WASPETTE

Pretty flowers, furry mammals and birds get lots of likes, but when I post something with more than four legs it does not seem to be so popular.  This is a pity because (a) there is a lot of beauty in the invertebrate world if you can reconsider your prejudices and (b) insects, especially, are an essential ingredient in the ecosystem that we are part of.

This one had flown in from the garden and was perched on the fridge door, probably wondering wherever she had found herself.  'Nasty fly in the house' could have been the reaction, but a closer look revealed a delicate and rather elegant member of the wasp tribe.  I managed to coax her on to a piece of paper and placed her outside on a cosmos flower.

Ancistrocerus parietum is the name of this small wasp - no English name generally accepted.

The clue to her waspishness is the very narrow 'waist' which you don't get in e.g. hoverflies.

As well as the yellow and black stripes on the abdomen, notice the two yellow bands on the thorax and the bright yellow legs.  Very smart.

After a short exploration she decided to fly off gracefully to a more appropriate home.

A BIT LATE

 I was just thinking it was about time for a ten year anniversary of this blog so I looked back in the archive to see when I started it.

I looked back (on the right of the home page there is a column of years) and discovered it was December 2011 😮 

There were posts about hazel catkins, oak buds, holly berries and old man's beard, amongst others.  

Nature is always changing but always the same.

That's why I seem to write about more or less the same things every year, I suppose.

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.