Damp meadow

A short walk down to the damp meadow by the River Bourne demonstrated once again the great diversity of flowers there, with plenty of Hawkweed, Bristly Oxtongue, Fleabane, Ragwort,  Mayweed, Birds-Foot Trefoil, Meadowsweet, Mint, Knotgrass and a small yellow trefoil of some sort, all in full flower. Last year there were plenty of Common Blue butterflies, but I didn't see any today. There was however a minute skipper, possibly an Essex Skipper, although I could not get around to looking at the underside of its antennae tips.

The other Lepidopteran seen - apart from the usual grass plumes - was a Shaded Broad Bar, Scotopteryx chenopodiata (confirmed almost instantly on ispot).

There was also this odd fly, plunging its proboscis deep into the flower throats of this mint head

Not much variety in the hoverflies, but particularly good for Sphaerophoria scripta, 

together with some Episyrphus balteatus

and a couple of Eristalis tenax.

and there was one of the very common (this year at least) Myathropa florea.

On the way down by the side of the footpath beside the large OSR field, I found a nice Syritta pipiens, so recognisable by its size, shape and jizz. you can see the rear tibiae colour pattern slightly more clearly in the second photo.

Hunting for a needle in the haystack

The crops are struggling towards harvest at the moment, with the wheat to the North of East Lock drying off nicely:

The field on the South side of the River had already been harvested, and the straw "rolled", under a violent sky:

On the path on the way down all the hogweed was swarming with Rhagonycha fulva,

but also attracted this Volucella pellucens:

Failed to find ANY sign AT ALL of the Shepherds Needle in the crop margin

White Hill

Wonderful Chalkhill Blue butterflies, and great flowers

Pembury Heath walk

Nice walk up from the water treatment works with plenty of flowers in the damp valley leading up to the conifers and heathland. Greater Birds Foot Trefoil, Lesser Medick, Tufted Vetch, Creeping Thistle, Spear Thistle and Marsh Thistle, Cut-leaved Geranium, Willowherb, Creeping Buttercup, Perforate St Johns Wort, Selfheal, Hogweed, a little Wild Angelica, Yarrow, Nettle, Bramble, Teasel, Agrimony, Pale Persicaria, Sedges and Rushes, Daisy, Cats Ear, Hawkweed, Ragwort, White Clover, Tormentil,

On the heathland I found the trailing St Johns Wort, Hypericum humifusum, as well as heather and the cross-leaved heath. By the cottage the clump of silverwed was still there. In amongst the pines there was little, but in other areas there was sweet chestnut coppice, some rhododendron, and birch absolutely everwhere. 

Southern Hawker and my first glimpse?

Might have seen one Purple Emperor flying high over the Knights Park Corner Oak for about half a second, but couldn't really tell!

Turning to the commoner woodland butterflies, here is a Comma, being very leaf-like indeed.

Here is a Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, also trying to look like a leaf:

and a rather brighter butterfly, a Gatekeeper,

and a very worn Meadow Brown, probably a male from the uniformity of the hind wing.

This is a male Southern Hawker, posing nicely for its photo, and confirmed on ispot. However it did look to me as though the light coloured patterning on the abdominal sections is all sky blue - which is supposed to be the rarer form.

This is a male Eristalis pertinax with its yellow front and mid tarsi, and a yellow basal section to the rear tibiae. It has also got a very clearly tapered abdomen, and a little bit of shading on the wing, all of which fits.

This one, another male, cannot be pertinax as it has dark front tarsi. However it should not really be arbustorum either, as it has a fairly clear face stripe, and no clearly swollen hind tarsi, although rubbed arbustorum can show dark on the face as well, and the swelling of the hind tarsi can be ambiguous. These two features are well seen in the next picture.

Difficult to get a good ID though, because the pictures aren't good enough. Does look like a small quadrate stigma perhaps, so one possibility is Eristalis interruptus, but this could never be a reliable ID at all.

Myathropa florea was also present in fairly good numbers, certainly better than I remember last year.

Silver Washed Fritillary

Today seemed likely to be sunnier, so it was back to Dene Park hunting the Emperor, but no luck again. However I saw a female Silver Washed Fritillary along the path from Knights Park Corner to Ringlet Corner, and then I think the same individual a little further on.These two photos were of this first one.

On the way back there was another individual by the Triangle. This one looked a little more worn at the edges, with a small nibble out of the left wing. Also I eventually worked out that this was a male, from the sex-brands. I think at least the second sex-brand away from its body has burst open (the white line), as designed for showering a female with scented scales, and thus indicates this insect's prior (hopefully successful) sexual activity. 

There were reasonable numbers of other butterflies around, including this Meadow Brown, probably a very worn female, unusually with two white spots!

By comparison this Gatekeeper looks very orange - if rather blurred in the first photo. This should be a male because of the dark smudge in the centre of the upper forewing:

This could be one of the fresh second brood of Speckled Woods, Pararge aegeria, with fantastic irridescent hairs close to the body.

and this is one of the very nice Ringlets, from the track leading up to Ringlet Corner.

Large Skipper. I would guess that this is a female, and rather worn.

Plenty of other things to see, such as a few Eristalis, including this rather nice Eristalis arbustorum - or is it?  

A dull Meadows South

Eristalis arbustorum on the Greensand Way

A short wander down the Greensand way path produced more Eristalis arbustorum than pertinax, somewhat to my surprise. I have seen a few of the rather dark females at Dene Park, and today I saw both males and females, so it was interesting to try to look at the details a bit more closely.

This is a close-up of the stigma on the wing, slightly blurred out towards or even beyond the junction of the Sc vein with the wing margin, as in the key.

These two photos are perhaps a slightly better view of the tergites pattern, showing how the dark patch on tergite two doesn't widen at the rear to block off the continuity of the yellow between two and three.

This is obviously a male, generally the more brightly coloured of the two sexes in this species I think. The antennae are sufficiently dark to fit the description of the species, although they may look lighter from different angles. Note also the overall clarity of the wings - apart from the stigma of course. Eristalis pertinax does I think have a bit of a wing cloud by comparison, another characteristic allowing me to separate out arbustorum from the pertinax I commonly see around Dene Park more easily.

Another feature that you can start to see is the rather nice white woolly look to the face. The lack of the face stripe is fairly characteristic of arbustorum within the genus, although wear does sometimes remove enough wool to produce a slight face stripe.

The picture below gives some idea of the "pied" nature of the legs, ivory on the tibiae and dark on the mid and fore femora and tarsi. Its not so obvious on the hind tarsus that the limb is dark on the apical half, but it is. I do think however that you can see the swollen nature of the substantial basal section of the hind tarsus below the tibia - if I've got all the sections of the limb correct! The dark fore tarsi of arbustorum contrast with the completely yellow tarsi of pertinax.

It is interesting to note their silvery hairs all around their bodies, on the dark parts of the legs, and on the eyes.

On the other hand this is one of the darker females,  most obvious first from their silvery tergite bands, then from the woolly white faces. Again note the "pied" look of the mid and fore legs, and the blurred stigma on both sexes! The other feature I think I am seeing is the white tufts of hair along the side of the thorax, again on both sexes, but I've not seen any reference to this in the books.

The next photo shows the lighter basal half of the rear tibia and the darker apical half, leading onto the obviously swollen metatarsus.

In the next photo you can just see the long hairs on the arista of the far antenna - this is one of my rather less bad pictures. The bicolouring of the hind tibia and the swollen meta-tarsus is, I think, convinging.

This is now some pictures of a male again, the first with a rather nice view of the woolly face and the trident structure part of the way up on the front of the pharynx:

This one is a great shot of the bicoloured rear tibia and the very definitely swollen metatarsus:

This is a fairly good photo of what in bees I think are called the tegulae, the joints that move the wings. In this species of Eristalis, the tegulae are noticeably black from the top, particularly with respect to the other features of the body. From the front they look as if they have a silvery pad on their front surface, as seen in the photo two above.

Still no sign of His Majesty

I particularly enjoy trying to spot the hoverflies that are found on the sides of the paths, and particularly on the Hogweed heads through Dene Park.

Today there were at least three Cheilosia illustrata, many, many Eristalis pertinax, many Myathropa florea, one Xylota segnis, one Xanthogramma pedissequum, a few Episyrphus balteatus and a lot of Melanostoma scalare, usually flying lower down.

Butterflies were a bit scarce, but there were two Ringlets over at Ringlet Corner, a few Commas and Speckled Woods, Pararge aegeria, but that was about it. 

Dene Park with BBCS Kent - and STILL no Emperor!

The Purple Emperor was again hiding his glory from his public, even from the Kent branch of the British Butterfly Conservation Society, but there were good numbers of fresh bright Commas, some Meadow Browns, a couple of Large Skippers, quite a few White Admirals, a nice Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, and I also found a Ringlet at Point Wood Corner.

I did find a hoverfly that I think is new to me, Epistrophe grossulariae, and the pictures were good enough on this occasion to lead me in the right direction and be reasonably convincing. Moderately sized fly, yellow on the side of thorax, generally parallel yellow bands on tergites 3 and 4, with spots on tergite 2. These open out and sweep slightly backwards rather than being true golf club shapes. Yellow bands on tergites 3 and 4 also open out and sweep slightly backwards at the edge of the tergites. Black bases to front and mid femora, black stripe on top of head leading to dark antennae, grey stripes on top of thorax.

Other hoverflies seen today were Eristalis pertinax, Episyrphus balteatus, Volucella pellucens, Melanostoma scalare, and Sphaerophoria spp.

Whitehorse Wood with the KFC

We had quite a wet morning so concentrated mainly on the plants to be found, although a few butterflies, flies, beetles and grasshoppers were seen.

The hogweed was its normal attractive self, and was drawing in a variety of flies including these Episyrphus balteatus, three on this one head - by no means unusual.

We had a good look at some remaining chalk grassland on a steep slope, where there were some beautiful field scabious plants, Knautia arvensis

We found the Essex Skipper (Thymelicus lineola) here, with the underside of its antennal tips black, as opposed to orangey as seen in the Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris. No photos of the Essex Skipper, but I did manage to snatch one photo of one of the Marbled White, Melanargia galathea, taken from a rather odd angle, nectaring off a Mallow plant. This is actually a member of the Browns, rather than the true Whites.

This is Blackstonia perfoliata, a nice plant common in this habitat

There were a few Melanostoma scalare or lookalikes to be seen, this on Mignonette, Reseda luteola.

Scattered on the steep slope were some pyramidal orchids, Anacamptis pyramidalis. Note the overall uniformity of pinkish colour, the three wide-spreading oblong lower lobes and the two raised ridges running down onto the lower lip.