Coed Foel Wyllt on Sunday morning

As I returned across the bridge to the car, there was a Red Headed Cardinal Beetle on the right, Pyrochroa serraticornis, 

And there was also a froghopper, Cercopis vulnerata, a rather well advertised vegetarian that I have fairly regularly if only occasionally spotted, including down by the gravel pits. This is one of the UK's largest homopterans, the adults of which (in a variety of colour forms) are found pretty well everywhere South of the Scottish Highlands. Its larvae are rarely found, as they normally feed on underground plant roots. 

The Lady Baggot Drive

I walked more locally today, Lady Baggot's Drive in the morning and Glocaenog Wood in the evening after collecting Nain from hospital. It was dry enough in the morning for a few photographs, but too wet in the evening to even get the camera out of the car. The evening walk was still really enjoyable, as these are really good woods that I don't know well enough - really promising for future visits!

Along Lady Baggot's Drive, the path I know best, there were quite a few flowers out, with the remaining spring flowers merging into the up and coming summer ones.

It was nice to see what I took to be Hedge Bedstraw, Galium mollugo ssp mollugo) L,  along the track. This is one of the most robust and upright bedstraws, and my favourite in the genus by far. I will need to check that I am not confusing this plant, the Great Hedge Bedstraw, with the Upright Hedge Bedstraw, Galium mollugo ssp erectum, now perhaps more correctly known as Galium album, which is found a bit further East, on the limestone.

The description of the species and two subspecies follows. A perennial herb with stout stock, decumbent to erect, 4-angled, glabrous or pubescent stems, 25-120 cm, ± branched, not blackening when dried. Lvs 8-25 mm, 6-8 in a whorl, linear to obovate, mucronate to cuspidate, 1-veined, glabrous or pubescent, rough on the margins with stout, forward-pointing, ± appressed bristles.

Infl a terminal panicle of rather lax cymes. Corolla white,tube very short, lobes 4, cuspidate. Fr glabrous, rugulose, blackenng when dry, fr stalks divaricate.

ssp mollugo: Fl stems weak, decumbent or ascending, diffusely branched (mostly >45°), swollen below the nodes.Lvs to 25 mm, obovate, oblanceolate or rarely linear, cuspidate. Fls 3 m diam in a panicle with spreading branches. Fr 1 mm; basal infl branches strongly divaricate in fr.

ssp erectum Syme: Fl stems ± erect with erect branches (mostly <45°) and linear lanceolate, mucronate lvs. Fls 2.5-5 mm diam in a narrow panicle with ascending branches. Fr 1.5-2 mm; basal infl-branches ascending in fr.

Next comes the flowers of the common figwort - note the anthers protruding from the throat.

This is maybe the second Yellow Archangel I have seen this year - well attacked by leaf hopper by the look of it!

and here is one of the commonest plants along the path, Herb Bennet, Geum urbanum. 

Followed by the commonest, Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum, with a hoverfly, Rhingia campestris on the flower behind!

Glocaenog

Monty and I took to the Forestry Commission track through Glocaenog forest for a "middle of the day" walk today, after a nice bit of shopping for Nain in Ruthin.

The trees were mainly Sitka Spruce, Picea sitchensis, with this year's growth of foliage just popping out of the bud scales and shedding them as joined cupules of scales all over the ground and undergrowth.

There were spots of quite nice habitat in between the trees, including patches of more open areas, and this decrepit rotten standing trunk, so valuable for insects and woodpeckers.

The trackside was well furnished with plants wherever the trees did not completely shade out the track, and this was dominated by Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum, and Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens in flower, with lots of shoots of Willowherb, Epilobium, growing in between them and due to flower later in the season.

There were large numbers of what I think is the small hoverfly Melanostoma scalare all along the track on the buttercup and also to a lesser extent on the Herb Robert and the Ribwort  Plantain flowers. Notice the obviously pale halteres, which can even look green in some individuals. The first three photos are females with the characteristic pattern of yellow triangles on T3 and T4 behind the yellow spots on T2 on the top of the abdomen, generally dusted face with a protruding knob and dark patch above the antennae, yellowish antennae, glossy black thorax and scutellum, with pale front and mid legs with some darker shading on the rear legs. The last comment is typical of insects in its complexity, looked at from the inside the dark shading perhaps starts half way down the tibiae, looked at from the outside it is just the tarsi that are dark, at least in this picture.

In this photo this female has a fairly swollen abdomen, with the top plates (tergites) well separated from the bottom plates (sternites), only connected by the extendible membranous sides. This may well be because she is carrying a lot of eggs. The internal organs can be seen fairly clearly through the membrane. The yellow patches on the tergites clearly reach the edges. All individual insects photographed seemed to be in a very similar state.

The picture below is probably one of the best I got of one of these females. They move quite delicately from one resting spot to another, often on the flowers, feeding gently off the pollen or nectar:

This I am pretty sure is a male of the same species, with its characteristically elongated narrow abdomen. There were far fewer of these.

There was also a stubby very black hoverfly (I think!), but again with pale halteres! This male should go to ispot for further work, but I am guessing Cheilosia at the moment (confirmed almost instantly by Ophrys on ispot)! There appears to be a small pale patch on the pleura (?) just forward of the pale halteres. The thorax is both very black glossy and fuzzily long-hairy. The face appears to have a dark double bump, somewhat unusual. The legas are clearly dark, unlike most Cheilosia.

Other plants of interest included the occasional Wood Avens or Herb Bennet, Geum urbanum, a member of the Rose family.

Other plants in flower seen alongside the path were Dandelion, Cats Ear, Field Buttercup, Birds-foot Trefoil and Garlic Mustard and different grasses, although I didn't get any photos of these I am afraid. However I did manage to photograph the flowers of a bilberry, of which there were several patches intermingled with heather, possibly on more established banks or maybe more acid areas.

There were also some really great shuttlecock clumps of fern:

Dene Park escapes the thunderstorm!

It was very hot today, with gathering thunderstorms which just missed Hadlow and Dene Park. It was lovely in the late afternoon/early evening up in the wood, with excellent birdsong from song thrushes, blackbirds and robins in particular. There were quite a few insects around, including this moth welcoming me to the car park. I am sure this is a very common one:

Also in the car park grassland was the "Black-Hearted Flower Beetle" Cantharis rustica.

It is about time I looked in a bit more detail at birch trees, the genus Betula. They are so reliant on seed distribution that the new seed heads are out, before the old ones are completely finished!

So, next, something entirely new to me, a Birch Leaf Roller. This was very difficult to tie down, as initially it looked as though it ought to be due to a beetle larva, but now I think it must be due to a Lepidopteran larva, by counting the number of legs!

I was now in the first woodland ride and came across another Nomada bee species, dark and orange!

Deeper in the wood, feeding on the nectar from the cow parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris, I found this odd looking fly. There is a tiny, tiny beetle with it! This is the largest of the UK species of Dance Flies, Empis tessellata, as identified by Ophrys on ispot. ID characteristics include the striped hairy thorax, brownish wings and black femora. It is probably quite a common fly, but likely to be significantly under-recorded generally in the UK.

As always there were the difficult hoverflies, usually the small and black ones. This ought to be a female Platycheirus albimanus, quite a moderate size, with grey spots just visible in the second photo, at a wild guess!

This next one is much easier because of the triangular yellow spots on tergite 2, Melangyna cincta.

Pseudopanthera macularia, the Speckled Yellow moth, exactly where it ought to be, on a fairly open woodland ride

The Larches

This is a fairly new Kent Wildlife Trust reserve, valuable as another example of chalk woodland and downland. The woodland requires quite a lot of clearing, a lot down to volunteers, and hard, often back-breaking work. So far it appears to have been quite successful, and many grassland species do seem to have re-appeared, presumably partly from a buried seed bank, as well as partly from plants surviving in clearings such as the Ground Pine, Ajuga chamaepitys. This species has seed that has been proved to last for 50 or more years in the soil. This labiate has unusual extended yellow flowers with red spots, held prostrately together with the elongate hairy trifoliate leaves, on a red typically Lamiaceae square-angled stem. These appear to be quite tiny stressed plants to me!

The Ground Pine is also found at Boarley Farm a few miles away, at several sites on the chalk hills of the Valley of Visions and also at the Plantlife Reserve at Ranscombe Farm on the other side of the Medway. It behaves as an annual, growing on disturbed chalky or sandy soils, and these flowers are relatively early (normally flowering season is June-October according to Plantlife). Management can be on a cultivated but unfertilised and unsprayed headland, or on quarry tracks or on grazed thin chalk downland where competition from other plants is not too intense. Currently it is known to be found on a few dozen sites at most in the UK, although it is not considered threatened in Europe. Management Guide for Ground Pine.

There was plenty of wild strawberry, Fragaria vesca, rather than the equally common barren strawberry, Fragaria sterilis. The petals are longer than the sepals, and also broadly cover them so that they cannot be seen from above, unlike sterilis. The terminal leaflet tooth also projects clearly beyond its neighbours, unlike sterilis, according to Rose, although this is not clear in every leaf in this picture. The runners are long, rather than short, and the leaves are said to be glossy green as well as hairy, rather than blue-green. The flower stalks are said to have adpressed hairs, although this is unclear from the fruit stalks here. It is also not a hautbois strawberry, Fragaria moschata, which doesn't have achenes down to the base of the false fruit, together with many other differences.

Another typical plant of the chalk is the rock-rose, Helianthemum nummularium, a beautiful flower. This is a prostrate perennial shrub. It has small oval or oblong leaves, woolly below with long basal stipules. The petals are crinkly in the bud, and the flower stalks are downy.

other members of the genus are very local and rare, so I shouldn't have to worry about a mistaken ID!

This is another plant equally typical of the chalk, the fairy flax, Linum catharticum. 

A retreat to the shade of Dene Park

Crikey, its even hotter!

Argogorytes mystaceus was the possible ID for some of the tiny insects along the field edge in the field to the North of the East Lock.