Oare Marshes

After collecting some water from the Artesian Well, the Fern and I had a quick walk on the seawall around the outside of the East Scrape, seeing Black-headed Gulls, Avocet, Redshank, Mallard, Shelduck, Greylag, Swans, Reed Buntings, Pipits, Starlings. Reed Warblers sang from the edges of the scrape.

Growing well were Birds-Foot Trefoil, Common Vetch, Wild Carrot, Fleabane, Sea Lavender, Sea Aster. There were quite a few Meadow Browns and some possible Small Heaths, as well as undetermined Dragonflies. 

Dene Park on a very muggy late afternoon

When I looked at the Lesser Spearwort down the back straight of the square walk again I was again able to see the fly feeding marks on the leaves that I had seen yesterday. I believe that this is connected with the leaf mines, that are very similar to the Chrysanthemum leaf miner I used to be so familiar with on various Asteraceae weeds.

I think the most likely miner is Phytomyza ranunculi, a very common leafminer on a range of Ranunculus species according to http://www.ukflymines.co.uk/Keys/RANUNCULUS.php, but they are extremely difficult to identify precisely. Perhaps it is best to stick to Phytomyza and leave it at that!

On one of the Beech leaves overhanging the path on the East side of the square walk I found some odd leaf galls that I didn't recognise. Clearly obvious white spots on the upper surface were matched by corresponding darker invaginations as seen from the underside of the light when viewed against the light. I thought these might be early stages of something and luckily when I looked them "Beech galls" on the net I found pictures by Ashley Watson on his blog http://adventuresofawildlife.com/2013/01/31/galls-on-beech/  that link these spots found at this time of year to the mature pustule galls of Hartigiola annulipes found in autumn that I am familiar with.

When a higher crop was used the white spots were seen to be surrounded by a small but presumably developing ring of hypertrophic growth, which would eventually turn into the mature conical hairy galls of late autumn. It is believed that there is only one midge larva in each gall, but I didn't see any evidence of the larvae when I looked at the undersides of the white spots myself - although I wasn't specifically searching for them - they are likely to be very small indeed at this stage.

As for other insects, it was so humid I wasn't surprised not to see any butterflies until virtually the last minute - and then I quickly picked up two Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, and a Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta, on the path back through Knight's Wood.

There were other plants around, and there was just one patch of Mouse Ear Chickweed just before the dip down at the parish boundary.

A little further on there were the first I think, (I really must check for P. anglica and its hybrids) Tormentil (Potentilla erecta) flowers growing along the east and back straight of the square path.

I think these two pictures indicate the change in colour of the flowers as they mature.

According to wikipedia the rhizomatous root is thick. It is inappropriate to be used for food due to extreme bitterness and low caloric value. It can be used as a vegetable dye to dye leather red.

The plant is particularly used in herbal medicine as an astringent because of its tannin content, which is unusually high for a herbaceous plant. This is linked to its use as a red dye, which is due to the structurally similar phlobaphene content. Phlobaphenes can be extracted from the root of the common tormentil and is known as tormentil red, alongside the triterpene alcohol tormentol. The plant has extremely low toxicity, which was studied by Sergei Shushunov and his team. The roots are a main ingredient of a bitter liqueur from Bavaria and the Black Forest area, called Blutwurz. It is also a main ingredient of anti-diarrheal preparation manufactured in the US by Lev Laboratories under the name Quicklyte.

Dene Park without a camera.

I popped up to the woods at Dene Park in the second half of the afternoon, and checked the Black Poplar in the car park and also the three Aspen trees at the junctions along the track for more Poplar Sawfly larvae and also (very hopefully) for the remnants of Hornet Moth pupae protruding from the trunk.

I was successful with finding the Sawfly larvae (Cladius [Trichiocampus] grandis), and there were at least four leaves on the Black Poplar with one to four tiny larvae chewing away at the windowpanes they had created.

I am not very hopeful that they will go to adulthood, as they are reputedly difficult to rear.  I wonder how they pupate - they are supposed to each form a chrysalis in a crack in the bark. I should at least go back to check for the "characteristic" egg scars on the petiole - they would be worth photographing! I didn't see any larvae on the Aspen leaves, but Andrew Halstead has apparently found them on Aspen at Wisley.

Note that other sawfly of the Nematus genus do attack Poplars, but in the more conventional Sawfly fashion, usually sitting on the edge of the leaves. The rarer insect I am dealing with here is sometimes called the Hairy Poplar Sawfly to help distinguish it from these other Nematus species.

I didn't find any Hornet Moth pupae, but it could have been very easy to miss them, as I have never seen them before. Of course, it may be that the insect I saw spent its larval stage elsewhere.

It was really nice to see the Lesser Spearwort  (Ranunculus flammula) flowering along the middle of the track on the far side of the "square", where the soil, and the shade, is heavier. Where it shares its ground with the Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens, the difference in flower size, colour and shape is fairly obvious. I would describe the Lesser Spearwort as having smaller flowers of a slightly brighter and more acid shiny yellow, with the petals slightly more oval and more separated from each other, giving the flowers as a whole a finer and "classier" look. The sepals soon reflex, and fall early. The flower stem is said to be grooved, which I didn't pick up, but is a good character to separate even larger plants (var. major?) from R. lingua, the Greater Spearwort. In addition the flowers and the individual achenes are smaller, although there is some overlap. I also failed to notice a reputed reddish tinge to the stems, and to be honest I didn't believe this character, even when I went back to check the following day.

When I picked a shoot I hadn't realised that the plant as well as being toxic has an acrid sap that can easily damage skin! An alternative common name is apparently Banewort. It is understood to spread by runners, the stems rooting at the nodes, and that it can potentially form dense clumps,  but it has never seemed as aggressive as that to me. It has become naturalised in New Zealand.

Great Comp

Arrived about 2:40 in warm but sometimes overcast weather, certainly not as hot as it was earlier. Immediately we had a look at the plants for sale a tiny black bee was seen in numbers investigating the Campanula flowers on the bench. This was I am nearly certain Chelostoma campanularum, almost confined to members of his family.

There were dozens of Episyrphus balteatus on the wide range of flowers available, and there was also my first

A large fat bee is most likely to have been a Megachile species

Quickly and cloudily at Dene Park

I have been neglecting Dene Park quite a bit recently, so I was glad to get back there at about 4 this afternoon, although it was now quite late in the day and cloudy, even threatening a bit of rain I thought! What a contrast to this morning which was sunny and almost too hot to sit outside by 10:30!

No butterflies and very few insects of any sorts at all really. There were some tiny flies on the Creeping Buttercup along the main path heading towards the dip down to The Scambles.

I was very pleased to see my first spike of Common Agrimony (Agrimonia eupatorium) of 2014 out in about 50% flower, alongside the path through Knight's Wood (I am obviously very slow). This is one of the several Rosaceous foodplants of the Grizzled Skipper, although there is little chance of seeing one of these at Dene Park, as it is not a Chalk Downland woodland, but on the Lower Greensand, well South of the North Downs.

Agrimony is a perennial herb, having a long black somewhat woody rhizomatous root. The plant is 30 - 60 cm tall, with a long, thin, tight flower spike. Old names include Church Steeples, Cockeburr, Sticklewort and Stickwort. The leaves are much larger and more sub-divided at the base of the stem than they are higher up. The leaflets are separated by much smaller leaflets, and get bigger as you get closer to the tip of the leaf. The whole plant is softly hairy overall.

There may be larger plants within the species taxon, maybe a subspecies, A. eupatorium var sepium, found in places like Durham, which are said to be more fragrant, but this should not be confused with the separate species, the Fragrant Agrimony, Agrimonia procera. This species has been noted at Bedgebury Pinetum - by the Wild Flower Society no less! There is a BSBI crib, incredibly useful to separate the two species!  http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Agrimonia_Crib.pdf

Agrimony is a traditional medicinal herb, the Greeks commonly using it for eye problems, while the Anglo-Saxons used it to treat wounds and to slow bleeding. The flowers are said to have a scent reminiscent of apricots.

Amongst many other ingredients the agrimony flowers contain the flavenoid quercetin which is anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and also gives the flowers their yellow colour. It is also relatively rich in tannins, hence its use sometimes as a gargle.

The whole plant yields a pale yellow dye in September, and a deeper yellow later in the year.

The Bourne Valley to Malt Cottage

Walking down through the Green Lane Shaw, there were a fair number of hoverflies patrolling their territories. Most I thought were the Marmalade Hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, but this was a Myathropa florea that was buzzing loudly and had taken control of some leaves in a patch of sunlight.

This is Leucozona lucorum, a rather tatty specimen from the currently declining first generation.

Many of the herbaceous plants were suffering from the dryness of the soil and the heat, and were already flagging this early in the season. The Hawthorn fruit continue to swell into haws - it seems that the season is progressing very quickly indeed! There is one on the left that appears not to have been fertilised. The epidermis of the fruit is slightly hairy, at least at this stage.

Here you can see even more clearly the swelling inferior ovary, with its sparse hairs and the remains of the calyx and the other floral parts above it, apart from the petals which dropped off weeks ago.

Further along the walk the Norway Maple keys were also developing gorgeously:

The elms were starting to show the Elm Leaf Gall,

In the Green Lane, I found a moderate stand of Hedge Woundwort, Stachys sylvatica, at the Bourneside end of the shaw.

As I  moved out into the arable fields along the river, the Honeybees were working the flowering Forage Beans across the fields.

The Vetch I saw most today was in the Common Vetch aggregate, Vicia sativa. This plant looks like ssp. segetalis as in the BSBI plant crib, as it seemed more or less isophyllous, the tendrils are branched, with a clear slightly bi-coloured flower (standard somewhat paler than wings). There is more taxonomic information here http://archive.bsbi.org.uk/Wats12p1.pdf. This includes the suggestion that the calyx teeth should be shorter than the calyx tube, as here. It would be nice to check the pods and the seeds later, perhaps I should mark some typical plants so that I can go back to them in a few weeks.

This a close-up of the flower.





This ant looks yellowish, perhaps because the light is behind it. It had come down from the flower above.

This shows the dark patch generally seen on the stipules, and the hairs covering the plant.

This is the leaflets close up - its fascinating how the genes can apparently code for such a variety of leaf shapes! I wonder how long it would take a computer programmer to code for growth to produce the same results? Are the slightly spiky tips of the leaflets defensive or for some other purpose? The spikes are a bit longer in the currently cultivated form Vicia sativa ssp sativa.

Most of the Buttercups I saw today were Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens. However there were patches of Meadow Buttercup, Ranunculus acris around, including at the edge of the crop in the field to the North of the bridge over the Bourne leading towards Barnes Place.

I think the beetles are flea beetles:

Many of this plant's flowers are already setting achenes, very similar to those of the Creeping Buttercup. Interesting pattern of light in these!

and this one shows the same pattern as well - air spaces around the seeds compared to double thickness wall edges perhaps? Or is it just that the seeds inside the fruit are themselves white? Anyway it's very pretty.

Here is Hedge Mustard, Sisymbium officinale, this one's buds just opening.

It was  nice to see some birds flitting around the hedgerows. The nicest I thought was this male Yellowhammer on the Eastern side of the reservoir b y Malt Cottage.

Even more heavily cropped, this Linnet:

The Bourne Valley

I walked down from the Access Trail along the Bourne Valley looking for birds, butterflies and planning issues!

It was very nice to see some Small Tortoiseshell Butterflies, Aglais urticae, sunning themselves along the path. I recorded 6 for the Kent BBCS website. This year I seem to be seeing more of these than I have in the last three years, which is very good news as their numbers sank like a stone a few years ago. I cannot tell whether these are the last of the overwintering individuals, or the first of the mid-summer ones.

There are starting to be more damselflies around and I saw a good male Common Blue on the nettles by the river.

After Monty had had a good runabout, I put him on the lead and allowed him to cool down while I tried to work out the ghostly birds flitting in and out of the shadows. There were a family of Great Tits with newly fledged young, which were seen in deep in the canopy but very difficult to photograph. The light face patch looks more yellow and the features in general are only poorly defined, although the wing stripe is a good clue for identification.

There were two magpies in the general area of Hayes Farm, apparently one smaller than another, so I suppose that the smaller one might have been a recent fledgeling.