MEADOW BROWN

Meadow brown butterflies are so common that we rarely bother to photograph them.  This is a pity because they are very cheery, flying in much gloomier weather than most other butterflies.

Photo: Alan Watts

They are basically pale brown with a touch of orange on their forewings.  When they perch you can see that the eye-spot usually has only one white dot in the centre, unlike the gatekeeper with two;  and the hindwing has a few BLACK dots, which you can just make out in the photo, whereas the gatekeeper has white dots.

THE BIG BUTTERFLY COUNT

All insects are in decline including butterflies, but all is not lost.  If we find out which ones are living where we can help improve things.  So this survey by non-experts all over the country is really important. 

You can join in the Big Butterfly Count anytime from now until Sunday 9th August.  They make it as easy as easy by supplying an identification chart.  All you have to do is spend 15 minutes watching for butterflies in your garden or anywhere else and then recording what butterflies you see.

Here is the link

the big butterfly count

https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org/

And here is one to get you started:

Photo: Alan Watts

The brown and orange Comma butterfly looks rather raggedy.  When it lands and folds it wings over its back you can just make out the tiny white comma or C-mark on a brown background, which gave it its name.  

Photo: urban butterfly garden

Comma caterpillars feed on nettles or hops.

Quick Result

We now have another way to access the information contained in the self-guided trail leaflet.  On each post there is a QR code like this.  

If you already have a QR scanner app on your phone you will know what to do.  If not this is an easy way (QR = Quick Result) to get information.  Click on your app store and download any of the free QR code readers or scanners.  Your phone will then be able to download the information about each location on the trail when you point it at the QR code on each post.

THREE SMALL WALL FERNS

I had thought that all the Rustyback Ferns had died in the dry weather, but after the recent rain they came back green again. 

If you look at the back of the fronds (not 'leaves' on a fern) you can see that they are covered with rust-coloured fur, hence the name, rustyback.   

Another common wall fern is the Maidenhair Spleenwort, with a black central vein and little round pinnules (like leaflets) on each frond.  

The spores, which are what ferns have instead of seeds, come from duck's-foot shaped sori on the underside of the frond.

 

And the third one, which is hard to recognise as a fern is Wall Rue.  It looks almost like a flowering plant

   

These longer stalks carry the black sori, from which the spores are ejected into the air.

Songthrush

In Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Spring he says the songthrush . . .  

'Through the echoing timbers does so rinse and wring

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing'

Although many birds have gone a bit quiet as the season progresses, I heard a beautifully persistent songthrush in Vilner Lane Wood a few days ago.  You can tell it by its habit of repeating many of the phrases of its song two, three or even four times. 

Video : Paul Dinning

Great Willowherb

The long grass is looking fine at Filnore at the moment.  A great habitat for insects, spiders and field voles.  This purple patch of flowers is a spreading clump of great willowherb.

Because it spreads by runners and obliterates other plants we need to keep it within bounds by cutting it down.  But as the flowers are so attractive, our grass cutting friends from South Glos have been known to cut round the clump instead of mowing it off.  Seduced by a pretty face.

The flowers are good for hoverflies and other pollinators .. .. .. 

.. .. .. and the leaves are eaten by the caterpillar of the elephant hawkmoth, which hides in the lower leaves by day and climbs hungrily to the top at night.

   

The caterpillar also feeds on rosebay willowherb, bedstraws,  and sometimes on enchanter's nightshade, himalayan balsam and fuchsias.

Insects on flowers

This bee seems to prefer the pink hogweed 

And the soldier beetles (also known as bonking beetles) go for the white hogweed.  I counted ten of them on this one flower head.

Even a late buttercup provides nectar 

for these very small pollinating flies.

Agrimony

Agrimony or Aaron's Rod is very abundant at Filnore Woods this year.

             

Close-ups by Alan Watts

HORNET MIMIC HOVERFLY

I have mentioned before that in warm weather a lot of flying insects get trapped in our conservatory.  There are too many to save them all but I catch the big ones in a glass tumbler and release them.  It gives me a real buzz to watch them fly off into freedom instead of drumming their little heads against the window.

This is Volucella zonaria , the Hornet Mimic Hoverfly.  It has two yellow stripes (or is it two black stripes?) on the abdomen and the wings are slightly tinted orange, with a dark bit near the wing tips.

It's the biggest hoverfly in the UK and buzzes quite loudly but is quite harmless to humans.  You can be sure it's not a hornet because all wasps have a narrow 'waist' and this girl doesn't.

We know this one is a female because in the male the eyes meet, while the female's yellow face is wider and separates the eyes.

The females use their hornetty look to nip into hornet and wasp nests to lay their eggs.  But the grubs do not cause the wasps any trouble; they feed on the detritus in the nests.  So the volucella grubs get a good source of food and the wasps get a clean, tidy nest.  Win-Win or Symbiosis as biologists call it !

MAUVE AND PURPLE BUTTERFLY FOOD

Creeping Thistle                                  Spear Thistle

As well as thistles, which we can all recognise, here are two flowers much-loved by butterflies at Filnore Woods:

First the pale mauve Field Scabious  

and then the more intensely coloured Greater Knapweed.

.

And from my garden, a small tortoiseshell feeding on some Verbena bonariensis.

Pendulous sedge

Flowers of the Pendulous Sedge (Carex pendula).  Only the top 'catkin' is male and shrivels first.

Like all sedges the stem is triangular in section.  You can feel it in your fingers; and the long strap-like leaves .. .. ..

.. .. .. are like an inverted 'W' or a seagull's wings, in section. 

Photo: Needpix

Pendulous sedge likes shady, damp woodlands.

BRYONY WHITE AND BLACK

The two bryonies are not related but they are both climbers which produce those long skeins of red berries draped over bushes at the end of summer.   The leaves are quite distinctive.

White bryony (in flower at the moment) has leaves with five lobes .. .. ..

.. .. .. while black bryony (not yet blooming) has shiny, heart-shaped leaves

Toady

The common toad, with the delightful name of Bufo bufo, is less shiny than the frog but, as you can see here, it can be equally fast and hoppy.  This one was caught in my raspberry netting but couldn't wait around. 

While I was getting my phone camera ready I was holding him in my hand and as usual he squirted out some unpleasant liquid from warts on his back.  This is an attempt to discourage predators and can be quite toxic to, for example, a dog if it catches a toad in its mouth.

Toads eat ants, beetles, slugs, snails and spiders.

St John's wort

Hail to thee blithe spirit

Bird thou never wert

I've included this couplet from Shelley's tribute To a Skylark to emphasise that 'wort' in any plant name is pronounced to rhyme with 'wert', 'hurt', 'Bert', and 'shirt' NOT 'court', 'short', 'snort' or 'WART' .

Think of 'worm', 'world', 'worth', 'worst', 'word', 'work' when you pronounce 'WORT'.

Remember that in English it is words beginning with 'wa' that are nearly always pronounced 'orr' not 'err': e.g. 'war', 'ward', 'wall', 'warm', 'water', 'Walter' and even 'was', 'wash', 'waffle', 'wasp', 'want' etc.

End of spelling and pronunciation rant.

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Anyway this is the Perforate St John's WORT, Hypericum perforatum.  
'Perforate' because if you hold the leaves up to the light you can see tiny translucent spots like perforations.  These flowers grow between posts 9 and 10 at Filnore Woods and in the grass below the overhead cables below the pylon.

My Reader's Digest Wildflower Guide says,"During the crusades, the Knights of St John of Jerusalem used this St John's Wort to heal the wounds of crusaders" because, according to the mediaeval doctrine of signatures, the holes in the leaves were like battle wounds.  No idea if it was effective.

Photo: Alan Watts

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Postscript - even Percy Bysshe wasn't that great at rhyming - 

Hail to thee blithe spirit

Bird thou never wert

That from Heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art

Photo of skylark: Mike Lane in the Guardian

SLOES NOT YET RIPE

Blackthorn bushes are already heavy with sloes, but they are still green and have not yet achieved their rich purple with a dusty bloom of white.

Though they are not poisonous they taste absolutely awful anyway, whether ripe or not.

LADY'S BEDSTRAW

And today's flower: A fizz of yellow amongst the grass - Lady's Bedstraw (Galium verum). 

The tiny flowers are bunched together and rather more showy than its cousin goosegrass (Galium aparine).

There is also a white version called hedge bedstraw (Galium mollugo).

'Bedstraw' because it contains coumarin, which gives a perfume similar to new mown hay, if the dried foliage is placed in your bed linen.

Green shield bug

The common green shieldbug is (errm) common and green, though it usually lives on the trees and bushes it feeds on and doesn't show up so well as on a kitchen floor!   

This one is probably not fully mature.  Shieldbugs go through several stages or instars before they get their full shield shape.

Hedge woundwort

An undistiguished plant of the hedgerow, hedge woundwort has beetroot purple flowers with white splotches. 

The leaves have been used as a poultice for centuries and do in fact contain an antiseptic.

Photo: Alan Watts