LAWYER'S WIG

Fruiting now, the Lawyer's Wig 

Fungus crops up in groups in the grass.  

The shaggy scales on the cap of the fungus are what makes it resemble the wig worn in court by barristers and judges.

The toadstool only lasts a day or so and then dissolves into a black liquid, hence its other name of Shaggy Ink Cap.

 

IVY FLOWERS

Although the leaves on the climbing stems of ivy are five-pointed, the flowering stems have only one point.  They look like two different plants.

The flower buds are like little drumsticks.

They open into greeny-yellow flowers, each with five projecting stamens.

These flowers provide a feast of nectar for insects when most other flowers are over.

And in spring they will present sprays of black berries for birds and mice, when other plants are flowering.

BEARDLESS

Old Man's Beard seed pods 

before they split open to reveal the fluffy beard, which lasts all winter.

 

HORNET RESTING

This handsome hornet (Vespa crabro) was sitting on an outside window sill having a rest.  It is probably a new queen looking for a sheltered place to hibernate.

In spring she will emerge and find a place to start a new colony.  She will chew up some old wood from a dead branch or an oak beam, mix it with saliva and make a sort of papier maché to build the first layer of a nest.  When the first eggs have developed into workers she leaves all the nest building and care of the larvae to them while she concentrates on egg laying.  

This behaviour is similar to all other social wasps but despite their impressive size (30-40mm long) hornets are less aggressive than common wasps (even common wasps only sting if crushed or threatened), although the venom packs more of a punch.  I have twice had to do a decay test on an old oak tree while hornets returned again and again to drink sap from a bark wound close to my face, taking practically no notice of me.

Hornets mainly feed on insects, 90% of which are flies, with an occasional treat of nectar or tree sap, so they are an important part of the ecology.  As with many social insects, only the newly mated queens, which appear in September, survive the winter cold.

DEWY WEBS

A different spider's web in the grass, hi-lit by sun and dew.

The hole in the middle is the entrance to a tunnel, where lurks the weaver of silk and trapper of insects. .

 

GARDEN CROSS

This Garden Cross Spider has her eyes on a butterfly chrysalis that has landed in her web.

Quite tricky to pierce the hard shell.  She was taking her time so I don't know if she got her juicy meal or whether she cut the pupa out of her web.

These are the spiders whose large orb webs show up so well in the dew or frost.

By the time the frost comes the females will have deposited their eggs in a weatherproof cocoon and perished in the cold, never to see their offspring emerge.

Sad but time-honoured.

 

LEAF MINERS

The artistic hand of nature paints these pale lines on leaves of various plants.

Above on red valerian and below on hogweed.  These are the trails of leaf mining caterpillars, the larvae of small micro-moths that specialise in a particular plant.  The egg is laid between the upper and lower membranes of the leaf.  When it hatches, the larva eats its way through the juicy layer in between, like eating the cucumber out of a cucumber sandwich but leaving the bread untouched.

My favourite is the bramble leaf miner.  You can see three trails inside the leaf below, each tunnel getting wider as the larva gets fatter. 

It pupates inside the leaf and then emerges as a moth to start the process all over again.

 

SPEEDY CATERPILLAR

I saw this character moving rapidly across a path near the Leisure Centre.  A ripple of movement travelled down his body and he travelled quite quickly towards the undergrowth at the side of the path.  I wanted to get it on video but by the time I had got my phone into the right mode, furry-features had made it into the shelter of the vegetation.

The best I can do is to show you an enlarged version of the photo so you can see just how furry or spiny he was.

Like many caterpillars at the end of the feeding period, he was probably heading for a place to bury himself and turn into a chrysalis to overwinter, dreaming no doubt about the spring, when a short life as a moth or butterfly would be his.

THE BLACK SPOT

Not the Black Spot delivered by Blind Pew in Treasure Island but a common fungal visitor on sycamore leaves at the end of summer.  

This Tar Spot fungus (Rhytisma acarinum) only appears late in the year and doesn't cover much of the leaf so it doesn't cause the sycamore any problems. 

Rather decorative, I think.