Saturday 28 June 2014

To the West of Hartlake Bridge


Quite a few White butterflies around today, and if the picture below has been correctly identified, they were all Small Whites, Pieris rapae.


There were also several Comma butterflies (Polygonia c-album) along the path - I was particularly glad to see these as it seemed to me that the numbers of Commas are a bit down, in contrast to the recovery of the Small Tortoiseshells. I really cannot tell if these are the "lighter underneath and brighter on top" Hutchinsonii form that should produce a second 2014 generation in early autumn this year, as the sunlight and shade so affect our perceptions.




A little further on I found a tiny insect on a Mayweed flower that I thought might be a solitary bee. On looking at the photos on the computer screen it turned out to be Microdynerus exilis a solitary "potter" wasp that uses old beetle holes in decaying wood and whose larvae are fed on weevil larvae. It is nationally scarce, Southern in distribution, and only added to the British list in 1937.


Here is a link to a Flickr page showing the sort of hole this potter wasp might possibly be using.

On the Bramble flowers there was a well posed Episyrphus balteatus, a very common hoverfly indeed this year.



As usual there were a lot of Banded Demoiselles, Calopteryx splendens, around the river area.


and this is a close-up of the female on a Bristly Oxtongue, Helminthotheca echioides, inflorescence:


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