Down by the riverside

Much of the river Deele is edged by tall trees which cast a deep shadow along much of its length. This creates a wonderful microclimate, ideal for a combination of woodland flowers and waterside insects. I like to visit at this time of year because it always serves up something of interest.

The area I visited is ripe with the aroma of Wild Garlic (Ramsons) at this time of year: the bank is covered with its delicate white flowers and strappy green leaves:

Ramsons (Wild Garlic) at the river Deele

The flower-heads emerge wrapped in a thin protective sheath which opens to reveal delicate, star-shaped flowers:

Ramsons flower-head with sheath

And a close-up reveals the delicate - almost translucent - nature of the petals:

Wild Garlic flower-head

Two other woodland flowers are also at their best at the moment:

Bluebell:

Bluebell

And Wood Anemone:

Wood Anemone

Having (at last!) got my hands on some spider references, I have been making an effort to fill in some of the gaps in my identifications.

Tetragnatha extensa is usually found near water on low-level vegetation. This one was on Hogweed on the riverbank:

Tetragnatha extensa on Hogweed leaf

Note that its rear right leg is holding the 'tension thread' which allows it to hide, whilst still being able to detect when some insect is struggling in its web. New to my Species List.

Tetragnatha extensa is very closely related to the huge brown spiders that are often found in garages or bathrooms.

Up on the bridge I found Ivy in fruit:

Ivy fruit

And a nice profile shot of the hoverfly Platycheirus albimanus which is everywhere at the moment:

Platycheirus albimanus (female)

I often think that its fascia is very like a human profile.

I'm never quite sure to be dismayed or excited when I see a Pug moth that I don't recognise: I realise that they are very difficult to identify (and that means I'm going to spend quite a while with the books to hand), but there's always the chance I'll find something new. This specimen is the Common Pug, which - strangely - I hadn't seen before:

Common Pug - Eupithecia vulgata vulgata

This moth is normally found from May onwards, so we're still a little early. It feeds on many broad-leaf plants as a larva. New to my Species List.


So that's four new species in a couple of days.

Three for the price of one

As part of the research that I'm currently carrying out on the eggs and larvae from Soft Rush (click here for a recap), I continue to examine specimens in quite a bit of detail. Yesterday I found what is clearly a minute leafhopper covered with a fine white web:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

My mind immediately leapt to an Entomophthora-type fungus that has killed the leafhopper. A bit of research shows that there is a single fungus - Entomophthora petchii - that kills various members of this huge family of bugs, but at this stage I had no idea which leafhopper I was looking at, or even which stage of the lifecycle it had reached when it was killed (nymph? adult?). A few features need examination: those dotted wing covers seem to be small and incompletely formed. This could suggest a nymph - since bugs all go through various nymph stages (instars) before reaching adulthood, or it might be one of the brachypterous species, where specimens can reach adulthood with either incomplete wings or fully winged. Size is also an issue: this hopper is only 4mm from nose to tail.

I took shots from various angles:

Frog Hopper on Juncus

And eventually found Conomelus anceps on the brilliant UK bugs website:  http://www.britishbugs.org.uk It turns out this is a Juncus feeder, and is quite common, but I've never seen it before, so that's one new species for me. I had also never previously identified the bug-killing fungus Entomophthora petchii, although I've certainly seen leafhoppers killed by a fungus. So that's two new species for my list.

I then decided to check previous records of Entomophthora petchii and found that there are only four existing records in the BI fungal database: all from Yorkshire (Helmsley, Pocklington, Leeds, Holmfirth) (and recorded under Zoophthora petchii), so I have moved the distribution map for this species quite some way to the west. First Irish record.

So one sample has led to three new records: two for my species list and one for Ireland:

Conomelus anceps killed by Entomophthora petchii on Juncus effusus

March and April have both been very variable in terms of weather, with very hot sunshine interspersed with long periods of rain or hail. The early heat has brought out various hoverflies much earlier than usual: this is Helophilus pendulus, which I regard as a summer species:

Helophilus pendulus

And this is a Syrphus:

Syrphus sp. hoverfly

The standard reference says "April onwards", for these two species, but I've certainly never seen them this early.

Post edited to tighten up naming (leafhopper).

Having mentioned in my last post that St. Marks Flies (Bibio sp.) are out, I got this shot of a male this morning:

St. Mark's Fly - Bibio marci (male)

We can tell it's a male by the large eyes, which meet in the middle. In Bibios, like many other flies, the male has much larger eyes than the female, and often emerges earlier in order to establish his territory. Bibo larvae are root-feeders on many plants, especially grasses. St Mark's day is 25th April, and the flies get their name from the fact that they usually emerge around that date. I've been seeing them for about a week, so the year is still rather early. Bibios are large flies that fly around in large groups - almost swarms - often with their rear legs hanging downwards.

When I was checking the images, I noticed that I had a decent shot of a couple of interesting features:

Bibio marci head (close-up)

Firstly, we can see how hairy the eyes are. Interestingly enough, the hairs don't interfere with the fly's vision: an insect's compound eyes are made up of tubes with sensors at the inner end and a lens at the outer end. These lenses are all arranged on a curved surface, which makes them all point in slightly different directions, which is good for all-round vision. The hairs grow parallel to the tubes, and as a result have minimal impact on the vision, since the line of sight is along the hairs, not across them. These large eyes are used for navigation and for identification of mates, prey and food.

Secondly, we can see the triangle of three ocelli (auxiliary eyes, arrowed) which react very quickly to changes in light intensity, and are used to detect quick motion in order to avoid predators.

A few years ago I took a series of 'bug's-eye' views of plants. Here's a view of a Dandelion seed clock from an unusual perspective:

Dandelion seedhead

 I rather like that shot.

A few of our hoverflies have grey abdominal bands rather than the usual yellow. This is a female Platycheirus albimanus feeding on Dandelion:

Platycheirus albimanus (female)

This is by far the most common species of hoverfly in my garden at the moment.

Sun's back

After a couple of weeks of rain, sleet and hail, things have warmed up again. Various Solitary Bees have been nectaring, and I spotted my favourite bee - Andrena cineraria - as she gathered pollen from a Dandelion:

The solitary bee Andrena cineraria

I always think they look like they're wearing Barbarians rugby jerseys. Here's a side shot:

Andrena cineraria

Andrenas (and other families of Solitary Bees) lay eggs in their own nesting tunnels, and although they might form communal 'villages' of individual nests, the female feeds only her own larvae with pollen. Nomada sp. Cuckoo Bees are ever present near the nests, hoping to get an opportunity to nip in and steal the pollen store when the female is out foraging.

Bilberry (locally called Mulberry) has flowered:

Bilberry flowers

Bilberry is a vital food source for a number of insects, most notably the Green Hairstreak butterfly. I like the way the unopened flower can sometimes contain water droplets:

Unopened Bilberry flowers

I have a number of different species of Fumitory on my patch. This is Common Fumitory, which gets its name from the grey-green foliage which can look a little smoky:

Common Fumitory

The local Willows are all in full leaf now, so it's time for the various Willow Leaf Beetles (Chrysomelids) to appear. This is Lochmaea caprea, which I happened to spot as it sunbathed on my recycling bin (which happens to be right under a Willow):

Willow Leaf Beetle - Lochmaea caprea

The Willow leaves will soon be showing the attentions of the beetle larvae as they eat off the top surface of the leaves.


I also spotted a few Bibio sp. (St. Marks Flies), which usually emerge around St. Mark's day (April 25th), so we're still running slightly ahead of schedule this year despite the last two cold weeks.

A mystery

I was peeling a stem of Soft Rush (as one does) yesterday, and spotted what looked like a caterpillar with an orange head and a green tail inside the pith:

Juncus stem and 'caterpillar'

(For scale, the Juncus rush is about 3mm. in diameter.)

But when I examined 'it' under a lens, I found I had a collection of separate 'things' all lying adjacent to each other:

Juncus stem with 15 separate 'things'

I immediately thought of the micromoth Coleophora alticolella, which feeds on Juncus flowers, and thought that these might be the overwintering eggs, so I fired the picture off to a couple of experts (isn't the internet wonderful?) for their opinion. The consensus is that these aren't micromoth eggs, but the overwintering eonymphs of Juncus-mining sawflies.

I have mentioned before that sawflies have an 'interesting' development lifecycle and these are a prime example of that. Whereas butterflies and moths go through a strict egg-larva-pupa-adult lifecycle, sawflies can exist in a range of states including some intermediate nymph stages like we see here.

Now we notice a few things about the photograph:

1) we have three different colours: orange, white and green (very patriotic, for an Irish specimen)

2) the white ones have a brown dot on them

3) the brown dots appear in different places, but overall they describe a smooth(ish) arc.

Until something emerges (or a range of somethings emerge) from these cocoons, we can only speculate about what we actually have here:

• It could be that the coloured specimens are about to emerge, or that they have failed and are dead.

• The arc of brown dots could be the eyes of the eonymphs, or they could be the eggs of a parasitic wasp.

I have fired the images off to a specialist group who are experts on sawflies and I am currently waiting to see what they have to say. I could separate some of the cocoons and put them under a microscope, but I'm very keen to leave them intact to see what emerges, so I have put the sample into a sealed tube and hope to be able to identify the adults after they emerge.

I have searched the internet and can find no images of the eonymphs of likely species, so this might well be the first image of its kind.

It's only March and already we have mysteries.

Still sunny

In this extended period of sunshine, most wildlife has advanced, regardless of the fact that we're still in March. I could see five Small Tortoiseshell butterflies at the same time in my garden yesterday, and that's more than I usually see in a year. Small Tortoiseshells hibernate as adults, so I think the mild winter has allowed a higher proportion of them to survive.

Some plants are flowering at roughly the usual time: I found Germander Speedwell:

Germander Speedwell

Wood Sorrel:

Wood Sorrel

And Common Dog Violet:

Viola riviniana - Common Dog Violet

But this flowering specimen of Herb Bennet is by far the earliest I have ever seen:

Herb Bennet

Field Horsetail is a bit unusual, in that it has early fruiting growths before the sterile green parts are seen:

Field Horsetail - fruiting growth

Again, these are a couple of weeks earlier than I would expect.

If have a microscope, I urge you to put one of those fertile cones on a slide and wait a couple of days for the spores to drop. The spores are fascinating: they have four curled 'legs' which expand and contract with humidity. As they curl and uncurl, they catch onto plant parts and debris, pulling themselves along in order to aid dispersal. This is a plant with 'walking' spores.

Even the uncurling fronds of Hartstongue Fern appear to be earlier than usual:

Hartstongue fern frond uncurling

As soon as the relevant plants are flowering, then their dependant insects appear as well. This is a new moth for me - Mottled Grey:

Mottled Grey moth

The Mottled Grey overwinters as a pupa and feeds on a number of Bedstraws, but the foodplant in my locality will almost certainly be Cleavers.

The Common Quaker feeds on Willow catkins, so March is the normal time to see them:

Common Quaker moth

I spotted a horde of Gerris lacustris Pond Skaters skimming over the surface of the stream beside the path:

Gerris lacustris Pond Skaters

These detect any unfortunate insects that have fallen into the water by sensing the vibrations in the water surface: they move instantly to the precise location in a feeding frenzy that lasts just a short while.

I think I have a new favourite picture. This is portrait of a female Platychierus albimanus hoverfly:

Female Platychierus albimanus hoverfly

I particularly like the way she is highlighted by the petals of the Celandine.

I wasn't too happy with the distance shot of the Small Tortoiseshell butterfly in my previous post, so I'm showing this closeup from yesterday:

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

More like summer than spring

We've had an extended dry spell and the days have been bright and sunny, encouraging some species out long before I'd expect to see them.

Moths are on schedule, including March Moth:

March Moth (male)

And Clouded Drab:

Clouded Drab

It seems that this specimen has been reading the books for a change, because it is a perfect match for one of the images in the standard reference. All of my previous photographs show specimens that look nothing like the reference images.

Both of these moths are feeders on Willow catkins as an adult, and feed on a wide range of broad-leaf plants as a larva.

The Ptychopterid fly Ptychoptera contaminata is regarded as a summer species, (my previous records are from June and September) but our lunchtime temperature of 15 degrees brought this one out today:

Ptychoptera contaminata

For some reason, this species hasn't reached my species index, so that's another new species for my total (now 1415 species).

Today also brought out my first specimen of Small Tortoiseshell butterfly:

Small Tortoiseshell

These hibernate as adults and usually emerge in March or April to breed the summer generation. Small Tortoiseshells are entirely dependent on Nettles for larval food.

I spotted this early instar of the Garden Tiger moth caterpillar wandering across a path. The image shows a few of the long white hairs which will become a feature in later instars.

Larva of Garden Tiger moth 

A fine set of specimens for a mid-March spring day.

I was on the road quite a bit today and noticed a Sycamore and Horse Chestnut in leaf, a couple of 'white' butterflies flying over verges and Cow Parsley and Sow Thistles in flower. What an amazing spring.