The garden at Tomich

Having arrived at the house at Tomich late last night to stay with Paula's parents, Ken and Pam, we woke to a really nice Highland day today. As we were getting the painting of the garage eaves organized, a very nice speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, appeared in the back garden, nectaring repeatedly on the mint flowers by the vegetable patch.

Surprisingly well coloured for the time of year, the mix of grey-green and tawny hairs on the body showed very well in a photo taken with the sun from behind the wings.

This was a very interesting butterfly to see up here, as it is one of the butterflies that has extended its range over the last few decades and recolonised large areas of Scotland. It is also relatively unusual to see it nectaring on flowers but it will do this early and late in the season when aphid activity is low, and the availability of honeydew on leaves that it normally depends upon throughout the majority of its long season is correspondingly reduced. In the garden there were plenty of Episyrphus balteatus hoverflies

and then suddenly there was a rather dumpy hoverfly running over a leaf surface. As I got the camera ready I could see that the legs were distinctly banded, black and pale (the pale sections being much whiter than the yellow illustrated in the book), the main part of the abdomen looked orangey and there was a dark tip to it.

The wings were kept firmly folded over the back, so everything beneath was a bit blurred, which was rather frustrating. I thought of Xylota segnis, a hoverfly that I knew to be common, but that I had previously had difficulty in finding, and I think this is what it must have been.

There is also a rare species, Xylota tarda that is only found in the Scottish highlands possibly associated with Aspen, Populus tremula, (there are Aspen trees within 200 m of the garden), but I couldn’t see the critical features clearly, so this remains just an intriguing possibility!! It did look so much like tarda though!
Then there was another small hoverfly, which looked as though it had grey abdominal spots. One possibility is Meligramma or Melanogyna, but again it was too difficult to see the diagnostic characteristics to be sure even that I had the right genus.

I also managed to get some shots of the birds on and around the bird feeders, mainly tits, chaffinches and siskins on the peanuts.

I also found a white-lipped banded snail Cepea hortensis on one of Pam’s plants, so I removed it, although it didn’t seem to be doing any damage!

There was a very nice parasitic wasp in the borders, which posed for a moment, and then went off looking for caterpillars to attack.

Common carder bees, Bombus, and white-tailed bumble bees, Bombus, visited the border flowers.

A very bright specimen of the hoverfly Eristalis pertenax was seen on the Michaelmas Daisies, again weeks after they seemed to disappear from around Hadlow.

A grey-dusted Tachinid fly also searched the Michaelmas Daisies, Aster, for pollen or nectar.

There was also a Heteropteran bug, possibly a capsid, but these are all difficult groups.

I saw two froghoppers along the road earlier on this morning, and this one on the Fuchsia flower looked the same. The larvae are found in the familiar cuckoo-spit earlier in the year and the adults aren’t found until the autumn, so its nice to see these now.

This small male hoverfly feeding off the Sedum is a little bit easier to identify because of the combination of its pale swollen front leg tarsal segments (swollen on the male only) and its grey rather than yellow spots, making it a Platycheirus. It is most likely to be P. albimanus, but there are a number of other possibilities. You can tell it’s a male because its eyes touch at the top of the head, as noted in many species of hoverflies and other flies.

On the other side of the drive the broom, Cytisus scoparius, seed-pods were swelling until they were fit to burst and explosively released their seeds with the occasional sharp cracks, the pods twisting into their spiral halves.

Overall a pretty lively garden for wildlife at this time of year!

Oldbury Hill

A busy day with parish matters first thing, everything from village home security, youth club, goalposts and dog orders to clearing rose briars from footpaths, followed by house painting, college prep and shopping before it was time to walk Monty. We are off to Scotland tomorrow, so a list of things to do tonight as well!
I travelled a bit further today, to the North and over the Lower Greensand Ridge to the start of the dip slope on the far side, where there is a very large iron age fort, Oldbury Hill.

The site is covered by acid woodland, with sessile oak, beech in the canopy (no ash!), mountain ash, holly and hazel (no hornbeam!) in the understory, and a limited amount of bilberry with only a little bramble and bracken in the field layer. The soil is sandy and infertile as well as acidic.

The light was very poor right from the start today but was really going by the end of the visit!

This is the bilberry, Vaccinium myrtillus which is quite a rare plant in Kent, where acid soils are uncommon
 

The beech leaves were checked out for the usual mites and insects and sure enough the following were reasonably widespread through the foliage: Eriophyid mites causing the upper leaf roll on the leaf margin, and the erineum on the lower epidermis respectively, the gall midge Hartigiola annulipes causing the pocket gall on the top epidermis along the veins, the leafmines caused by Phyllonoricter maestingella and lots of leafhopper damage on the leaves. Again the only species missing was the Eriophyid mite that causes the lines of felt directly over the veins - the only time I've seen this year was just on one leaf at Bitchett Hill, and I didn't photograph it!


However there was at least one new appearance, that I had been hoping to see at all the sites I've been looking at Beech so far, Bitchett Hill, Dene Park and Clearhedges and had had no definite luck with to date. This was the serpentine mines caused I think by Stigmella hemargyrella. There are two Stigmella species on beech and both cause serpentine mines, but with the other the egg is laid, and the mine therefore starts, right next to the midrib, so we know its not that.

This is a better photo and the frass shows up darker and more neatly in the middle section of the mine, as described in the books and web reference material, but still not clearly "coiled".

This extra addition does probably indicate that beech has been growing there a long time and the fauna is therefore nearer a complete list. But still no sign of the mines Phyllonoricter messaniella, Stigmella tityrella (but wait for the 30th October, up in North Wales), Parornix fagivora, the weevil Orchestes fagi (but wait for the trip to Tomich) or the gall formers Mikiola fagi, etc., so still quite a lot to look for!
This doesn't look quite like a leaf-mine to me - although very similar patterns of dead tissue can be found quite commonly on beech leaves. There always seems to be one "entry hole" per patch and I would guess that these patterns are caused by fungal infection following an attack on the leaf, for example by the Hartigliola gall midge, whether or not the midge gall develops or not. It just has that sort of "jizz" about it:

Something new seen just visiting the leaves was this scorpion fly - I saw a similar insect in the hedgerows by West Peckham a few weeks ago,

and here is an unknown Tachinid, perhaps its very heavily "dusted" to give it this grey appearance,

This is the very common, and indeed the only, leafmine on holly, Ilex aquifolium, caused by a fly Phytomyza ilicis,

Its still a little early for many fungi, but here is a smallish bracket fungus, an annual saprobic or necrotrophic fungus usually on dead or weakened trees of the weeping birch, Betula pendula. This is the Birch Polypore or Razor Strop Fungus, Piptoporus betulinus, bits of which were famously found in the sack of the "ice-mummy" frozen into an alpine glacier 5,000 years ago, Otzi the Ice-Man! He could have used it to put a fine edge on a knife, or for starting fires, or for medicine, or for more than one of these purposes, no one really knows.

View of the upper surface first.

Then the lower, with its characteristic "rolled" margin. The mycelium causes a yellowish to brownish cubical rot that sometimes smells strongly of green apples.

This is a very large growth on the butt of an oak tree, cause unknown although it could perhaps be the Crown Gall bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

Unknown species of moss on stump, perhaps something along the lines of Thuidum tamariscifolium.

And finally a moss of the tougher variety, Polytrichum species, common in woodlands and quite tough/resistant to drying conditions.

Clearhedges followed by Bat survey at Sandhurst Wood

Tudeley car park - mainly mines and galls, but some surprises

After a quiet morning sorting out papers and diary for the coming term, it was off to Jessups to buy some camera cleaning kit and then up to Tudeley for my last car-park duty of the year. The car park was full with a group led by the amazing Ian Beavis from Tunbridge Wells Museum, who as usual was able to answer my insect questions off the top of his head - fantastic!

After the group had gone it was a quiet afternoon, but still worthwhile because all the visitors who did turn up were utterly nice, and it was a real pleasure to hand out maps and answer their questions. So time to get a few photos although there wasn't a great deal actually moving.

The first thing to be seen was the now very apparent "window-paning" damage caused by slugworm (sawfly larvae) on a small clump of field maple seedlings. I knew the culprit because I had seen them actually feeding last week! I haven't seen this anywhere else on this plant, and its not listed as a host plant under bioinfo either! It might have been Caliroa cerasi.

also on the field maple leaves was the occasional leaf gall, small round swellings, sometimes stalked, sometimes hairy, always on or very close to a main vein, caused by Aceria macrochelus, which is really quite common generally,

Then as I looked at the silver birch, Betula pendula, seedlings, I could suddenly see a number of (mainly) very tightly curled leaves, individually scattered over the plant stems.

I immediately thought of tortrix caterpillars, and inside each tight and twisted roll there was certainly silk and frass - but no caterpillars! Much later on in the afternoon I noticed another leaf which had only been folded once, and not tightly rolled as yet - and hey presto I found a tortrix, with the expected silk and frass.

Hopefully this caterpillar was indicative of the previous inhabitants of the more tightly rolled leaves as well! From the tight rolling of the damaged leaves, the black head and legs on a green crawler body and slight dark bumps on the dorsal surface, this might perhaps have been Tortrix viridana, perhaps more typically associated with oak, but it does look close. It's too late in the year, and the head is the wrong colour, for Apotomis betuletana, which should be seen in May. Any other offers?

Then there was also a leaf mine on the birch, but again there are a rather large number of possibilities to consider,

and here is another,

and the view of the same mine from beneath the leaf,

and yet another type of mine on birch!

There were quite a few blotch mines on the upper surface of the hazel leaves, Corylus avellana, sometimes several to each leaf. This is perhaps Phyllonoricter coryli, a common silvery leaf blotch of hazel, characterised by the mines extending over the top of the veins. The mines I was looking at were too small to extend over the veins,

although this larger one directly over a vein was seen, perhaps with an exit hole. The smaller ones may have been a different species of course, but I think they are all P. coryli, just mainly small new ones of the second generation (listed as September - October), before they have expanded too much, or curled up at all.

There was a rather similar upper-side blotch on the hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, leaves, looking even more like a bird dropping, with brown speckles. The veins are over the veins in the lobes.

This therefore ought to be Phyllonorycter corylifoliella!

and then I saw just one of these, a micro-lepidoptaran Coleophora species for sure, but which one? It could perhaps be C. coracipennella or C. spinella, or another species entirely. in any case these cases are remarkable sights!

This gall on nettle is very common, and hopefully reliably identified as Dasineura urticae, caused by a tiny Cecid gall midge.

and here is another infested leaf. These galls are often infected with other Cecids, which are predatory on the primary gall-former,

Just by the entrance there were several Potentilla reptans leaves with blotch mines on the upper surface. I can't find anything like this in the guides.

this is another Potentilla, the silverweed, Potentilla anserina, but this discolouration is likely to be a virus, rather than a gall as such,

This could be another virus, on nettle this time:

and yet another virus,

This is the only shield-bug I saw today, the sloe bug or Dolycoris baccarum. The antennae are white banded (note double bands), the edge of the abdomen is white spotted, and the insect is notably hairy.

And I only saw ONE hover-fly on the flowers for sure, they all seem to have vanished since a week ago. The only places I can still find them are when the males go "lekking" in sunspots in the woods, and as they are then flying, they are impossible to photograph effectively.

Anyway this one was a bit special, Helophilus pendulus, a very colourful species that I have already seen at Dene Park and The Elgar Wildlife Pond at Hadlow earlier in the year, but still a bit unusual. The striped waistcoat is shared by this and only three other genera. This is the commonest species of the commonest of these four genera.

Here is a good shot of the large paired buff-yellow patches on the abdominal tergites two and three, with the more greyish "commas" on tergite four. The black transverse stripes don't quite reach the edge of tergites 2 and 3, and there are thin yellow back edges to each of these tergite plates just visible. Critically the hind tibia are pale/yellowish rather than black for at least the proximal half (the insect's left rear leg tibia is visible in this photo, the right leg tibia is folded underneath the body). These are all species diagnostic characteristics:

and here is a different view showing the black stripe down the centre of the otherwise yellow face, and the mainly blackish tarsi (note these are also species characteristics)

Now I haven't begun to look at molluscs yet, but clearly they are all around, just waiting to be identified. This snail was on a hogweed leaf that was strongly affected by powdery mildew, fungal species that grow only in and the epidermal cells of the leaf, never penetrating any deeper into the plant. The snail appears to be grazing on the surface hyphae and conidia, thereby possibly doing the plant a favour! It could be the copse snail, but this would only be very, very tentative:

While this one climbing up a dead stem might just be the white-lipped banded snail, Cepea hortensis, which is by no means always banded:

So, by the end of the afternoon, quite a collection of wildlife seen in a small area, mainly by patiently looking and waiting!