Bourneside Meadows

The landscape down towards Bourneside Meadow does not seem to have benefited from the small amounts of rain so far, and the whole area feels dry and almost devastated. The crop of forage beans have been sprayed with dessicant, and stand with blackened stems that rattle loudly against each other whenever Monty gets into them.

Alongside the crop margins there are lots of Prickly Sowthistle, Sonchus asper, mostly with white woolly seed (really cypsela) heads, and going over rapidly. Some of the old plants are heavily covered with a powdery mildew, and overall therefore even the weeds are struggling. Intriguingly there are young plants from earlier seeds already forming rosettes ready for the winter and flowering next year.

It was nice to see the first of a series of male Common Blue butterflies. Polyommatus icarus, as I turned off the track towards the meadow, and I think I saw a total of about 9 males altogether, with perhaps 3 females as well. This one is a male:

For the whole time I stayed within the meadow I didn't see any Brown Argus butterflies, Aricia agestes. However as I left, I did find four, all together in the very long grass alongside the river bank, trying to roost and settle on the grass stems and leaves being blown about by the wind. This communal roosting is characteristic behaviour of both this species and the Common Blue. The Brown Argus does seem to be give a much more silvery impression overall in flight, as well as perhaps being slightly smaller and narrower.

There were regular overflights from various white butterflies whilst I was at the meadow, and I did get close to one of them, which turned out to be a male Green-veined White, Pieris napi, nectaring on a Mint flowerhead. I know it was a male because it only had one dark spot on the upperside of the forewing, whilst females have two, and tend to have much darker forewings overall. It was nice to check the wing patterning, and the almost blue-greenish white hairs on and around the body. The hairs themselves might be white, but look blue-greenish just against the body.

The hairs extend around the abdomen, although this is not always so easily seen.

This butterfly on the other hand, seen later in the meadow nearer the river, was much more likely to be a male Small White, Pieris rapae, because of the lack of black triangular markings at the ends of the veins on the outer margin, although the overall upper wing pattern is very similar.

It was great to see the substantial clumps of Mint. The rounded terminal flowerheads and projecting stamens suggest that it is probably Water Mint, Mentha aquatica, supporting the generally wet nature of the ground around the large pond. The leaves were very hairy, not obviously petiolate on first glance (but they must have been, and this was confirmed on close examination), rounded with generally forwardly bluntly projecting teeth. The flowers were lilac, and a few mm in length with triangular calyx teeth as described in the books. Standard number of 4 stamens in the genus, with a central style and stigma, together with equal calyx teeth, (corolla and) calyx hairy on the outside in this species.

Bourneside Meadow

The butterflies were superb at Bourneside Meadow today. It was particularly nice to see the Small Copper, Lycaena phlaeas, although Warren also saw it today at Pittswood and at the Nursery of Ashes Lane, so I suspect it may be more widespread across the parish than I had realised.

I saw several male Common Blue, Polyommatus icarus, males but they were moving too quickly to be photographed. These must be early representatives of the second generation of this summer, which has started just this last week, after a break of about a fortnight from the first generation. Singles or pairs are regularly seen by Warren every summer, so this suggests adults of this species should also be fairly well spread across the parish. This butterfly forms reasonably discrete colonies measured in tens or hundreds, with individuals occasionally wandering some distance.

This species is most active in sunshine and is a frequent visitor to flowers. Males are the more active of the two sexes and set up territories which they patrol in search of females. The female is less conspicuous, spending most of her time nectaring, resting and egg-laying. When egg-laying, the female makes slow flights, low over the ground, searching out suitable foodplants on which to lay. When a suitable plant is located, a single egg is laid on the upperside of a young leaf (UK butterflies), which should be fairly clearly visible.

In dull weather this species roosts head down on a grass stem. As for similar species, such as the Brown Argus, this species roosts communally at night, with several individuals occasionally found roosting on the same grass stem.

The chrysalis is attended by ants, which may take it into their nests, feeding off the honeydew it may excrete.

One of the clues as where the Common Blue breed is going to be the location of the larval food plants. I checked some of the Birds-Foot Trefoil plants in the meadow and I thought most of them were Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus, but at least some definitely looked like Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, as in the relatively hairless plant with (only 3) orange flowers below. Both are included in the fairly wide ranging list of trefoils and medicks that are used as larval foodplants, so this species of butterfly should do well on this particularly rich patch of wild flowers.

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I also spotted (I think) a Brown Argus, Aricia agestis, picking it out from the Small/Essex Skippers as it fluttered past me, found where it had settled, and grabbed a very poor photo just to confirm the record of the colony. The wings are a good chocolate colour and there are good orange spots around the edge, with no blue dusting towards the body, so I do not think it is a Common Blue female. From the rather rounded wings and the full extent of the orange spots it is possibly a female rather than a male Brown Argus. As it seems quite fresh this might be one of the first of the second generation this year.



On one of the Hogweed heads there was a Crabronid wasp, Crabroninae. The wings lie flat across the abdomen. It is very likely to be an Ectemnius species. Sometimes you find Cerceris species in Philanthinae but these are quite easily distinguishable, by the unevenly ridged segments of the abdomen, the head shape, the yellow face and the overall jizz,  http://www.ispotnature.org/node/281557  and http://www.ispotnature.org/node/280405. The yellow proximal sections of the antennae suggest Ectemnius rather than the otherwise very similar Crabro, where the antennae are black overall.

Another confusion possibility is Mellinus arvensis, generally late in the season, and without the yellow on the bottom of the antennae, or the silver or gold hairs on the clypeus, and with more orange rather than yellow legs.

As to getting down to species, this is very difficult - useful notes from Ardea:

"For female ID you need to get a clear view of the shape of the clypeus (basically upper lip) which you can only see well from the underside of the head, against the light. The clypeal hairs obscure the shape from the front. WIth your photos, long Mesonotal hairs, golden clypeal hairs = either lapidaries, ruficornis (scarce), cavifrons and sexcinctus."

Bourneside Meadow and Andrena haemorrhoa

Andrena are really fascinating solitary bees and there must be so much to learn about their mysterious lives. Today I was hoping for hoverflies but also came across quite a few Andrena which seemed to be flying in the canopy of trees. For example first there were quite a few Andrena in the twigs and branches of the Great Sallow bushes, Salix caprea, by the Red Pond along the Access Trail, of which I only caught one.

I don't know for sure that there were any more bees here than anywhere else, all I can really say is that I spent quite some time looking for hoverflies there, and that I saw mainly bumblebees visiting the catkins and mainly Andrena bees in amongst, and occasionally settling on, the branches. I think the Andrena may also have visited the catkins rarely, but I got the impression that most of the time they were not looking for food, just flying. I imagine that if you are a bee subject to predation by birds, then you are probably safer in amongst the twigs and branches, than out in the open. However I do also wonder whether there is a social feature in gathering together as well.

After quite a lot of time by the Red Pond I moved down to the riverplain of the River Bourne and ended up looking for bees on the dandelions in the damp meadow by Bourneside Farm. There was almost nothing there, but it was getting on towards 4 in the afternoon and I rather suspect the dandelions become less attractive to insects after about the middle of the afternoon.

There was at least one chiff-chaff in the treeline along the boundary with the land below Easterfield Bungalow, and while trying to get photographs there of the opening leaves of the native Common Alder, Alnus glutinosa, I saw some rapidly flying insects moving quickly in, and just outside the edge of, the canopy of the trees at about head height. They were moving so fast I couldn't even tell for sure whether they were bees or flies and I spent a lot of time trying, and failing (I need a bigger net?), to catch one. I would say that as far as numbers go, there were at least half a dozen and probably into double figures as a total. In the end I eventually caught one insect and that turned out to be a male Andrena haemorrhoa upon closer examination and under the binocular microscope. The insects did all look quite similar in size and "jizz" and if asked I would have said it was more likely that they were all males, rather than a mix of males and females, and possibly all of the same species.

I have found Andrena haemorrhoa in several places in the local area, but this seemed to be a specific association with these trees and also a specific behaviour.  It could be that the bees were commuting back and forwards along the tree line towards a food source or other site, or perhaps they were just flying to and from with some sort of social purpose. It would be useful to see if the behaviour is repeated on different days and times of day, and also to see if the all the insects are really all male Andrena haemorrhoa.

Here is a picture of one, this time a female, I took a few hundred metres away up on the Access trail in May last year:

You can see the foxy red colour of the hairs on the thorax (even more intense in the female as compared to the male), the whitish hairs around the face, the orange-red hairs on the tail, and the rather shiny black colour of the main dorsal surface of the abdomen.

The unfolding alder leaves were very difficult to photograph because of the shallow depth of field. As the buds swell the two main scales may part slightly, partly exposing the leaves within.

The scales then roll fully back on themselves, allowing the leaves to start their main phase of expansion, looking slightly shiny or possibly sticky.