Arrival at Warkworth

On the drive across from the A1, it was nice to see a Lapwing, Vanellus vanellus, flying over the road.

Lovely to get down to the beach and hear the thunder of the waves! As I dropped down the slope from the car park past the scrub, a Whitethroat, Sylvia communis, sang briefly just to the N of the path, and then when I cluttered over the dunes what I thought was a Meadow pipit, Anthus pratensis, called "sip-sip" from the top of one of the bushes on the crest and then several more times from overhead as it flew high, repeating the whole process twice.

It was half past seven in the evening, and the weather started off poor and then finished atrocious. I got very wet! Along the beach some Black-headed Gulls, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, were feeding by the edge of the incoming tide, picking at the sand as the first salty water washed over it. Many others skimmed regularly overhead travelling in both directions along the tide line. Sadly no Sandwich Terns were seen today.

There were several small groups of small waders scuttling along the tide. I  think they were too dark above to be Sanderling, Calidris alba, but equally there were no obvious dark patches seen on their breasts, so unlikely to be Dunlin, Calidris alpina, and therefore Ringed Plover, Charadrius hiaticula, would be my best bet, with no very clear wing-bars when startled into flight. About 20 in total I reckon, one smaller group, one larger group.

Ruthin Craft Centre

Some lovely trees here. Himalayan Birch, Whitebeam, Swedish Whitebeam, Norway Maple, Ash, Sycamore, Cherry.

The cherries in the courtyard are just developing fruit at the moment, so perhaps they are wild cherries, Prunus padus.

A late visit to Dene Park

It was distinctly cooler and moister today, and there wasn't a great deal of insect life up in the woods when I got there at about 3:30. It was cloudy and briefly threatened a little rain at one point.

However the visit got off to a great start, when I was pretty sure I heard a Garden Warbler, Sylvia borin, singing away in one of the small copses on the grassy area by the car park, It was like a Blackcap, but much more prolonged, varied and tuneful. I honestly cannot think what else it could have been! I was able to listen for several long periods of song, but failed to get a sound recording (memory full!). So that is a life tick for me, what a delight!

I'm still not sure whether the ride clearing that the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership have been doing has had any positive effect - it seems to be too little on the trees either side and too heavy on the ride-side herbaceous vegetation.

Hot Hucking

A really nice day today, the warmest of this year so far I think.

Not huge numbers of butterflies seen, but then again I tend not to see so many unless I'm really on the lookout - presumably they just don't get into sight range so easily. However Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, were seen occasionally, at least three, together with one male Brimstone along the edge of the North Downs Trail. There was also a large dark butterfly, possibly Peacock sized, sunning itself on one of the posts by the side of the Dry Valley, but I had put it up before I saw it properly and wasn't able to identify it.

A nice white erineum on one of the newly planted lime trees suggested.

Salad in the Garden

Just wonderful to hear the Chaffinch and the Blackbird singing ;loudly as I ate my salad in the back-garden this evening. Also Collared Doves, Woodpigeons, House Sparrows, Starlings, Bluetits, and even Rooks over, and Swifts ever so much higher up.

Its so nice that it's warm enough to eat out there even after 7 because the garden gets shaded by the house so quickly. Looks like we are going to have a mini heatwave!.

Shorne Woods Country Park.

Really warm this afternoon - hot even!

So it was a great time to visit Shorne, and it even looked as if the room above the cafe might be big enough for the possible SE Tree Forum this autumn.

I found TWO Blue Tit nests, and one Great Spotted Woodpecker nest - this "looking" is really getting results! The Great Spotted Woodpecker hole was easy to find as the youngster in the nest was calling continuously and monotonously just like a car alarm! Really exciting stuff, even if the photos are poor.

Really good to see the trees, Highlights included the veteran Oaks and Sweet Chestnuts, the tall Hollies down beyond the Fairy Ring on the Red Trail, the uprooted Sweet Chestnuts with South-facing root-plates offering opportunities for solitary bees, while the trees themselves regenerate from the fallen trunks, potentially quickly closing the canopy.  

A quiet Holborough

Quiet because of a much lower variety of birdsong, but there were some good insects and a couple of really nice songsters.

Butterflies were nice with a fresh Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, and two others scrapping, over the brambles on the path in to the reserve by the houses. At the end of the walk there was a Green-veined White and a male Orange Tip along the concrete path.

The picture below shows a Bombus pascuorum doing something quite strange - it is investigating the remnants of an old Lamium album flower from which the corolla has already fallen off. There seems to be little to attract the bumblebee, and little advantage to the flower in attracting the bee. I wondered if this is a common observation?

Well, it turns out apparently that Lamium is unusual in the family Lamiaceae in that the nectaries continue to secrete nectar for some time after the corolla falls off. This seems odd, but after all, why not if it perhaps more successfully facilitates pollination of the other flowers in the whorl, the structures are there anyway and perhaps it just shows common sense to leave them releasing for a day or two longer. This fits in with the often bizarre position of the nectaries in many other plants, by no means confined to the flowers themselves, for example perhaps being on leaves close-by.

The nectaries themselves in Lamiaceae are often are a ring or torus of four individual structures surrounding the four ovary chambers. The fourth is however undeveloped and apparently vestigial in Basil, the three developed ones directed downwards towards the lower corolla lip. In other Lamiaceae there may be only one active lobe, the one with the thickest epidermis. The nectar-producing cells inside the nectaries are small and parenchymatous, with abundant inter-cellular spaces to release the nectar into. Starch acts as the carbohydrate store and builds up in them prior to anthesis, and then disappears as the flower develops and requires the sugary nectar. The stomata on the nectary surfaces are ultimately fed solely by the phloem vessels in some Lamiaceae and are at least in some cases "anomocytic" (lacking in subsidiary cells), perhaps subsidiary cells being unnecessary where close control over opening and closing is unnecessary. However in Lamium oddly enough there are more than two guard cells per nectary stoma!

Fuller details of the fascinating Lamiaceae nectary structure and function can be found in the article in the South African Journal of Botany on Floral nectaries of Basil (Ocimum basilicum): Morphology, anatomy and possible mode of secretion written by M.P. Mačukanović-Jocić, D.V. Rančić, and Z.P. Dajić Stevanović from the University of Belgrade.

This is a more conventional picture of a bee visit, with the anthers held over the back of the bee, releasing the pollen there. Much will be collected by the bees' legs perhaps and transferred to the pollen baskets. Other grains may end up on the stigma of the next flower to be visited.

This individual has quite worn wings so she is probably not fresh. She is quite a large insect judging by the size of the flower she is visiting, so she could be either a Queen from last winter or a large worker from the first generation this year. I am pretty sure she is the standard Carder, B. pascuorum, as she has shaggy hair overall, paler hair on segment 1 of the abdomen than on segment 3, and a few black hairs do appear to be present on the back (and therefore maybe the side?) half way along the abdomen.

This is the same bee having moved on to another, more advanced whorl of flowers. Here, although most of the flowers in the whorl are over, there is at least one more to come! As the bee makes use of one of the flowers on the back of the whorl, you can see how the legs are being used to help hold the bee in position for nectaring, head held deep in the hood of the corolla. There might also be a tiny insect on one of the calyces to the front of the whorl.

Before the Bumblebee got on to that whorl it had been up to a bit of thievery, getting at the nectar by attacking the side of the corolla just above the ovaries: