To Meadows Pond on the Tower Walk

This is a short walk crossing to the South side of the village, around the Castle Gardens and along the shady path by the side of the Ha-Ha, and out by the pond created a few years ago in Meadows field just to the East of the River Bourne.

The brambles and roses along the path by the back of Castle Gardens yielded honeybees and Episyrphus balteatus - apparently ubiquitous in my limited experience. Along the shady walk sheltered by the leylandii cypresses along the side of Castle Gardens there were high flying small hoverflies that looked in silhouette like more Episyrphus. Here there are elder, brambles, ivy and nettles, with some wall lettuce and black horehound to be found. It's when this path opens out, unsheltered by the leylandii, and it runs between the maize field and the brambles rambling over the wall of the Ha-Ha, with brambles, roses, and hawkweeds, sow-thistles, hogweed, mallows, ragwort and cut-leaved geranium along a wide grassy path, that a greater diversity of insects can usually be found.

I did manage to spot a Syrphus on what I thought was a hawkbit. The difficulty of telling the Syrphus species apart with only photographs is very clear. It is very difficult to get a clear shot of the rear femora, and without specimens you can't get the confirmatory microscopic details. However this does look like either ribesii or vitripennis, according to the key and the other information in Stubbs and Falk. This was the only Syrphus I saw today, but I think there are probably quite a few individuals around, possibly of several different species.

I found an interesting Eristalis on the ragwort by the end of the maize nearest the Ha-Ha of the Castle Gardens, and in the end keyed it out as Eristalis arbustorum. It was quite small, the face was dusted white overall, there were white hairs on the side of the thorax below the wings, the tibiae were about half dark, half pale, the rear metatarsus was swollen - at least from some angles, the stigma was extended past the tip of the Sc vein, without any obvious wing shading as seen from directly above, even though I think this could be seen from the angle. I couldn't see any hairs, long or short, on the aristae of the antennae. This was a particularly dark individual, with no obvious orange patches on the tergites, but there are internet pictures of similarly coloured individuals, and it was agreed by Ian Andrews on ispot.

On the single hogweed plant out in flower, there were quite a few insects including 2-3 male and female Syritta pipiens. Although rather blurry photographs, enough could be seen of the overall shape, swollen rear thighs, leg colour patterns, tergite spotting and dusty thoracic sides to give me confidence in my identifications. On the hogweed there were also a lot of small dark beetles and black ants.

Quickly around Coed Fron Wyllt in the evening

I popped out at about 6 pm to do a second walk today, and it was lovely in the cooler air of the wood. Monty had been fairly exhausted immediately after his mid-day jaunt in the quarry, but was not showing any ill-effects by the time we left for the evening. Because it was late in the day we concentrated mainly on the plants.

The collage of wild flowers has changed again since the other week, and (starting with the pinks) the Ragged Robin, Lychnis flos-cuculi is now out in quite reasonable numbers in some patches along the tracks to the Southeast of the river.

and this is it's close relative the commoner Red Campion, Silene dioica.

The foxgloves, Digitalis purpurea, were looking fantastic, with various bumblebees seen from a distance but not identified.

I only found one Common Spotted Orchid, Dactylorrhiza fuchsii, but I believe there are more, all along the valley down through Lady Bagot's Drive.

The thistles, which with their crowded heads should be Marsh Thistles, Cirsium palustre, were not attracting any insects yet as far as I could see:

This lovely bank of flowers includes Herb Robert, Geranium robertianum, and Hedge Bedstraw, Galium mollugo, backed by Creeping Buttercup and Bramble foliage.

And the honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, is now out:

Now moving on to the yellows, I think this is the Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, although it's a bit tall.

Below are the flowers of nipplewort, Lapsana communis, occasional plants of which were found in the wood.

and this is a Common Rockrose, Helianthemum nummularium, on the cut in the rock face, which may be relevant to the soil pH.

The St John's Wort plants are now starting to come out

Although its spring yellow flowers are long gone, it is still very easy to recognise the leaves of coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara, with its covering of down almost completely lost now.

And remembering the older plants, here is one of the larger mosses, Polytricum commune, with its straw coloured calyptrae.

There were very few insects about but I did find this rather poorly coloured longhorn beetle, Rutpela maculata, still on the hogweed flowers:

There was also the common alder leaf gall, caused by the gall mite Eriophyes laevis. They are scattered over the upper surface of the leaf; on the underside, there are only small inconspicuous openings. Leaves can be much more densely galled than this, sometimes to the extent that the leaves became quite distorted.

and this snail, which I cannot identify for sure, but it could perhaps be the brown lipped snail Cepaea nemoralis:

The woods themselves are absolutely delightful. According to the North Wales Trust, this wood has one of the highest known densities of dormice discovered so far. They are trying out high level nesting pipes here, based on the Corris model developed by Jack Grasse, located up to 10 m high in the trees.

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?