

I snapped this Crane Fly on a window.  He was outside and I was inside.  You can see that HE is a DADDY Longlegs because the end of his body is square.  The females have a pointed abdomen so that they can push their eggs into the grass roots where their larvae, called leatherjackets will feed all summer.

The adults emerge from the ground in September and drift about looking for mates.

As they are flies they only have two wings.  You can see that the second pair of wings, which most insects have, have developed into balance organs called halteres.  They look like tiny drumsticks on crane flies but don't show up quite so well on other flies, although they nearly all have them.

Nightshade but not deadly

These are the ripening berries of Bittersweet or Woody Nightshade.  Although the ripe red berries are tempting for children, it is the green berries that are more poisonous.  No-one has died from eating these since a girl in 1948.

Nonetheless it is not a plant to eat.

The plant scrambles over other plants and the purple and yellow flowers are quite attractive but easily overlooked.

Big butterfly count results

Red Admirals along with Small Whites are still fairly abundant this month.  They were the 7th most abundant butterfly in the Big Butterfly Count this year.

They are not so easy to see when they close their wings up

But this one was so intent on drinking the nectar from a sedum plant that it was relaxed enough for me to get quite close.

You can see the list of ther top 19 butterflies recorded in the link below.

big butterfly count results

Aspens

Aspen is a member of the poplar family with pale, almost silvery bark and leaves that are almost round with scalloped edges.  Because of their long stalks the leaves tremble in the slightest breeze.  Hence the botanical name Populus tremula.  

Aspens spread by sending up sucker shoots from the wide-spreading roots.  This means they tend to invade open areas and produce more and more trees.  Here you can see a group of sucker shoots invading the grassland at Filnore Woods.

We have several aspens at Filnore: some near the ruined cowshed and these up near post 3 opposite the memorial lime trees.  The big tree in the middle of the picture is the original tree that we planted 20 odd years ago.  But can you see that one of its children to the right has gone brown and may be dead.

 And in this picture there is a dead branch on a nearby oak.  No need to panic though.  Nobody lives forever.

Raking again.

At last our volunteers have raked off the last of the cut material 

on the slope of the cowshed field.

Let's see if next year the number of wild flowers increases.

Big spiders

 As you may have realised, late summer and early autumn is the season when most spiders are at their biggest.  The majority of species die in the cold of winter, leaving their eggs to overwinter in a cocoon and start over as tiny spiderlings again in the spring.  

This is not a particularly large garden spider (Araneus diadematus) but she was happy to pose for me  eventually ..  ..  .. 

..  ..  ..  though at first she was a bit shy and curled her legs in, to look smaller.

She is quite pretty with a white cross on the dark 'folium', the oakleaf-shaped pattern on her back,  and black rings or 'annulations' on her long legs. 

BTW the dragonfly I featured on my 12th September post has been identified by helpful Louise Bailey as a male Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum)

Wind and ivy

The main cause of damage to trees in this country is wind, though if course the wind only shows up where the weak points of any tree are.

Half of the crown of this oak tree near the cowshed was removed by the wind during stormy weather in August.  You can see the gap.  

 And a couple of branches came off a nearby ash tree and had to be tidied.

We're not sure why the oak failed but probably it was the heavy load of ivy that led to the branch failure on the ash.  You can see that the ivy was well established

The crown of the tree was getting overwhelmed and the wind resistance had been increased.

So although a little bit of ivy is good for wildlife - shelter and nectar and berries for birds, insects, spiders and small mammals - it was time for remedial action.

By severing and removing a section of the ivy stem, we can ensure that the ivy in the tree dies off.  You can see below how thick the ivy stem was.

  

The only problem now is that large chunks of ivy will eventually die and fall off.

SO DON'T WALK UNDER TREES IN WINDY WEATHER, ESPECIALLY IVY-CLAD TREES, AND ESPECIALLY THIS ONE !

 And today I discovered another broken oak (a broak?) up near post 3.

Hawking on Sunday

Saw this dragonfly on an oak leaf on Sunday.  It has the shape of a hawker.  Could it be a Brown Hawker, Aeshna grandis ?  The wings don't look brown enough.

  I'm not very good at dragonfly identification so if you know what it is please email filnorefriends@gmail.com.

Path improvement - lots of photos

In winter the path between the beech corridor near post 14 and the old plantation near post 15 gets really muddy.

These three pics were taken in April when it was beginning to dry out.

So in May, as the brambles and the rosebay willowherb were beginning to grow, we cut the vegetation back.

We were intending to raise the level of the path, but the weather was against us.  First it was too wet to work and then it was so dry that the ground became like concrete.

So last Sunday, September 8th, we cut it back again  .  .  .

.  .  .  and started building.

Once we had laid out the poles to either side of the central path, they were staked in position.  Then small sticks were laid at right angles to the side poles, and leaf litter scattered on top.

To finish we topped it with woodchip from our friendly community compost site  .  .  .  

.  .  .  and trampled it down

It will need more woodchip as it settles but the team have built a solid foundation.

Photos by Eric, Alan and Jerry

Painted Lady

Another great shot by Alan of a painted lady butterfly nectaring on lavender.  

Darn it, is that a hornet

 Found in our toolshed, a dead hornet that got lost and failed to escape.

Hornets are on the whole fairly docile despite their fearsome appearance (look at that sting).  They rarely sting unless trodden on or poked.  Leave them alone and they will leave you alone.  

Like their smaller relatives the common wasps they spend most of the year collecting caterpillars and other insects to chew up and feed to their larvae.  But like wasps, when the queen is laying no more eggs and they have no larvae to care for in August and September they seek out sweet things to scoff, like your beer or a pot of jam.