TEN GREEN BOTTLES

You may not be delighted to behold Greenbottles (Lucilia sericata) jostling on a dead rodent, but it's a good job somebody clears dead animals away.  They lay their eggs in the corpse and the larvae (maggots) eat it up.

Unfortunately I was unable to capture the attractive metallic green colour on their bodies.  

Photo: Simon Bennett, on naturespot website

This colour helps them select mates.  As they fly, sunlight reflects from their carapace through their wings in a series of flashes - one flash per wing beat. Younger flies will make better mates and because they flap faster they flash faster, which makes them more attractive to the opposite sex.  This is different from most insects who use a sense of smell to locate and select mates. 

 

RAKING UP

The grass, including a lot of wildflower stems was cut by our friends from the South Glos council workforce.  Now the Friends of filnore Woods volunteers have to rake it off to stop it fertilising the ground and encouraging the coarser more dominant plants to overwhelm the hayfield flowers we want to encourage.

It is raked into windrows to make it easier to locate and pick up with pitchforks.

So not so many thistles, nettles, brambles, greater willowherb and hogweed.

Hopefully more cowslips, coltsfoot, lady's smock, red campion, hop trefoil, hedge woundwort, yellow vetchling, tufted vetch, goatsbeard, centaury, yellow wort, birdsfoot trefoil, lady's bedstraw, knapweed, scabious, meadowsweet, perforate st johns wort, betony, self heal and the rest. 

 

HAWK KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS

This splendid caterpillar was photographed by Alan Watts on the path alongside Thornbury Farm Wood near Tesco.  Alan said he thought it had finished shopping as it was heading away from Tesco.

It's the larva of an Eyed Hawkmoth which had probably been feeding on the leaves of willow or crab apple and was crawling off to pupate underground for the winter, and turn into one of these (below) next summer.  The spike on the end of the caterpillar is not a sting, and its blue colour helps distinguish it from the very similar caterpillar of the poplar hawkmoth.

Photo: The Guardian

This moth only displays these eye marks if disturbed.  It also rocks to and fro to scare off birds which might attack it.

The caterpillars have another way of avoiding predation: they hang upside down from twigs, pretending to be leaves, as you can see from this photo from the UK Moths website.

Photo: Nick Greatorix-Davies, UK Moths

 

VERVAIN

The long spikes of Vervain (Verbena officinalis) are easily overlooked because the flowers are so small.  The plant is happy in alkaline conditions such as chalky soil or old mortar.  It has long been used for medical and mystical purposes and was once thought to ward off headaches, poisonous bites and the plague.  

Although the flowers have a pink tinge, to me they sometimes look bluish.  How does that happen?

The leaves divide in a way that is called pinnatifid in botanical circles and the branches also divide.

Small but beautifully formed.

       

 

WASPS AND APPLES

Once fallen apples have a hole pecked in them by a bird, the slugs and wasps can get to work.

At this time of year worker wasps have stopped feeding the grubs in their colony on caterpillars and other meat.   The queen has stopped laying eggs.  Now they can please themselves by searching out sugary stuff.  It can be nectar or jam or beer or cream teas or fallen fruit.

It's a jolly festival time for them.  They won't trouble you unless you accidentally squash them. 

 

WOOD MOUSE

A Wood Mouse on the patio that had been given a sleeping draft by my cat.  

You can tell it's a mouse by the long scaly tail and the big ears.  A vole has a shorter, furry tail and very small ears.

I put him on the garden wall and he seemed to perk up.

In the German town of Walldorf there is now to be an annual ban from May till August on cats leaving the house at all, in order to protect the rare crested lark in the area.

Cats in this country kill a lot of mice and voles as well as birds.

The RSPB have created a well-balanced web page on this controversial subject. Here  is a link.

FOX WORK

Spotting mammals is difficult because they are usually secretive and often nocturnal.  You have to look for footprints, fur, faeces and signs of activity.  

This photo shows that somebody has killed a pigeon - probably a fox.  

 

KNAPWEED

Another late summer nectar source, greater knapweed grows in groups in the cowshed field, often neighbouring scabious. 

In the early stages the centre of the flower is a bright reddish purple. . . . . .

. . . . . . but as it matures the flower becomes a more uniform colour.

 

RAGWORT

The yellow daisy flowers of ragwort are a rich nectar source.  

The raggedy leaves gave the plant its name.

Here's a majestic specimen just below the viewpoint . . . . .

. . . . . with bees harvesting as each new flower opens.

It is also the foodplant of the cinnabar moth's yellow and black striped caterpillars, so we usually leave the plants until the caterpillars have finished with them.  It's then time to remove them as they can seed into neighbouring fields and contaminate any hay or silage.  We must always miss a few as they seem to reappear every year.

SCABIOUS

A group of  field scabious with ragwort and knapweed in the background.  

The scabious flowerheads can contain up to 50 little flowers with the outer ones having longer petals than those in the centre. 

 The stamens stand up like pins but wither before the stigmas mature.  This ensures that they do not self-pollinate.

The flowers are rich in nectar and are visited by bees and butterflies.

Because the stems are covered in scabby scales it used to be thought, according to the doctrine of signatures, that it would be a good cure for the skin condition scabies; hence the name.

 

SURVIVING THE DROUGHT

Amidst the bleached grass a few wildflowers are still hanging on.

The tiny pink flowers of storksbill

   

        

Dandelion-related autumn hawkbit (I think,  -  these hawkbits, hawksbeards and hawkweeds are notoriously difficult to sort out)

   

And yarrow with its ferny foliage, the precursor of all the pretty Achillea varieties in our gardens.

     

 

SWIFTS HAVE GONE; MARTINS STILL HERE

 This year we have had three house martin nests on the end of the Cossham Hall.  Below each nest is a pile of droppings.  Some people object but I think it is a privilege to still be valued by these birds.

They build their nests on the ends of the roof purlins, using beakfuls of mud.

   

I saw about a dozen over the High Street yesterday- presumably parents and offspring.  Soon they will be off to Africa.

Swifts, on the other wing, have already left us.  They mate for life and always return to the same nest site each year, which is usually in a narrow space in the roof of a church or house.

There is one such nest in the Age Concern building in the High Street.

I have seen the adult bird squeezing under the fascia board directly above the Age Concern notice.

 unable to fit the arrow on the photo

Unfortunately both these buildings are likely to be 'developed' or demolished by Thornbury Town Council who need to change it all to housing as they need the money.

 

AUTUMN IN AUGUST

 Poplar trees at the top of Streamleaze are shedding their yellowing leaves.  I don't think they are dying, or shutting down early for winter.  By dropping leaves they lose less water during this hot dry weather so it is a water saving precaution.

I wonder why other species of tree are not following suit.

SELFHEAL

Selfheal is at it's most striking in slightly longer grass . . . 

 . . . but in mown grass, such as a garden lawn it is a series of purple studs. 

It produces copious seed but also spreads by means of long creeping stems that root easily.

 

LADY'S BEDSTRAW

We all know about Goosegrass, Cleavers or Sticky Willy.  It's the one that sticks to your clothes -  stems, leaves and seeds endowed with velcro-style hooks.  

A more attractive relative is the bright yellow Lady's Bedstraw.   The leaves look similar but lack the velcro hooks of goosegrass.   When dried it has the scent of new mown hay due to a substance called coumarin.  Supposedly The Virgin Mary lay on a bed of this plant in the stable at Bethlehem, hence Lady's Bedstraw.

It's quite common in fields at this time of year, standing erect among the grass.

The white version found sprawling on hedgebanks is Hedge Bedstraw.

And the most fragrant member of this genus is Woodruff, used to flavour young white wine (Maiwein) in Germany.  It flowers in May.

Photo: Alan Semper on Naturespot website

Typical of the genus are the narrow leaves in whorls all round the stem and the clusters of small, four-petalled flowers.