A sunny day

Yesterday (Saturday) was bright and sunny, bringing out many hoverflies and bumblebees from hibernation.

The first hoverfly to pose for me in 2012 was this female Eristalis tenax:

Female Eristalis tenax

There are a couple of interesting points about that shot:

• Notice the very dark abdomen, virtually all black. The orange stripes are virtually invisible, which is due to the colder temperature during winter. These females overwinter as adults, and their offspring will have the benefit of warmer summer temperatures and will mostly have the 'normal' orange stripes.

• I noticed that the 'Eristalis bulge' in the wing vein (arrowed) showed up well in the photograph. This is a very useful feature to learn when identifying hoverflies.

This shot of the face shows the wide vertical black stripe between the eyes, which is a strong indicator for E. tenax (other species of Eristalis have narrower stripes or no stripe):

Female Eristalis tenax - front view

Now that the Willow has catkins, the early moths are taking advantage of this vital food source. This is the (male) Early Thorn moth:

Male Early Thorn moth

This is one of the few moths that hold their wings vertically, rather like many butterflies do. (The heavily feathered antennae are the clue that it's a male).

Lovely weather

Most of the flowering plants are working to the normal schedule: the cold winter appears to have had little or no negative effect. Primroses have opened up all along the verge and ditch edges:

Primrose

The Barren Strawberry can be separated from the wild strawberry by the notch in the outer edge of the petals and also by the slightly glaucus appearance of the leaves:

Cow Parsley is beginning to show faster growth now, and already the fungal rust Puccinia chaerophylli is in evidence.

Puccinia chaerophylli on Cow Parsley

References say May-June, although I have found it in mid-April. I'm beginning to wonder if this is going to be an 'early year'.

Most of the early moths are showing up now:

Early Grey - a Willow pollen feeder

Early Thorn, found on many broad-leaf woody plants

Twin-spotted Quaker - another Willow feeder

Hebrew Character - one of our most widely-spread moths. Eats many plants.

Caddis flies are often mistaken for moths, but the wings are downy rather than scaled and the antennae are held in a forward-pointing position.

This specimen appears to be one of the Anabolea family, but it could be one of 25 different species.

Caddis fly larvae are usually aquatic and live in cases made from debris glued together and rolled into a tube.

Spring has another try

After my last optimistic posts we had a few days of snow and sleet that stopped everything in its tracks.

A few days of rain, then some sun, and things have started again.

The Willow catkins are now open:

That means it's the only time of the year to look out for the solitary bee Andrena clarkella. It looks like a small tawny bumblebee and feeds its young exclusively on Willow pollen.

Here is a shot of it that I took a couple of years ago.

A specimen of the Early Thorn moth - Selenia dentaria - came to light during the rain last night:

This is one of the few moths that close their wings together like a butterfly.

Another new one for my species list.