Stag weekend

Sorry to hassle you with an extra blog but I just heard on the radio that PTES (The People's Trust for Endangered Species) have declared this weekend to be 'Stag (Beetle) Weekend'.  This is the time of year when they may be seen flying about (harmlessly) on a warm evening.

This is our biggest beetle but is dying out, largely due to the general tidying up of dead wood, which is essential for their larvae.  

The larvae or grubs live underground eating dead wood for three years or so but the adults live little more than three weeks.  In that time the males wrestle each other with their 'antlers' to impress the smaller females.

After mating and laying eggs in more rotting wood, that's it.  All gone by August.

Check  this link to visit the PTES web page.

https://ptes.org/campaigns/stag-beetles-2/stag-beetle-facts/

Hoverflies

A lot of buzzy things fly in through the open door of our conservatory and fail to find the exit.  It's easy to dismiss them as just flies but closer examination shows a huge variety.

Here are two hoverflies

The one on the left is the Migrant Hoverfly (Eupeodes corollae).  The key to recognition is these curved yellow stripes on its abdomen, like commas.

The other is a Drone Fly (probably Eristalis tenax)  - sorry, my photography doesn't show these chaps too well.

If you can get him to sit still long enough, the kink in the vein near the wing tip helps with identification

And this little character, the Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus) is also common and perhaps the easiest to identify.

Have a look at the Buzz Club website, which is all about insects, particularly pollinators.  You can:

• learn about hoverfly lagoons
• watch a video by Dave Goulson the bumble bee man
• try a quiz to see if you can tell apart honey bees, bumble bees, solitary bees butterflies & moths, wasps, hoverflies, flies and beetles.  All good fun and the results help a survey to see how many people are in the know.  

You can even join the club which is for all ages from young children to octogenarians.

Spindle

Second prize for most unremarkable plant goes to the Spindle Tree.  The leaves are rather like a weedy privet.  The young shoots are green but develop four longitudinal stripes of light brown 'bark' which make the stem feel square in section.

 At this time of year there is a 'magnificent' display of four-petalled, greenish flowers with four sticky-uppy stamens.  I shouldn't mock, as they are quite pretty in a quiet way but easily overlooked.

And in autumn they give way to the bright pink fruits which split open four ways to reveal the orange seeds inside.

Natural mutation?

On the edge of a field of oil seed rape, this dandelion had one normal seedhead and one weird one on a great thick stalk.

It seemed to have four sets of sepals on top .. .. ..

.. .. ..  and five more sets underneath

Looking from the side, I think it had grown four, five or more  seedheads facing sideways all round.

I wonder what the flower had looked like.

Hedge Mustard

This stringy little plant is easily overlooked .. .. ..

.. .. .. but the tiny flowers are quite pretty - if you have a handlens

Arable weeds

Looking across this field of ripening oil seed rape, I was reminded that arable weeds - the plants found in cultivated ground - are some of our most threatened wild flowers.

On the edges of the field, where these OSR flowers were still blooming, I found a few of them.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is also called Poor Man's Weatherglass because it closes and opens as the sun goes in and out.

A familiar garden visitor is Groundsel, with yellow shaving-brush flowers and seedheads like miniature dandelion clocks.

And the ever popular poppy.  These two were genuine wild ones, not sown for effect.

Tweets for the week

Go to the Woodland Trust website and search for 'birdsong'.  They have a nice little page with examples of song from Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Nightingale, Song Thrush, Bluetit and Cuckoo.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2020/04/bird-song-blackcap-chiffchaff-and-more

Woodlouse Spider

When I was scrabbling round in an old pile of stones I found snails, millipedes, woodlice and this jolly little spider.  This is Dysdera crocata, the Woodlouse Spider.  It's not called that because it looks like a woodlouse but because IT EATS THEM.  It is one of the few spiders with fangs strong enough to break through the woodlouse carapace.

But Dysdera is very shy.  She doesn't like the light and quickly hides herself away, so she is quite tricky to photograph.  You may find her in a damp cellar.  Woodlice like damp and dark so Dysdera has to follow.

The flash makes her look very bright but she is more colourful than many spiders.

One of my favourites because she is easy to recognise.

Sorrel

Amongst the buttercups the rusty red flowers of Common Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) 

stand tall and tint the meadow.  

You can tell it's a Sorrel and not a Dock because the leaves have little curly horns where the leaf joins the stalk, sometimes wrapped right round the stalk.  Broad-leaved Dock, the commonest dock, has a square sort of base to the leaf, while Water Dock and Wood Dock 
(you can tell them apart because one lives in woods and the other in water) 
have leaves that taper down the stem.

This is only a rough guide and my drawing below is not botanically accurate but just an attempt to make the description clearer.

Buttercups - meadow and creeping

Maybe not the farmer's favourite but a field of buttercups is a glorious sight.  

The tall ones with finely divided leaves are Meadow Buttercups, while the shorter ones with lobed leaves, sometimes with white spots, are Creeping Buttercups, scourge of the bowling green.

Campions

Slightly rarer than the red campion (Silene dioica), the White Campion (Silene latifolia) is usually an annual rather than a perennial like its pink cousin.   

I found these growing in the wild bit next to the new football field 

adjacent to the Mundy Playing Fields

Makes a nice combination.

Damsels

Local wildlife enthusiast, David Fordham took this photo of two red damsel flies feeling cooperative.

Damsel Flies are closely related to dragon flies but their bodies are needle thin and when at rest their wings are usually held along the body whereas dragon flies hold their wings out to the side.

Dragon Flies and Damsel Flies together make up the order Odonata and about 50 species have been recorded in the British Isles.  But my AIDGAP guide to dragons and damsels lists a mere 16 of the more common damsels, many of them brilliant fluorescent blue.  

Watch out for them near water.

Hemlock Water Dropwort

 Earlier in the year, wet ditches and streamsides were home to a lot of this vigorous plant.

It looks like no other .. .. ..

.. .. .. with its slightly blue-green, lobed foliage.

Now that it's in bloom  .. .. ..

.. .. .. you can identify it with its cluster of white drumsticks.

Hemlock Water Dropwort - distinctive and very poisonous.

Mullein moth

This is the great mullein which grows wild 

and produces this remarkably tall spike of yellow flowers.

Photo: first nature

We have a rather smaller, pink, cultivated variety in our garden.  

The botanical name is Verbascum.

  

Each year we lose some foliage and even the flowers to the caterpillars of the mullein moth.

Now in the wild I would let them be, but as we only have the one plant, I'm afraid I 'manage' the caterpillars.  (You will remember that 'manage' in conservation speak usually means 'kill', as in deer management, squirrel management, Japanese knotweed management, etc)

I feel a bit bad about this but it doesn't seem to have affected the local mullein moth population as we get a fresh crop of caterpillars every year.

Photo: Rod Baker, Naturespot

Apparently mullein moth adults can live up to five years ! ! !

   

Mammal traces

One of the reasons birds are so popular is that you see them about the place and even in a dense wood you can hear them.

Most wild mammals, on the other hand,are rather secretive and many are nocturnal, so if you are studying them you need to look out for footprints, burrows, prey remains and poos.

This generous contribution appeared on a flower pot in my garden.

I collected them and pulled them apart to see what food the donor had been eating.  It was just vegetable matter, like potting compost, so not a carnivore.  Too big for a squirrel, I thought (they often plant hazel nuts and walnuts in our flower pots) and fairly sweet-smelling so it could be a badger.  But badgers usually use latrine sites near their homes.

Any helpful suggestions to jjdicker@blueyonder.co.uk.

PS a different, brown pile of poo appeared on the grass.  I couldn't identify that one either but inside was a busy beetle.  dung beetles are important tidier-uppers of dung, which their larvae feed on.  So I left the assemblage undisturbed - for now at least.

Coo !

I was watching this wood pigeon cooing on a neighbour's roof, when I realised, for the first time, that it coos with its beak shut.

There are two pigeons common around Thornbury, 

the big fat wood pigeon who coos in this rhythm:

"big toe's bleeding, My big toe's bleeding, My big toe's bleeding, Hmph!"

Whereas the collared dove, which is smaller and daintier sings:

"United, united, united"

I suppose collared doves all come from Manchester.

Photo: John Harding BTO

Wood speedwell

Simon Harding sent this image of a Wood Speedwell, which he saw locally.

Very pretty.  As it is paler than the Germander Speedwell I posted on Wednesday, the veins in the petals show up well.  Usually found in damp woods.

Not so slow

Slow worms feed on all sorts of invertebrates: slugs, snails, spiders, insects and worms.  They like tussocky grass and woodland edge habitat.  They also need something to hide under like a big stone or some logs plus a sunny spot for occasional basking.  If you have a mature garden and a compost heap there will be lots of food for them.  

But if you have a cat, any visiting slow worms will soon be killed. 

Photo: Simon Dicker

The fact that it can shed its tail as a defence mechanism and has eyelids so that it can blink, show that it is a lizard rather than a snake, - although it doesn't have any legs, which makes people think it is a snake.  

Anyway it is quite harmless to humans.

Speed on your way

There are over 20 species of speedwell in Britain but Germander Speedwell is one of the prettiest, with larger blue flowers than some of the weedier species.  

On way to check it is Germander or Birds-eye Speedwell is to examine the stem against the light.  There is a military style line of white hairs running straight down opposite sides of the stem, like a double mohican hair style.  As you rotate the stem through 90 degrees, now you see them now you don't.  

If you don't get what I mean I'll have to show you in person some time but read my explanation again with a speedwell stem between your fingers.

Cinnamon Bug

Stinging nettles beginning to show their catkin-like flowers.

Ha !  What's this on a nettle leaf?

With the help of my trust Michael Chinery insect book  

and the internet, I've identified it as .. .. .. 

.. .. .. Corizus hyoscyami, the black and red squash bug, or more colourfully, the Cinnamon Bug.  Four black spots and a black triangle with an orangey-red oval in the middle.  At the back the overlapping ends of the wings show up as black too.

Being a true bug it has no jaws but a rostrum like a hyperdermic syringe to suck juice out of a variety of plants.