Sun!

This week has been a bit of a surprise: mist in the early morning followed by absolutely clear blue skies all day. Quite delightful, really.

I have been examining my local Hawthorns for miners and came up with this rather interesting specimen:

Stigmella perpygmaeella mine on Hawthorn

It's the mine of the micromoth Stigmella perpygmaeella, which is new to my species list. At point A (the head of the mine) we can see the miner (yellow larva with oval head). But at point B we can see another, different, larva. This second larva has the look of a hymenopteran about it (round shoulders, tapering body) so it will be either a sawfly larva or a wasp larva of some sort. It is clearly heading towards the miner, so it looks like we have a predatory larva in the mine. I knew that miners could be parasitised by Braconid or Chalcid wasps, but this is an entirely new relationship. More research....

While I was working the Hawthorn, I found a few nymphs of the Hawthorn Shieldbug:

Final instar nymph of Hawthorn Shieldbug

This is the fifth and final stage of the nymph: at the next metamorphosis it will be the adult.

Capitalising on the good light, I went up to the local heath to see what I could find. Devils-bit Scabious is one of the latest plants to flower, and the path was lined in purple.

First to catch my eye was this pale pink variant:

Pink Devils-bit Scabious

I have seen this sport before, but it seemed there more around than usual this year. It looks like the pale colour doesn't put off the pollinators.

This shot shows another oddity which I see from time to time:

Viviparous flower of Devils-bit Scabious

The bud at the top is a viviparous flower growing out of the flower below it. It isn't a branch, because the stem arises from inside the lower flower. Not quite sure why this happens.

Here's a shot of the hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus on a normal flower:

Episyrphus balteatus on Devils-bit Scabious

I noticed this cluster of Russulas from the path side and immediately thought "Russula mairei", which is common everywhere around here, but then I realised there were no Beeches around:

Russula emetica - The Sickener

The trees above are Fir and Pine and the mushrooms are growing through Sphagnum. This is classic habitat for Russula emetica, which I have been hunting for perhaps 10 years. This habitat is perfect for it, so I wonder why it has taken so long to get here. New to my species list, at last.

Russula emetica - The Sickener

Russula mairei is known as the Beechwood Sickener, but Russula emetica is known as The Sickener, as you might guess from its specific name.

Ards - Continued

Although the primary reason behind my visits to Ards is to explore the fungal flora, I always see a host of other things that attract my attention for one reason or another.

Ards is the only place where I have found the native Golden Rod. It has a distinct requirement for woodland, and the distribution maps tend to show a western bias, and you don't get extensive woodlands much further west in Donegal than Ards.

Native Golden Rod

Eagle eyes will have spotted the odd leaf at bottom right: it's a leaf of Honeysuckle that has been mined by Chromatomyia aprilina:

Honeysuckle leaf mined by Chromatomyia aprilina

When trying to track down leaf miners, the frass (dung!) pattern is a very good starting place. Note that the frass (thin black line in the white mine) is distributed in a line down one side of the mine. That's a clear pointer that this mine has been made by the larva of a fly, so we can ignore all the moths, wasps and beetles. That leaves us with just a couple of species of fly that mine Honeysuckle, and we quickly arrive at Chromatomyia aprilina by the shape of the mine.

Wood Sage is another plant that I only ever find in woodland:

Wood Sage

Drumboe in Ballybofey is another place to find it.

Just as I was taking the shots of Wood sage, a shadow passed over and I saw a specimen of Speckled Wood landing on a Rhododendron:

Speckled Wood butterfly

Notice that it's in absolutely perfect condition, so that makes it one of the few third-generation specimens for this year. I find fresh specimens in April, July and September, indicating that we have roughly 8 weeks between generations. Interestingly enough, next year's first generation will more than likely be the offspring of this year's summer generation, since a third generation doesn't always happen. It seems that we're seeing a transition from two generations a year to three as warming increases.

I was a little surprised to see Viola riviniana in flower:

Viola riviniana - Common Dog Violet

Sometimes, when conditions are right, our spring flowers can have a second push in autumn. Day length might well be an influence here, since we normally see Dog Violets just after the spring equinox and it's just after the autumn equinox now.

Devilsbit Scabious, on the other hand, is just at its best right now:

Meliscaeva cinctella on Devilsbit Scabious

The hoverfly is Meliscaeva cinctella, which feeds on aphids as a larva.

I rather like that picture.


I found this Oak Cherry gall on a fallen leaf:

Oak Cherry gall - Cynips quercusfolii

Galls are plant (or fungal) growths made by insects for their own benefit. The female lays her egg(s) and the plant is thereby stimulated into making unusual material growth on leaves, buds, twigs, seeds or roots. The larva lives inside the growth, feeding on the inside of it. Galls are a pretty good place for an insect to develop: there is protection plus a good supply of food. But wildlife is never that simple. There are other insects who know that the gall contains food, shelter and a larva. These burrow or drill their way into the gall and then one of three things occurs: either the incomer coexists happily with the gall-maker (an inquiline), or it kills the original larva as food either for itself (a predator) or it lays eggs inside the original larva as food for its young (a parasite). It doesn't stop there, however. Some parasites and predators target only the inquilines, and so we can have a changing population of larvae, inquilines, parasites and predators all existing within a single gall. The number of different species taken from inside a single gall specimen exceeds 50.

This spider was hanging vertically on a Hazel leaf. The abdominal pattern indicates the Common Garden Spider - Araneus diadematus, but the abdomen is much smaller than I usually expect to see. It's suspect it's a male:

Common Garden Spider - male

This flower looked a bit strange amongst a bank of normal specimens. I quickly worked out what it was. Can you?

Mystery flower

And I almost forgot this huge puffball that I found near the car park. It's Handkea excipuliformis, around 20 cm tall, with a 7 cm diameter cap:

Handkea excipuliformis

The cap will soon develop slits that allow the spores to be forcibly expelled when hit by raindrops or animals (or people with sticks)

High heath

It was surprisingly warm in the hours preceding the predicted storm, so quite a few insects had taken the opportunity to fill up on nectar.


This tiny solitary bee was nectaring alongside an even smaller Empid fly on Common Catsear:

Solitary bee and Empid on Common Catsear

Notice the very thin and upturned ovipositor on this tiny Ichneumonid on Marsh Ragwort:

Ichneumonid on Marsh Ragwort

Quite a few insects are reaching the end of their season and will either die soon or hibernate. This is the hoverfly Helophilus pendulus which has been quite scarce here this year:

Helophilus pendulus on Devilsbit Scabious

And there are still a few Common Carder Bumblebees around:

Bombus pascuorum on Devilsbit Scabious

I've seen a few Small Tortoiseshell butterflies flying around the garden this week. This one nectared on Knapweed for a while and then posed perfectly for its portrait:

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

Small Tortoiseshells hibernate in sheltered places and then wake in March or April to start off next year's generation.

This is a first for me:

The Stonefly Leuctra fusca

It's Leuctra fusca, a member of the Stonefly family and is known as a Needle Fly for fairly obvious reasons. The nymphs are fully aquatic, but I found this adult hiding on the underside of a Willow leaf which I was examining for the orange fungal rust. The nearest running water is a stream about 50 m. away.

I always check the front lights for moths at night, and I spotted this Lesser Crane Fly. Those legs look almost ridiculously long.

Lesser Cranefly attracted to light

The proposed fungal foray to Ards in about 2 hours' time hasn't quite been called off yet. But it's going to be close.....

Post hurricane post

The weather continues to be hateful, but I'm guessing that everyone has been in much the same position.

I went up to the boggy area which has many specimens of the late nectar source, Devilsbit Scabious, and found this specimen of the hoverfly Sericomyia silentis. For those of you who know the size of the flowerhead, it will be apparent just how large this hoverfly is.

Sericomyia silentis on Devilsbit Scabious

Devilsbit is a plant that loves damp, acidic soil, in complete contrast with its close relative, Field Scabious, which needs alkaline soil. Interestingly enough, I sometimes find an occasional specimen of Devilsbit Scabious which has the same colouring as the lime lover:

Pink form of Devilsbit Scabious

It's still 100% Devilsbit, though.

Staying with Devilsbit, I found a few rather interesting specimens that were making an extra flowerhead from an existing one:

Devilsbit Scabious with 'extra' flowerheads

Notice the second 'offshot' appearing to the lower left of the central flower. This phenomenon wasn't restricted to one area of the bog: I found multiple specimens spread over perhaps 200 m.

Some specimens of Angelica have survived the storms: these are mostly ones in very sheltered locations. Specimens out in the open have all snapped at ground level. This flowerhead had a number of Ichneumonids still nectaring on it. There are 3 in this shot:

Actually, I just spotted a fourth, right at the bottom of the shot.

This area has quite a few Scots Pines, and I found a few specimens of Suillus flavidus and its bigger brother Slippery Jack, which are always found in association with Pine. I also found the usual swarm of Hebeloma mesophaeum all the way along the edge of the access road:

Hebeloma mesophaeum 

The mosses are Pleurozium schreberi (red veins) and Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus (green 'stars' at 4, 6 and 8 o'clock).

I recently showed a specimen of the leafhopper Cixius nervosus, but I thought this one showed off those wonderful wing veins at their best.

Leafhopper Cixius nervosus

Leaf hoppers - like so many other true bugs - are quite difficult to separate, but the main identification features are visible in this shot.

1) There are 3 'keels' on the thorax.
2) The black dots on the wing edges are larger than those on the inside veins of the wing
3) There is a rather distinct black bar across the front third of the wings.
4) The area between the eyes and the thorax is brownish-yellow.

Let's hope next week's fungal foray isn't rained off.

Small gaps

The rain is still more or less continuous, with very short gaps between showers, and I have had to adopt a new tactic for getting some pictures: I watch the sky to the southwest and wait until I see a gap in the weather some 12-15 km away. I then rush out and hope to reach the fringes of town before the gap in the rain reaches me. That means I'm in place when the temporary stop occurs. This is fine for getting photographs of plants and mines, but not so good for insects because it takes them a little while to realise that the rain has stopped and they have warmed up enough to fly to the nectar sources that I'm watching at the moment.

Tufted Vetch is an odd plant: it grows in only a few places on my patch, but wherever it grows it is rampant. There appears to be no similarity amongst the places it chooses and there are places that appear to be ideally suited, but the plant is absent. It must have some very particular micro-climate requirements.

Tufted Vetch

A few more late summer portraits:

Knapweed or Hardheads

Red Bartsia

Devilsbit Scabious

Taphrina alni is a parasitic fungus on female Alder cones:

Taphrina alni gall on Alder

The tongue-shaped growth reaches 4-5 cm. long and turns red before releasing its spores. Note that the growth is caused by the fungus, but is made by the Alder tree for the benefit of the fungus.


Alder is a good food source for Sawflies: these are multiple mines of Acidia cognata. The broad-shouldered larva can be seen in each of the mines:

Mines of the sawfly Acidia cognata on Alder

This next shot shows just how attractive Angelica is for insects at this time of year. I counted 7 ichneumonids, 2 sawflies and 2 dungflies on this flowerhead:

Angelica with Ichneumonids, Sawflies and Dungflies

One of the few Ichneumons that can be identified by sight: Amblyteles armatorius, which is parasitic on larger moths.

Ichneumon Wasp Amblyteles armatorius

Harvestmen are related to spiders, but they don't make a web. They hide instead in plants, waiting for some unsuspecting insect to come wandering along.

Harvestman Mitopus morio on Angelica

I like how the Angelica echoes the shape of the legs.

The social wasps are divided into two main families: Dolichovespula and Vespula. Dolichovespula species (Dolichovespula sylvestris shown) can be readily identified by the 'malar space', which is indicated by the arrow below:

Dolichovespula sylvestris, a Tree Wasp

The malar space is the distance between the lower edge of the eye and the upper edge of the mobile mandible, or jaw. In Dolichovespula sp., the gap is large, making the face very elongated, whilst in Vespula sp., the gap is virtually non-existent. Most of the wasps that can be seen moving leisurely over Angelica at the moment, including the one above, are males.

The Potato Capsid, Closterotomus norwegicus, is commonly found on Knapweed and other composite flowers. I have never found it on potato:

Potato Capsid on Knapweed

Late purple

Three late flowers from high bog fringes:

Devilsbit Scabious:


Marsh Thistle:



And Knapweed:


I wonder if it's a coincidence that they're all purple.

It starts

The fungal season is well underway, and I found a new species for my list on my first little foray of the year. This is the Earth Fan - Thelophora terrestris. It apparently grows in soil, as seen below, but it tends to form tiers in a straightish line, so I think it's on submerged dead wood. The moss is young Pleurozium schreberi.


The Deceiver - Laccaria laccata - is a very common fungus that can be found anywhere from the youngest plantation to the oldest forest. This is its close relative Laccaria proxima. The most obvious difference is the much darker (and more fibrous) stipe, which can just be seen in the shot below. It inhabits mossy and peaty heath, which is exactly where I found it.


The Hoverfly Rhingia campestris has a distinctively large, pointed, snout. I always wondered why until I saw them nectaring in close-up: they have this enormous nectaring tube that folds away for storage. The flower is Devilsbit Scabious.

I also spotted this recently-emerged Angle Shades moth. Newly emerged specimens have the pink and olive markings, slightly older specimens have only shades of orange/rust.


There's a lot going for the next photograph. The Dungfly Scathophaga stercoraria has caught another fly and is consuming it, hidden deep inside the flowerhead of Angelica. I had to use manual focus to get the shot, squeezed through a gap between the framing flowerheads at the front.


I love the newly-formed seeds of the Angelica that act as a platform for the Dungfly.