MiniBeasts – Enviro-Mentalist

Mad dogs and wildlife surveyors

With temperatures soaring, you would have to be a fool to go out in the midday sun. Unless you had a wildlife survey to do. This weekend, like a fool, I went out twice. On Saturday I did my monthly BeeWalk (now in the fourth year), and on Sunday I went to survey a square for the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey.

The Bee Walk can vary in difficulty, depending on the time of year. Early in the year there are only queens to worry about, as the season goes on there are workers, males and cuckoos thrown into the mix. I am not the most confident bee identifier, so I really should get some practice in before hand, especially when the lavender is in full flower and the bees are buzzing all over the place. Much easier to be confident identifying the different species in the field than to try and take photos, do diagrams and count at the same time.

I did take a little diversion on the way home to try and see my second favourite butterfly (Marbled White) and also to check that the Brown Argus are still where I expect them to be (although not for much longer as the site is going to be built on). Both were ticks – my first for the year for both species. Brown Argus are a bit tricky to ID, unless you are prepared – they look very much like a female Common Blue – except that they have two dots that are close together on the underside of their hindwing making it look like a figure of 8. The Blues don’t have this, but they do have an extra spot of the underside of the forewing. Fortunately the Argus does like to pose with its wings closed so you can be sure of the ID.

On Sunday I had a cunning plan – get out early to look for butterflies and get home before the heat really ramps up. Unfortunately the old adage of fail to plan, plan to fail, held true for me. I was picking up a route that had already been done by a previous surveyor a couple of years ago. But, I thought I knew where I was going and, armed with my print off of the map I set off in high spirits having just seen a Red Kite overhead. I took this as a good omen as it is my favourite bird of prey. In hindsight, maybe it was looking for the carrion from previous unprepared surveyors. The survey involves walking two roughly parallel 1km paths, and should take about one to two hours. (Although the last square I had was in the land where butterflies feared to fly and it took about 30 minutes because I only had to count 5 on the entire route). I was happily following the field margins along the path, counting large whites, small whites, meadow browns and gatekeepers. I even managed to spot my favourite butterfly, the small copper – which was an unexpected bonus – things were going well.

Then, I thought I had reached the end of the first 5 parts (of 10) of my walk. I emerged onto a road – and found I was back where I had parked my car – not halfway along my walk, but actually at the end. I had to start all over again! I hadn’t realised that the path I was supposed to take went through the middle of the field, but instead I had followed a path that wasn’t marked on my map! So I walked down the road, and tried to find out where I should have gone – sorted. I did the last three bits of that part and went to go and find the route back – and got lost again. Instead of going through a field, I was in a housing estate and found myself on a completely different road – it took me nearly 30 minutes to get back to where I should have been!

On the plus side I did see a nice dragonfly, survived the field with cows in it and still managed to find a Small Copper (actually two of them) on my proper route. But, instead of being out for about an hour or so, I spent two and a half hours in the sun – good job I had factor 25 and insect repellent on as well as a stout hat.

So, for anyone thinking of going out and surveying, please do but be more prepared than I was – visit the area first so you know the route, and make sure you have an idea about the species you are likely to see. I was told earlier this week that lots of people send in records of the rarer butterflies such as Purple Emperor and Wood Whites, but there are not many records of the generalists – people will just report lots of whites, or plenty of gatekeepers – which is not really very helpful to determine the state of the butterfly (delete and add in appropriate wildlife) population.

All about bees

Wild bees are pretty amazing creatures. I already knew that – I have the books sitting on my bookshelf and in my wishlist to prove it. But I attended a talk this week that gave me even more reasons to love bees and, hopefully the inspiration to go out and study them in the local area (as there are not that many records for this part of the country).

Most bees are excavators, although some nest in holes in walls (or bee hotels) and some make their nest in empty snail shells (they hide these under sticks they collect – how cool is that?). They provision a cell with pollen, lay an egg and seal it up, then leave more pollen and an egg and onwards until they reach the front. Girl bees will be at the back with more pollen (because they are bigger larvae and bees) and boy bees at the front so they emerge first and are ready when the girls emerge.

One species of furrow bee is sometimes a solitary bee and sometimes a social bee – in the north they are solitary and in the south they are more likely to be social – the queen producing workers to forage whilst she guards the nest.

One solitary bee , Ceratina cyanea, (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to live in Northamptonshire) is fairly unique in a) living in bramble stems and b) surviving the winter as an adult.

Bees also have their parasites and cuckoos – in fact 27% of bee species in this country are brood parasites – that means they take over the host’s nest rather than killing and eating the larvae (although the queen often gets killed). Fortunately, the parasites are rarer than their hosts – otherwise they would soon wipe themselves out. One set of brood parasites are the Nomada bees (that look a lot like wasps) – these wasp-like bees are about the same size as their hosts and find them by smelling their nests. I took these pictures of the Ashy Mining bee and its associated Nomada parasite at work.

Nomada Bee – Parasite of Ashy Mining Bee

There are lots more amazing facts that make solitary and bumble bees worth studying, but I don’t want to reveal all their secrets.

130 species have been recorded in Northamptonshire, but only 80 have been recorded since 2000. Some may have been lost, mainly due to land use change, but some may still be here just waiting to be found. Now where’s my guide book and sweep net?

Bring on the butterflies

After a day dedicated to bees last week, this weekend it was time for the butterflies to entice me into the sunshine. It started when I noticed a painted lady fluttering around the bottom of the garden. These migrants are certainly some of the most flamboyant of butterflies – as beautiful on the underside as the upper side of their wings. They were enjoying the buddleia which they were sharing with several red admirals a couple of peacocks and a small tortoiseshell.

So after a quick detour via the front garden where a small skipper was enjoying the verbena bonariensis I went for a wander to a field that I’d seen my first brown argus in last year. In fact it was apparently the first time in many years that it had been recorded in Daventry.

The field is much more overgrown than last year with fewer plants, but it was alive with the sound of grasshoppers and crickets. I only walked a short way in when I saw arguably one of our most beautiful butterfly, the small copper. I have only ever seen it in this field and at the country park in Daventry. It may be small, but it is dazzling. My pictures today really don’t do it justice, but it was constantly hiding behind grasses when it had its wings open.

small copper_2

I wasn’t really expecting to see a brown argus again, but luck was on my side and I got really good views. It is an inconspicuous looking butterfly, and often confused with a female common blue, but the brown spots on its forewing and the lack of blue even near the body convinced me I had found my quarry.

brown argus_2

Speaking of common blues – there were quite a few of them about – some of them having a bit of a quarrel and some not. The males are a beautiful blue whereas the females have varying amounts of blue on them, all the way through to almost completely brown.

common blue common blues

Sadly all of these butterflies were in a field that they are planning to put old people housing on. So, this could be the last time I see brown argus and small coppers in Daventry.

Bee Festival

Thanks to social media I discovered that Coventry University (their Centre for Agriculture, Water and Resilience) were running a two day bee festival just down the road at Ryton Gardens with the fantastic Steven Falk author of the THE bee ID book – and it was free.

I sat through three brilliant talks in the morning with three interesting and very enthusiastic presenters. First there was the aforementioned Mr Falk. How he crammed in so much information in less than an hour I don’t know. He spoke about his book, discovering new species including the use of DNA to prove an 18th century naturalist right and the different families of bee – I don’t think any of us there will forget the Pantaloon Bee! Next up was Andrew Salisbury from the RHS talking about the trials that they’d carried out at Wisley to find out if native, near-native (i.e. Northern Hemisphere) or exotic (Southern Hemisphere) plants were better for pollinators. The answer – depends on the pollinator. It was very interesting to see how they carried out the trial, such a lot of meticulous hard work. I was also interested to hear that they only saw 80 butterflies over the multi-year survey – I am not sure that butterflies visit gardens in great numbers unless you have a buddleia.

Finally we had Brigit Strawbridge talking about plants and pollination. She almost contained her enthusiasm for bees! Fact of the day that I learnt was that you won’t spot honey bees on lavender unless it is warm as it takes hot weather for the nectaries to fill up enough for the short tongued bees like honey bees to be able to feed. But brambles keep on providing nectar for days – that explains why the bees love my silver stemmed Rubus and shun the lavender for it!

In the afternoon Steven Falk entertained a large crowd on a search for bees around Ryton Organic Gardens – he was hoping for 20, but we were all satisfied with the 17 that we did see – including this Osmia leaiana showing its orange pollen collecting scopa on the underside.

Osmia leaiana-osmia leaiana

The whole festival was put on by BloomsForBees a new initiative promoting Citizen Science and plants for pollinators with a new App and website to help log the bees and the plants they are enjoying.

I had a fantastic day, made some new friends and renewed my love of bees. A recent workshop about solitary bees that suggested that there was no point trying to ID solitary bees unless you were willing to learn latin and kill the bees for subsequent dissection dampened my enthusiasm quite a lot. Steven Falk loves giving bees English names that make them more memorable and showed how much there was to discover without the aid of a killing jar and microscope. And, as for his knowledge of flowers… All I can say is if you get the chance to go on a Bee Walk or Workshop with Steven – grab it and his book which has been sitting unused on my shelf for too long.

Metamorphosis – March Book Review

Metamorphosis – Astonishing Insect Transformations – the subtitle definitely describes the content of this book by Rupert Soskin.

Insects – often overlooked, thought of as bugs or pests, possibly with the exception of butterflies (although the cabbage white butterfly springs to mind) but with around one million species known and named. Untold numbers are still to be found. Contrast that with birds – ten thousand; mammals – five thousand; even reptiles and amphibians only manage fifteen thousand between them. It is no surprise then that there are many things that even the most fervent entomologist can still learn about this diverse class of creatures.

In Metamorphosis the author beautifully illustrates an area that I haven’t yet seen covered in another book – the transformation that insects must undergo to get from an egg (in the majority of cases) to the adults of the species that we are usually most familiar with. This lack of familiarity is despite the fact that the adult stage is usually the shortest with many living days or weeks but spending years as a larva or nymph.

The book is essentially in two parts – those insects that go through several instars (stages); looking to some degree like miniature versions of the adults, and those that undergo a complete transformation from what is essentially a tube of innards to something completely different (the most obvious example being the change from a caterpillar to a butterfly).

I started off wondering so much of the book was devoted to the first class of insects; the hemimetabolous insects (the young of which are called nymphs) when the changes they go through are nowhere near as marked as those of the holometabolous examples. But, as the author explains, the only way that an insect can grow is to shed its skin – and, in some cases (such as some of the shield bugs) I don’t think many people would match juvenile with adult.

What makes this book a joy to read are of course the photographs. Where many books show the adults in all their glory, Rupert Soskin shows the different stages in the life of the insect, from egg to larva / nymph, to chrysalis and adult.

The photographs are beautiful and I can only begin to wonder at the patience of the author as he waited to get the shots. Within the different chapters there are of course notes about the insects and their lives – after all, the photos only tell half of the story. In some cases he has even shown the scale of the insects – a very helpful device.

I was a little disappointed at first when I saw how many of the insects are from outside the UK and therefore something I am never likely to see (no matter how much the climate changes). But, they were fascinating – I was completely won over by the stick insects and the Peruvian Horsehead Grasshoppers.

All the main orders are included from grasshoppers to mantids, dragonflies to beetles, butterflies, moths, flies bees, wasps to hemiptera. I began to wonder how he decided what to include and also what didn’t make the final cut.

I thought that the sections on the butterflies and moths were interesting choices, showing the changes in size and coloration of the caterpillars and the resulting adult. But, my favourite photo of all (other than the horsehead grasshoppers, mantids and stick insects) had to be the female wasp removing water from her nest after the rain – just fantastic, one of the best insect shots I have seen and behaviour I hadn’t heard about. Just one of the many interesting aspects of insect life that Mr Soskin managed to capture and share.

I have only two real complaints about the book; I would love to have known more about how he took the photos – he has a small section about this but it was very short on actual details and I would have liked it to have been twice the size with more fantastic insects and beautiful photos (this is of course selfish as the book is 250 pages long).

This is a beautiful coffee table book that I could look at again and again, and a starter for anyone interested in insects showcasing some of the less well known stages of their lives. Whilst it is only a starter, it does include some further reading suggestions that will be making an appearance on my birthday wish list. Many thanks Mr Soskin for creating such a wonderful book (and to Northampton Library for stocking it so I didn’t have to wait until my birthday to read it).

New for me

Time for a confession. Before the start of this year I had never heard of a Brown Argus. I didn’t know that it was a butterfly. How bad is that. Moreover, I saw them in the results for the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey, and assumed that they were a specialist that I would never see. I saw pictures on Facebook and then thought nothing much more about them. In fact I wasn’t sure I would recognise one if I saw it.

Yesterday I took my camera out for a walk – for once the weather was warm and not very breezy. I saw a lot of gatekeepers, a very lovely small copper – a butterfly that I had never seen in Daventry before. I also saw some common blues flitting about the field edges. Lots of photographs were taken as you can probably imagine.

Today I decided to upload them and sort out the fuzzy from the sharp as well as those that might not be the best, but could be useful for ID purposes. After I had sorted and tagged them it occurred to me that I had assumed that the small brown butterflies were common blue females (which have wings that vary from blue through to brown) because they had frequently been disturbed by blue males. But, for some reason I thought I would see what the difference was between a brown argus and a female common blue.

A brown argus has no blue on the upper side of its wings, whereas there may be some blue scales on the female common blue. It also has more orangey spots along the edge and often a dark brown spot in the middle of its brown wings. Not much help because my photos were all of the underside of the wings. So, for the undersides the description was related to two spots with that form a figure of eight on the hindwing and the absence of a spot on the forewing for the Brown Argus. This didn’t seem to be much help either – I was a bit non-plussed until I saw what they were talking about in pictures on the UK Butterflies website. Suddenly I knew what to look for and guess what? Yes, one of the butterflies I photographed was in fact my very first Brown Argus – colour me happy!

I’m not sure if this is a viable population as my Northamptonshire butterfly book states that their range has contracted a lot in the county and that their traditional food plant is rock rose and, where this is not available, they have moved onto crane’s bill. Unfortunately the only things I could see around the field edge were ragwort and a chamomile, along with lots of grass. I will have to have a look around there to see if I can find the requisite flowers!

Danger, Danger…

There are many insects that make use of warning colours, particularly yellow and black, to ward off predators. Some are just faking it, others are definitely not for the eating.

The cinnabar moth caterpillar definitely falls into the latter category. Unlike the adult moth which is black with smart red hindwings that really stand out in flight (they are named after the red pigment, cinnabar), the caterpillar is the standard stripy yellow and black. These caterpillars are usually found wherever there is flowering ragwort – they feed on both the flowers and the leaves. I’ve seen many plants completely stripped of any foliage – but whilst it might be a bit early in the season so far this year, I’m not seeing as many as I would expect – and I have wandered around several ragwort filled fields.

The ragwort of course is known for its toxicity to livestock (although the horses in the field I was looking in seemed perfectly fine) and it is this that the caterpillar takes advantage of. It stores the poisons from the leaves in its body and even keeps its toxicity once it has pupated to an adult. The moths are usually found in rabbit grazed fields (which this definitely was), but numbers are dropping – probably due to the removal of ragwort (declines of over 80% in the last 35 years have been reported). In New Zealand they took the opposite approach and introduced the cinnabar moth to control the ragwort.

I’m still trying to work out why they have such long hairs – if they were to stop them being eaten then I would expect them to be denser, besides, they’ve already gone to the trouble of being colourful, why have an extra defence?

It seems that the only danger to the caterpillars are farmers and each other – they are known to be cannibalistic.

Adults are on the wing in May and June, with caterpillars around in July and August – they spend the winter under the ground as a pupa.

Mayflies, Dayflies

Another day, another chance to find something new. I decided to go along the river today and hired a Boris bike to increase my exploratory range. I wanted to try and record some warblers in the reeds but the constant roar of traffic and building work meant that was a non-starter.

The river banks were full of rape flowers and cow parsley. The yellow of the rape was attracting quite a few red-tailed bumblebee workers and lower down there were some flowering nettles with carder bees buzzing about.

Further along the path I noticed a pair of dark coloured insects fluttering up and down in the air, almost landing, but not quite. They managed to dance for a short while before a breeze knocked them out of the air and onto the flowers. Time for my trusty close up binoculars whilst trying to keep the bicycle upright. A long body with what looked like three filaments at the end, bulging eyes and large, dark patterned wings. I was quite hopeful that this was a mayfly, my first ever. I grabbed my camera but only managed to get one quick shot off before it wised up to me and flew away.

Fortunately it wasn’t too bad, even the exposure wasn’t that bad considering the brightness of the flowers.

This was indeed a mayfly, Ephemera vulgata, one of 51 species of mayfly that live in the UK. Apparently the term mayfly is misleading (although it is still May) as they fly throughout the summer months. The name mayfly refers to a particular species that was usually first seen when the May (hawthorn) was in blossom. Another name for them is dayfly, as many of the adults live for only one day (or sometimes just a few hours) – not having any mouthparts or digestive organs being on the wing only long enough to find a mate and lay its eggs underwater. But this is not true of all mayflies, some live for longer than a day. Most of their life is spent as an underwater nymph, whiling away a year or two eating algae and other vegetation before emerging and flying to the bank and sheltering under leaves. Here they moult again and become a dancing, fluttering fly.

More minibeasts in the garden.

I am now obsessed with my close up binoculars (although I have to wonder what the 8x magnification looks like). A lack of nature over the weekend due to poor weather conditions has not stopped me though.

I’ve discovered a red-tailed bumble bee nest at the bottom of the garden. I watched several workers (I counted a maximum of five leaving without returning, but there might be more) coming and going. Most had orange pollen baskets full, although a couple seemed to come back without any provisions. I had a slight hope that the bees might have been the red shanked carder bee because I swear I saw some red hairs on the legs of one of them – but it might just have been pollen dust. I live in hope though and now I know where they live I can keep a watch. There was a different bumble species (possibly white-tailed) visiting the aquilegia and with full yellow pollen baskets, so I’m not sure where my red-tails were foraging.

The fern smut moths seem to be present in quite big numbers now I know what they look like. However, my ID skills stopped short of other micro moths – there was a very white one with black eyes that I have some terrible photos of to help with my ID.
I watched a small orange fly with black spots on its wings (possibly a fruit fly) wait for a small spider to leave the corpse of another fly before moving in, and I saw another fly – probably a hoverfly, sitting on a leaf. I watched it lift its wings up to clean over the top of its abdomen with its hind legs and then clean each of its wings between these legs. The hind legs by the way were black but with a yellow stripe / underside. I mean, how cool is that, watching it carefully smooth each wing in turn between its legs? hoverfly

And, there are so many spiders, many different types. How do you start to tell the difference? I noticed this one, a male Philodromus dispar, a type of crab spider sitting on a leaf. It was still there the next day. It seems to have two legs that are much smaller and thinner than the others. It does move, but it was back again in the same spot the next day.

I haven’t even started on the slugs and snails yet… So much to discover and I don’t even have to go very far.

My new bins – first impressions

The suggestion was made – ‘wouldn’t it be cool if you could watch insects in real time with the same magnification as with your macro lens?’ And yes, it would be but does such a thing exist, can you get closer than a few metres to look at insects with a pair of binoculars. Enter the Pentax Papilio in either 6.5x or 8.5x magnification.

The online reviews were very good, but I have to admit, that I was a bit skeptical of the one that said they could count the segments on the antennae of a butterfly. But, with a minimum focus distance of 0.5m and the potential to use them for birding as well I had to give them a go. I got the 6.5×21 version as it should make it easier to track an insect about.

First up, was a moth that I saw at work – it looked a bit tiny with the naked eye, but with the bins I saw texture on the wings, white lines across it and little furry feet. I have no idea about the segments in the antennae as it didn’t appear to have any. This is what it looked like through my point and shoot camera – and I could eventually manage to ID it as a chocolate tip moth. Very cute, very furry and sticking two fingers up to the moth people that wouldn’t come and do any moth trapping at work because we didn’t have any interesting moths – it is all relative!

However, this was only a limited test and I needed to try them out in the garden and see what was there. First test – bees in the front garden zipping about the rosemary. I have been trying to ID them, and I know some are probably red mason bees, but others look different, and behave differently, rarely stopping to nectar at all, these looked much greyer, almost white on the thorax and head. My bins passed the first test. Not only did I get a good view of the female mason bees (as shown on forget-me-not below), but I discovered that the others were male mason bees. They aren’t grey at all, just very blonde and very furry with quite long antennae. I was confused as well by some of what thought were females but which looked grey on the thorax with a red abdomen – my new bins showed that this was a result of having lots of rosemary pollen stuck to their hairs! As a result I am fairly confident in my Osmia bicornis ID skills. It’s amazing how orange and how furry these bees look in close up!

I watched a couple of hoverflies, well, hovering, one was definitely a marmalade hoverfly, but I couldn’t ID the other, but I could even watch their legs and feet tentatively making contact with the rosemary flower as they touched down – amazing!

A bigger test for the bins though was in the back garden – it is usually much gloomier due to the large amount of foliage shading the area. I wasn’t sure that I would find anything to look at, but I was wrong. I watched a spider tense itself under a leaf when a fly landed on the top surface, only to be thwarted as the fly took off again after a quick clean. I saw a tiny yellow and black fly on a hazel leaf that I wouldn’t have even noticed otherwise. It was less than 5mm long, yellow underneath, with orange legs and a yellow almost checkerboard pattern on the top of the abdomen / thorax. It had a yellow head with a blackish stripe between its eyes and thing yellow stripes on its scutellum. It is not the kind of thing I would be able to take a picture of, but I think I managed to ID it from my notes as a grass fly, Chlorops sp.

The good thing about the bins is that they show you things you would never have seen otherwise (either with or without a macro lens). I saw a moth crawl out from under a leaf. It was tiny and looked like a black speck and I probably would have thought it was just that if I hadn’t seen it arrive. It had glossy purple black wings and a yellow head and legs. It was so small I couldn’t even get a good picture with my macro lens. This is as good as it gets:

This is a fern smut moth Psychoides filicivora, I had never noticed them before amongst our many ferns! Now I’ve seen quite few of them crawling around at the bottom of the garden.

So, the verdict. The view through the bins is even better than through a macro lens – not least because it is in real time and works without a tripod in poor light. The only downside is that there is some barrel distortion, but it doesn’t ruin the view. Can you count the segments on a butterfly’s antenna? I still don’t know because I haven’t seen a butterfly since I got them, but my guess is yes.

My new bins are opening up a whole new world full of creatures or behaviours I’d never noticed before, and I’m afraid I’m going to be boring you with lots more mini beasts that are inhabiting the garden.