Coed Fron Wyllt between the rain showers.

There were quite amazing collections of wild flowers in patches along the path, hedge woundwort, buttercup, herb robert, yellow pimpernel, red campion, St Johns wort, foxglove and speedwell all combine to create a fantastic collage of colour.

The occasional hoverfly can be found, and here is one of my absolute favourites, Helophilus pendulus! I do wonder why it was named pendulus. It is the only species of the genus that I have seen so far, is said to be the commonest, and I have usually found it fairly near water, as discussed in Stubbs and Falk. Sites include Broadview Gardens by the Elgar pond, Haysden Country Park by the River Medway, Dene Park with its occasional shady ponds, and now here in these woods just by the stream. S & F do say it wanders away from water a bit. Its larvae are usually found in the mud of ponds, farm drains, or soaking wet manure or sawdust. Within sight of this adult was a farm barn with cattle in it, so absolutely everything fits in this case!

The insect above is a male. In Helophilus both sexes have a gap between the eyes, while in the female the eyes diverge evenly, and in the male the rear half of the eyes are more or less parallel, and there is a clear division between the front and rear halves of the frons. I think I can see both these features and that should mean that this is a male!

The basal yellow section of the right rear tibia that is visible looks as though it extends roughly a little bit more than half way along the limb, and that should mean that it is H. pendulus as opposed to H. hybridus in which the yellow should extend less than one third of the way along. However there are some insects which are intermediate! Reassuringly the abdominal pattern also has a complete black band the full width of the rear of tergite two, splitting tergite two from three, fitting pendulus, while hybridus has the yellow side patches connecting across and linking tergites two and three.

Features which get the choice as far as the pendulus/hybridus pair include the black face stripe, the narrow yellow back edges to tergite two and particularly tergite three, and the male facial characteristics quoted above.

The right hand wing appears to have sustained some damage, and to have a kink cutting across the R4+5 loop, particularly visible in the upper of these two photos.

West side of Dene Park

We took a different path through the woods today, along the public footpath on the Western edge. There are rather fewer opportunities for insects, but it's still an interesting area. There were a few bees on the bramble (Rubus sp.) flowers, but the patches were fairly shaded.

The footpath runs within the edge of the current wood, but on the outside of the original wood-bank with a field currently being cropped with barley to the West, with a generous headland. This photo is taken from part way along the path, and I have just walked up along the edge of the wood on the left hand side. The woodland in the distance at the back of the field and to the right is Fox Wood, also within the Dene Park FC Open Access complex, but I think very few people actually venture into it.

As the path swings around the old hunting lodge, it joins the driveway track, and here there is woodland on both sides. The trees here include horse-chestnut and purple beech, with a fair amount of laurel and rhododendron understorey, and I assume this planting reflects the presence of the house, or perhaps the old hunting lodge. The horse-chestnut was already starting to suffer from the leaf-miner Cameraria ohridella:

In the mix there are some apparently young hornbeam, and on a few of the leaves there were signs of what looked like Aceria tenella, a mite gall found in the axils of the leaves mainly along the midrib, smooth bumps on the upperside, hairy entrances on the underside. This is the view from above:

The driveway swings off to the West and out of the wood towards the Shipbourne Road. At the wood entrance the Dogwood Cornus sanguinea and the Privet Ligustrum vulgare were in flower, but again there were very few insects to be seen.

To the North of the drive the field to the West is growing grass rather than barley. This field and the others around the wood complex are probably fairly good for wildlife such as moths and butterflies specialising on grass as larval food plants. This could possibly include the Large Skipper seen later within the wood, on the Eastern side, nectaring off bramble.



Turning back into the wood the rides through the wood are generally overgrown and shady. They are also very muddy under foot at the moment with the amount of rain the SouthEast has had since the start of May, with unidentified small flies skimming over the surface of the puddles!

Just by the Parish boundary stone, the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership (MVCP) have coppiced one small area to the side of the path - hopefully with more to come!

This is a ladybird larva, possibly the seven spot, Adelia septempunctata:

but this I think is the larva of the harlequin ladybird, Harmonia axyridis:

Dene Park

About 2:30 I got up to Dene Park and tried out the 500 mm as well as the 300 mm on the new monopod/head combiniation - thanks for this to Phil Willcocks, my stalwart friend and supporter.

There seem to be fewer insects to find in some areas - I couldn't see any solitary bees, flower beetles or malachite beetles on the grassy area, although there were good patches of buttercup, hawkweed, heath speedwell and heath (I think) bedstraw in flower. This grassland area I think is rather valuable within the area as a whole, and it is nice when there are good numbers of insects here. However there were some bumble bees, firstly on the clover:

There were also a couple of marmalade hoverflies, Episyrphus balteatus, the first one being rather dark, and the second one much lighter:



and this male hoverfly, which I wasn't sure of, but is Meliscaeva aurocollis according to my use of the marvellous plates in Alan Stubbs' book, and later confirmed from these photos on ispot:

The scutellum is vaguely yellowish, making it a member of the Syrphini. The yellow spots on tergites 3 and 4 sweep forwards towards the middle, making the black bars behind look a bit triangular. The yellow spots on tergite 2 are definitely rounded rather than pointed towards the inner edge, hopefully reducing the possibility of this one being Melangyna cincta.

I walked into the wood, turned left and spent the whole of my available time walking slowly along the path towards Knights Park Wood. There were quite a few bumble bees and some other insects. I saw two examples of Myathropa florea, one of my favourite hoverflies. This is the first sighting, a male, and here you can see the action of the pharynx, seemingly sucking on the anthers first to its left and then to its front.  I wonder if it is taking pollen as opposed to nectar? There could be nectaries on the anthers of course.

This is the second sighting. One of the things you can see in these photos is that the legs tend to be coloured differently on one face and the other - most easily picked out when you look across the insect, and are seeing the outside of the near leg and the inside of the far leg for example.

Along the Knights Park path, I saw my first Volucella inflata, at least of 2012.

I posted this on ispot although I was reasonably sure of the ID. Its the first posting of this species on ispot, perhaps because although it is nationally scarce with a very Southern distribution, everyone else is more confident in their identification skills than I am!

I was really very pleased to find this hoverfly, which is confined to heavily wooded areas in the SouthEast. The larvae have been found in sap runs, which the adults seems to like as well. There is said to be a strong association between this species and over-mature trees and/or ancient woodland. This larval habitat is most unlike all the other members of the genus, which demonstrate a complex relationship between their larvae and the nests of social insects. 

Sunny for the second day on the Access Trail

There seem to be a lot of cranefly adults around at the moment, and this one is really quite colourful!

I think this may be the same species, seen from above - but this individual was at the other end of the Access trail, the tail looks a bit different and of course there could be many similar species around!

This could perhaps be a different species, although quite close to the first individual?

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: