More moths

The rain continues, but there is an occasional gap when it's safe for insects to fly. If it's dry at night, then we have a chance that a few moths will come to light, and I keep my porch lights (which can be seen for at least 5 miles) on just in case. My house sits on a south-facing slope over a river valley, and there's a bit of rough bog about a mile away, so I can attract moths from quite a range of different habitats when timing and conditions are right.

There are perhaps half a dozen different species of moth flying at the moment, with many more to be expected when the Willow catkins open, which should be about 2 weeks away.

This is the Chestnut:

Chestnut moth - Conistra vaccinii

The Chestnut overwinters as an adult, emerging from its hiding place to feed when conditions are favourable. I have seen and photographed this species a number of times, but this specimen is very much paler than I would expect, although it's obviously quite worn. The larvae feed on a wide range of broadleaf trees and also Docks.

Much easier to identify is the Dotted Border, which gets its name from the row of dots on the trailing edge of the wings:

Dotted Border - Agriopis marginaria

The Dotted Border overwinters underground as a pupa, emerging in February, and the larvae feed on a very wide range of trees and shrubs, and also heather. This is another moth where the female is flightless.

The weather has been much warmer than we had in the last two winters, with just a few nights of frost, so the spring is quite early, with a few flowers just beginning to show. The Willow catkins are on the verge of opening, so that will bring out the early bees, hoverflies and Willow-dependent moths including the various Quakers.

Willow catkins about to open

Dependency chains

Willow catkins have started to appear on a few trees, so the dependent species will be stirring from their winter hiding places: the larvae of some micromoths live inside the catkins, causing them to drop early; larger moths of the Xanthia family feed on the pollen; and the solitary bee Andrena clarkella gathers the pollen to feed her larvae in the underground burrow. 

Catkins of Salix

As soon as the leaves appear, a completely new set of micromoths and beetles will appear to eat the leaves or make mines inside them. This pattern of a series of dependent species will repeat itself when other trees such as Birch, Oak, Beech and Alder produce their flowers and leaves, but the Willow is the first of our trees to produce these food sources, so it's always the one to kick things off for the new season.

Willow catkins

I don't usually try to identify Willows to a single species because they hybridise and back cross very freely. This one seems most like Goat (Pussy) Willow, but I suspect there's a bit of Grey in there, too. ( I know of a lovely specimen of Dwarf x Eared Willow growing in the middle of an abandoned path: the tree produces catkins, so it's mature, but it is no more than 10 cm. tall. I'll show some pictures in June, when it's in flower.)

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.

What freeze?

I would have thought that the coldest winter for 47 years would have set things back a bit, but today I found Willow catkins starting to appear:


We had an early frost and fog today....ideal for photographing mosses. This is the recent (40 years or so) interloper from the southern hemisphere, Campylopus introflexus:


It has the most wonderful spore capsules (~2.5 mm tall):

Close-up (blogger permitting):

That's one of my favourite shots of all time.

Baeomyces rufus is a very common lichen on exposed soil, rock and old wood. The green cluster is another specimen of Campylopus, shown above:


The fruit bodies are (of course) purely fungal ( each mini-mushroom is about 2mm. tall):

The urge to reproduce

I never cease to be amazed at the attempts of disadvantaged plants to reproduce. This tiny (5 cm. tall) Knapweed had managed to produce viable flowers despite having seeded in the middle of a road.


This Willow had been damaged much earlier in the year, and the new shoot has a catkin on the end of it:


I suppose the urge to make offspring is an essential part of the make-up of any successful species.

This blue Sawfly is quite numerous at the moment. The curved antennae - somewhat reminscent of horns - are quite distinctive.

Moths and leaves

I was up in the deforested heath looking at willows for signs of bud-break and spotted this caterpillar on a bush. Turns out it's the Northern Eggar - Lasiocampa quercus f. callunae. Specimen about 3 cm. long:


This is an interesting species (or species complex). The southern populations feed on Oak and have a one-year lifecycle. Northern and western populations feed on heather and willow and have a two-year lifecycle. Populations in the English midlands vary between one year and two year cycles.

I did find a few willows in bud-break:


And also a single specimen of Alder:


And with catkins:


One of the groups I'll be studying closely this year is leaf-miners. I've previously tended to be a bit cavalier in my leaf-miner hunting, but this year I'm going to be more organised, with target species and timescales all planned in advance.

Spring

Last week we had four beautiful days of sunshine: almost as many as we could expect in a whole Donegal summer. This week we've had four consecutive nights of frost, including the coldest night of the winter so far (-5 Celsius). Imagine my surprise when I looked outside my window today and saw:I usually expect to see Willow catkins around the first week of March. In that case I need to get out and look for Blackthorn and other Prunus flowers: they are usually out at the same time as the first catkins. This is proving to be a very early year (Daffodils are out in a few locations, too.)