CINNABAR

Spotted in Thornbury (apologies to the facebook page of that name) this cinnabar moth near Badger Road.

These are the guys whose caterpillars are those black and orange striped devourers of ragwort.

BURDOCKS BY THE HEDGE

This hedge we laid a few years ago is doing pretty well but we want to give it a chance to widen and thicken. 

So that (above) is what it was like before our volunteers scythed a lot of the undergrowth which was stifling the lower shoots of the hawthorn hedge.  They left some red campion and these burdock plants as they are rather striking,  Peter is standing next to one to give you an idea of the size.

Later in summer they will supply the burrs, which are great to throw at your friends sweaters, where they will stick on, thanks to velcro-like hooks on the seed cases.

Photos: Alan Watts

 

SWIFTS AND MARTINS

On 10th May I first heard and saw swifts flying over the High Street.   They are the ones with very long wings and screaming voices.  They usually nest under the eaves of the Age UK office on the corner of Chapel Street, opposite the window I look out of from my computer desk.   Two of them flew up to the usual nesting site on that day.  The swifts have flown over on a couple more occasions but now they seem to have gone.  I hope the entrance to their nest site was not blocked up during recent redecoration of the exterior. 

Photo: 'Aldeburgh's amazing swifts'

More optimistically there are several House Martins' nests on the gable end of the Cossham Hall.  Currently there are blobs of mud on the ground beneath - spillages as they construct the nests - but later you can tell if the nests are active by the guano below.  I first notice House Martins here on 9th May.

Photo: BTO

House Martins chirrup and have white tummies and rumps whereas Swifts scream and are very dark brown all over. 

Swallows tend to be more rural as they build their nests inside open sheds or stables.  So we don't have them in town.  They twitter.

WHITE LACE TINGED PINK

Red campion amongst the cow parsley

Queen Anne's Lace with a dash of pink.

 

WEEVIL

 

A cracking shot of a pale green WEEVIL on the newish leaflet dispenser at Filnore Woods.  

Weevils are vegetarian so don't usually eat leaflets.

Sorry about the photography but as there are over 40,000 species of weevil worldwide I thought he should get a mention.  Here is a rather better image, from the naturespot website, of a member of the Phyllobius genus.  They are often found on nettles. There are 12 members of this genus in Britain and they are all very similar.

Photo: David Nicholls

Just met another one at Filnore today; it was perched on Alan's hand.  Another Phyllobius species, I suspect, but this one has darker legs.

Weevils are a group of beetles usually with a long snout or rostrum.  The mouth parts are at the end of the rostrum and the antennae, which typically have elbows, are part way along the rostrum.  

You can see those features on another British weevil Curculio nucum, the Nut Weevil, below.  Adults feed on hazel buds and leaves and enjoy a dessert of pollen and nectar from hawthorn flowers.  The female uses her long rostrum to bore into young hazel nuts and then she lays an egg in each nut, so that the larvae have a good supply of food when they hatch.  

Photo A J Cann, naturespot

Our little green job on the leaflet holder and on Alan's hand is a weevil with a shorter rostrum and a good bit smaller than the nut weevil - the lesser of two weevils.

PIGNUT ETC

Visit the field behind the Mundy Fields now to see 

great drifts of golden buttercups and snowy white pignut. 

Pignut is an umbellifer like hogweed and cow parsley but much smaller.

Check the wiry stem leaves to confirm it is Pignut.

  

There are other wild flowers in this field too.  The pink tinge is sorrel.

And there are clumps of Birdsfoot Trefoil.

Also known as 'eggs and bacon' or 'tom thumb' OR 'granny's toenails' !  It's the foodplant for caterpillars of the common blue butterfly and the flowers are a great nectar supply for insects of all sorts.

It's the field with Allan Burberry's memorial seat beneath the red horse chestnut tree, now in bloom, recovering from compaction and erosion by bovine feet.

 

ALLAN BURBERRY TREE

The fern-leaved beech tree planted for the late Allan Burberry last November has come into leaf at last and started growing.

This is a cultivar of common beech and will sometimes produce common beech leaves but most of the leaves are sort of . . . . ferny.

 

MAYFLIES

There was a brief exchange about mayflies a few days ago.

SUN AND DAPPLED SHADE

Sun shining through hazel leaves.

Dappled shade on the path

 

GREEN TIGER BEETLE

I've always wanted to spot one of these iridescent green beetles, scampering along a path or across bare ground.  They are widespread but not really common.  And they are liable to fly further along the path if you disturb them, with a bit of a buzz.  

This one, and several others, were on a gravelly path on the Isles of Scilly and posed nicely for a portrait, before rushing off at speed.

They are quite distinctive: green with two creamy spots and long purple legs with white hairs.  The long legs help them to chase down prey - anything that is earthbound like them.  That means spiders, ants and even caterpillars, who can't run very fast anyway.  Tiger beetles can reach 5 mph which is pretty fast for someone only 10-15mm long.

They are well equipped as predators with ferocious jaws and big eyes, a good sense of smell and sharp ears (somewhere under that green carapace).

They are around from March to October but mostly between April and July.  The larvae are just as fierce.  They over-winter in burrows and devour any creature that falls in.

The fiercest and fastest predators in the UK insect world. Very fierce tigers.

 

15: IVY-LEAVED TOADFLAX

Ivy-leaved toadflax is ideally suited to walls 

due to its clever way of planting itself in any crack it can find.

The flowers, mauve with a yellow spot, face outwards to the light but once fertilised they turn inwards to the wall, seeking a cavity to plant their seedy selves in.

The leaves are not really like ivy leaves but they do have five or so lobes.

I like this pic of a seven-spot ladybird on the plant.

 

BUTTERFLIES

 Some butterflies recently captured on camera by Alan Watts.

The Speckled Wood can often be seen sunbathing on a leaf or flitting about busily in dappled shade.

The Peacock butterfly, so called for the eye marks on its wings, has a distinctive flying style: powerful wing beats followed by lots of gliding.

People sometimes mistake this for a red admiral, but red admirals are black and red and white, whereas this Small Tortoiseshell is orange and black and yellow.

Can you see her?  A female Brimstone hanging upside down pretending to be a leaf.  The male is yellower - the original butter-coloured fly.

Only the male Orange Tip butterfly has orange tips to its wings.  The females could be mistaken for a cabbage white.  This male is nectaring on a nourishing dandelion, but the females lay their eggs on the caterpillar food plants Lady's Smock or Jack-by-the-Hedge.

Thanks, Alan, for these pics.  June and July will bring lots more butterflies out.

COMMON VETCH

Common Vetch (Vicia sativa) is one of the first of the pea family to flower.  The purply-pink flowers are in pairs at the base of the leaves.  The leaves are pinnate with up to eight pairs of leaflets (six pairs in this specimen).  Each leaflet may be notched at the tip, with a little whisker.  In the image below the shape of the leaflets is clear although some of them have been nibbled a bit by weevils.

The plant scrambles up other plants using the tendrils at the end of each leaf to grip.

As you can see, the tendrils are branched, with up to five little wires waiting to spiral round whatever they touch.

ZOOMING POND FLIES

This is a slow moving stream on the Mundy Playing Fields.  A host of small flies are zooming about just above the surface, occasionally touching each other briefly - I presume they are mating.  

Are there any dipterists (fly enthusiasts) who can help with identification and a description of their life cycle?

Very similar fly behaviour over a children's play mat in the garden.

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FOXICIDE

This dead fox cub appeared in my garden this week.  No sign of an attack - but I didn't turn it over as I was harvesting parsley by hand.

When I returned the next day it was gone !

Could it have eaten something poisonous?

Could it have been the victim of a jealous step-father dog fox?

And who removed it and why?

Next door neighbour had a similar experience but only the head of a fox cub.

SPOOKY?

 

16: STORKSBILL

This is a largish storksbill plant, missed by the mowers, but wilting a bit in the dry weather.  Storksbill is only an annual anyway.

In the image below you can see the shape of the pinnate leaves and on the left the cluster of seed pods that give the plant its name.

The flowers are a delicate pink with five petals . . . . .

. . . . . . but often shyly hidden in short turf.  There are a lot in the grass verges near Thornbury Tesco, by Daggs Allotments, and near the old market site and Streamleaze Court.

How many clusters of storksbill-shaped seed pods can you find in this picture?

The seeds have a remarkable way of planting themselves.  When each 'stork's bill' is ripe it splits apart explosively to spread the seed far and wide.  But then the clever bit:  attached to the seed is a strand of the seed pod.  This curls into a spiral which tightens and loosens according to the humidity.  And so the seed travels over the ground until the point of the spiral finds a little crack or hole and it then winds itself into the ground.  Bingo! Planted!

Photo: Plantlife

 

13: COWSLIP

Like primroses and bluebells, cowslips are a colourful and popular wild flower.

But unlike the other two, cowslips are not a woodland flower.  So we need open grassland to promote them and that is what we strive to maintain at Filnore Woods, despite the invasive tendencies of thug plants like nettles, willow herb, bramble, cow parsley and creeping buttercup.  This is why we have to cut and remove the grass in midsummer.  If it's cut and left it acts as a nitrogen-rich fertiliser, which favours the thugs.

The cowslip is also known as 'Bunch of Keys' from the arrangement of its flowers, drooping on one side of the stem.

 

STEP BY STEP

Is this the four horsemen of the apocalypse?

No it's not quite the end of the world yet.

Sunday's work morning task was to install eight or so extra steps at the top of the slope down to the footbridge.  Hazel poles from coppicing last winter, were fixed in place and topped up with woodchip, kindly donated by Danny at Thornbury Cemetery.

This will make the path, which gets slippery in winter, much safer and less surprising for all.

Well done Alan, Peter, Eric, Jim and Andy.

Photos: Alan Watts

 

MUNTJAC

Muntjac were introduced to Woburn Park from south-east Asia  in the early 20th century.  

Photo: Jo Moe

  Of course they escaped and have spread rapidly until they are now a species of concern.  They like to browse woodland shrubs and ground flora so that they have seriously wiped out a lot of rare oxlips in their stronghold in woods in East Anglia and may have contributed to the decline of nightingales who like dense woodland understoreys.

Oxlips confined now to Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire; photo: Woodland Trust

Muntjacs look rather hunched because their hind legs are longer than their forelegs.  I think this makes them look a bit shifty.  They are known as barking deer because they sound a bit like dogs.  They are also about the size of German shepherd dogs.  

Here is a recording of  Muntjac calls by Steve Wilson, found on the British Deer Society website.

Muntjac are gravy coloured with lighter underparts. The males  (bucks) have small antlers and 'tusks' and a dark v-shaped mark on their foreheads.  Females (does) have no antlers and a diamond-shaped head mark.  A muntjac doe can breed at 7 months and when she has given birth to her single fawn can mate again a few days later.  They breed all the year round. This means they are now the most common deer in Britain.

Some people think they are cute.  I think, "Eat More Venison".

Deer of all species have no natural predators and are eating our countryside away.