Queendown Warren

A late afternoon trip up to Queendown Warren produced good numbers of bumblebees and the common Brown butterflies, but was disappointing for Chalkhill and the other Blues.

Firstly were the Cuckoo Bumblebees, and here are two versions of Bombus vestalis or Bombus bohemicus, the first version with only one yellow thoracic band, and the second version with a thinner band in the middle of the abdomen.

Here is the first version. If it is Bombus vestalis, it is probably a fairly worn specimen, as the yellow patches are now quite small and indistinct. These are all the same bee. The wings look a little worn and tawdry, and not strikingly brown, although clearly brown tinged especially on the veins. This would all fit with a Bombus vestalis that has been around the block a couple of times.

Frustratingly once again I cannot tell for sure whether it is a male or a female! If I had to make a decision I would think it is a male vestalis in which the antennal segment A3 is much shorter than the A5, but I really cannot be certain. I think this only applies to males, and is well seen in one of the photos on http://www.bwars.com/index.php?q=bee/apidae/bombus-vestalis.

This is the second version, with a slight yellow band on the abdomen. Again these photos are all the same bee. In this individual I would have said that the wings are rather browner than the bee above.

Lullingstone on another warm Sunday evening

At Lullingstone there is a good patch of Ragwort and Creeping Thistle between the first woodland clump and the golf course. Today I checked it for butterflies and bumblebees in particular. The first butterflies I saw were Gatekeepers, Pyronia tithonus and Meadow Browns, Maniola jurtina. 

On Gatekeepers, the small white spots are found on the darker areas of the underside hind wing and there may be four or five it seems to me. This looks to be fairly sharp across the whole insect, at f/20, but the photo does suffer from noise at ISO 1000, with double sharpening, which seems to be the main cause of the noise problem.

This is a slightly unusual head-on view of the same insect:

And here is one of the Meadow Browns, on a Creeping Thistle flower. Its a male, with two spots on the hind underwing:

And here again is a head-on view, but this time of a different insect, a far more tattered male. It is rather difficult to tell how many spots it has for sure.

and here is a third male, with just a single spot.

As I left the flower patch, I saw a Peacock butterfly, Inachis io, at the back of the patch - It looked huge in relation to the Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns, quite a stunner!

and just about then I was overflown by a Spitfire!

The cimbicid sawfly Abia sericea male

http://www.wbrc.org.uk/WORCRECD/Issue11/Sawflies.htm

And moving on to Bourneside meadow

Here, rather by way of contrast, to the plants seen along the Access Trail, is the Branched Bur-Reed, Sparganium erectum, growing in the river by the Bourneside footbridge. The smaller globes are male inflorescences, the larger ones lower down on a branch are female inflorescences. There appear to be black-tipped perianth segments  in the female inflorescence, making it Sparganium erectum (L.). The size of the plant as a whole is a bit of a clue as well.

From the view of the central inflorescence in the photo you can see the leaf keeled at the base, broadside on to the stem. The plant looks hairless overall, as specified in the books. The female flowers take on a bur-like appearance before breaking up into distinct fruits. The fruits are small, dry and spongy and contain 1-2 seeds. They are shouldered, as seen in this weblink from the US'

The fruit, which ripen in November, are eaten by waterfowl and there is a micromoth, Plusia festucae. Most spread is vegetative, partly via its rhizomes, and it acts as good habitat for wildfowl, but it can be regarded as a clogging weed in some circumstances, requiring a degree of control.

Next to the Branched Bur-Reed, there is a plant of Hemlock Water Dropwort, Oenanthe crocata. The leaf shape is right, and the styles on the developing fruit look OK for this species.

This is the detail of the leaf:

and another trying to get closer to the styles:

On the meadow itself, which seems to be getting much taller year by year, there were some good butterflies, including Gatekeepers, Pyronia tithonus.

Back to the Access trail

On the Field Maple (Acer campestre) leaves on the sunny side of the Access trail I found both of the common Acer campestre leaf mite pouch galls, the very common Aceria myriadeum and the less abundant and somewhat larger Aceria macrochela (warning: the taxonomy of all Acer gall mites is a bit dubious).

Both, however named, can be seen in this general picture of the upperside of a leaf at about breast height.

At first I was worried because I didn't think that these galls were at all fuzzy/furry, as shown in Redfern and Shirley, but a closer look at one of the more terminal galls in the picture above reassured me:

Here to compare, is a shot of a leaf absolutely covered with puches caused by Aceria myriadeum. It's amazing how the wrinkles in the leaf can bring the surfaces in and out of focus.

While these mites attack the plant foliage, there are a number of butterflies about, including good numbers of ageing Commas, Polygonia c-album. Even after a fair amount of wear, these butterflies show wonderfully coloured hairs and scales:

There were also some of the new emergence of Gatekeepers, Pyronia tithonus, basking in full view, even if screened from my camera by nearer foliage:

And there was one Large White, Pieris brassicae (L.), and several Small Whites, Pieris rapae (L.), some of the detail  of which are shown here, the eyes most in focus in the first photograph, and then the furry hairs of the body more clearly seen in the second photograph.

There were quite large numbers of the Marmalade Hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, on the bramble banks.

Now, how about the bumble bees? These are quite tricky I find. I think the first is a male of the White Tailed Bumblebee, Bombus lucorum, and the second is a male of the Buff Tailed Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris.

Moving on to the plants I took particular notice of the very common Spear Thistle, Cirsium vulgare (Savi) Ten., showing the sharp somewhat yellow-tipped bracts below the inflorescence:

Here you can see the cottony stem, and the spiny-hairy upper surfaces of the non-shiny leaves, which have long terminal lobes:

Looking a bit closer at the upper surface of the leaves you can easily see the spiny hairs:

and here is a close-up of the cottony stem - remarkable! A noxious weed in the UK, it is an introduced and injurious weed in 9 states of the USA and also an alien in Australia - lucky them!

In amongst these bramble, thistle and nettle banks, there must be rabbits. Here is some of the damage they are doing to the Wheat crop, (Triticum sp.)  in the field owned by Hadlow Place Farm.

Millers Dale, Peak District

I had a good session up in the old quarry that is Millers Dale Nature Reserve, part of the Wye Valley SSSI.

Meadow Browns, Maniola jurtina, were out in reasonable numbers, but could have been outnumbered by the Ringlets on first impression. Ringlets do seem to be having a good year.

I think this is a female Meadow Brown, settled in the grass. Egg-laying could be on her mind perhaps? She has both front legs over the top of the grassblade, together with her right rear leg, and the left rear leg hooked under the grass blade, holding her steady. Like all Nymphalids, the front legs are tiny and vestigial, and hardly ever visible at all.

Females are more banded than the males, and rarely "spotted" - apart from the main eye spot of course. You can see the rolled up probscis, not quite fully withdrawn.

I think this however is the male, with a duller less banded rear underwing. You can just see a red mite attached to the "neck". The rear underside wing shows no spots however, some males have them, some don't and it appears to be genetically related to predation risk, with a degree of genetic drift towards more uniform but differently marked populations on different smaller islands. There may be gene linkage involved as well.

This male by contrast has two spots on the lower underside wing, which indicates variability in this population at least.

There seem to be many more flowers up North than at home in the parched garden of England. Here is a plant that I suspect of being Greater Burnet-Saxifrage, Pimpinella major. However it's a little hairier, and rather less furrowed than I expected.

Skippers at Lullingstone

The photograph below shows a male Small (?) Skipper, Thymelicus sylvestris. I am pretty sure it is this species, partly due to the apparent orange underside to the antennal tip just I think visible on the far antenna in particular, and partly due to what seems to be a curve in the male sex mark, most clearly seen on the far front wing. These two species are a fascinating example of evolution at the species level, with this species preferring Yorkshire Fog as the principal larval food plant, while the Essex Skipper seems to like a range of grasses such as Cocksfoot, Creeping Soft grass, Timothy, etc., but appearing to avoid Yorkshire Fog.   

 

I checked on the nectar food plant (Creeping Thistle, Cirsium arvense - ouch!) and noted that the flower head smelt of honey.

This, on the other hand, is the Essex Skipper, Thymelicus lineola, with black under the antennal tips, and a finer, straighter sex-mark, although this cannot be seen in these photographs.