CARDINAL

Here's someone clambering through the long grass with no attempt at camouflage. 

He doesn't need it because the bright colouring advertises to birds and other predators that he would not be at all tasty;  quite the opposite in fact.

He is a cardinal beetle (Pyrochroa serraticornis) and is himself a predator on other insects.  He likes a bit of pollen too but the reason he spends time on flowers is to ambush other small insects.

Photo: Alan Watts

The adult beetles are about in May and June but the larvae may live for several years under the bark on fallen wood, feasting on dead bark, dead insects and micro-organisms.

Photo: wikimedia commons

 

CURRANT GALLS

Found these currant galls on shrivelled catkins of oak that had fallen on to the picnic table near the main entrance to Filnore Woods. 

They are caused by a tiny gall wasp called  Neuroterus quercusbaccarum.  Out of these  currant galls in June male and female wasps hatch and mate.  The females lay eggs on the LEAVES of the oak and these will develop into spangle galls, like little brown sequins on the underside of the leaf.

Out of these SPANGLE galls in September come female wasps only.  These are the wasps that lay their eggs in the developing CATKINS to form currant galls and start the cycle all over again.  A fascinatingly complicated life story.

11: PENDULOUS SEDGE

In April the Pendulous sedge was in flower.

These are the male flowers full of pollen.

 The seemingly modest female flowersare easy to miss, hanging quietly behind the puffed-up males.

But now in early June the withered male flowers are still at the end of the long arching stem that has grown, but it is the dangling female catkins, now prominent, that show why this sedge is called pendulous.

 

ADMIRABLE

I mentioned in an earlier post not to confuse the red admiral butterfly with the small tortioiseshell. 

Well this handsome brute is indeed the RED ADMIRAL, in his black uniform with red epaulettes and white cuffs.  If you can get close enough you may also spot the black dots on the orange tailcoat and the little blue patches.

Alan snapped this individual.  The damaged left hindwing could be a bird,  old age wear and tear, or maybe this individual was hibernating and sustained damage during the winter.

 

SPOT THE GREEN-VEINED WHITE COMPETITION

We have several 'white' butterflies: the large white, the small white, the wood white (rarer) and the green-veined white which is white on top but pale yellow with pronounced green veins underneath.  With that info can you spot the green-veined white in this picture taken by Alan Watts?

Sorry no prizes.

GVWs have a rather fluttery flight and they like anywhere with damp, lush vegetation.

 

GUELDER ROSE

Now in bloom at Filnore, the beautiful Guelder Rose.

It is a woodland shrub and, given sufficient light at the woodland edge, it will produce these beautiful heads of flowers.  The inner flowers are fertile and will be followed by bright red berries in autumn, but the showier outer flowers are sterile. 

The leaves are similar to maple leaves but it is a Viburnum not an Acer.

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.