Mind-your-own-business

The title of this post is not intended to deter people from reading it, but rather to introduce a wild flower.  The plant is quite common and can be found in many damp places.  It is an introduced plant, originally from the Western Mediterranean islands.  We have a large patch in our garden that sprawls around the water butt, but until it was pointed out to me, I didn't realize that it has flowers.  The flowers are so small that you need a hand lens to see them.  They are even small in relation to the tiny leaves of the plant.  It is in the same family as the nettle - Urticaceae.

Mind-your-own-business - Soleirolia soleirolii

The flower

Male flower in its full glory

Short-haired Bumblebee Release

For those of you that follow the Short-haired Bumblebee Reintroduction - www.bumblebeereintroduction.org - you'll probably be wondering how they are doing.  Well, 46 of them came through quarantine successfully.  The main losses were due to parasitic wasps that get to the bees before we catch them.  But we had a successful release on Monday and the queens were happy to have their freedom at last.

Short-haired Bumblebee - Bombus subterraneus

Short-haired Bumblebee - Bombus subterraneus

Short-haired Bumblebee - Bombus subterraneus

May Moths

We put out the moth trap last week on a couple of occasions.  The first time there was a nearly full moon which always makes the catch smaller, but we did get around 12 species including the magnificent Puss moth and the other-worldly Pale Prominent pictured.  The second occasion, only a few days later - but the moon didn't rise until later in the night, we had a whopping 37 species.  The most notable were the Pebble and Oak Hook-tips that we'd not seen before, and the large number - more than 10 - of Cinnabar moths.  See the photos and species list below.

Puss Moth - Cerura vinula

Pale Prominent - Pterostoma palpina

Cinnabar - Tyria jacobaeae

15 May 2014Bright-line Brown-eye Brimstone Common Marbled Carpet Flame Shoulder Light Brown Apple Moth (Micro) Maiden's Blush Muslin Moth Pale Prominent Puss Moth Treble Lines Waved Umber Willow Beauty

Oak Hook-tip - Watsonalla binaria

18 May 201420-plume Moth Alder Moth Buff-tip Chinese Character Cinnabar Clouded Silver Common Carpet Common Pug Common Quaker Coronet Flame Shoulder Foxglove Pug Garden Carpet Garden Rose Tortrix (Micro) Least Black Arches Light Emerald Lime-speck Pug Oak Hook-tip Orange Footman Pale Prominent Pebble Hook-tip Peppered Moth Poplar Grey Poplar Hawkmoth Red Twin-spot Carpet Scalloped Hazel Scorched Carpet Setaceous Hebrew Character Shuttle-shaped Dart Small Angle Shades Snout Waved Umber White Ermine White-pinion Spotted Willow Beauty Yellow-faced Bell (Micro)

Ladybirds and Woolly Thistles

On the footpath between Elm Lane and Pannel Lane there are a lot of Woolly Thistles.  They are very conspicuous because the sheep have grazed everything else around them.  What was even more noticeable was that almost every one had a dozen or more 7-spot ladybirds on the leaves.  On one I even spotted some yellow eggs which I assume were ladybird eggs.  I've not heard of any association between ladybirds and thistles before, but I can see the logic of finding somewhere hairy and prickly to lay your eggs and let your larvae feed.  (In the photo of the eggs, you'll see a couple of out of focus aphids - perfect food for a hungry larva)

7-spot Ladybirds - Coccinella 7-punctata

Woolly Thistle - Cirsium eriophorum

7-spot Ladybird Eggs

May

May is the month that things get named after.  I guess that's because things happen at quite a rate in May and people use flowers and emerging insects to signpost the year.  Just recently we've put the moth trap out a couple of times and the trap and the space around it were full of cockchafers - otherwise known as May-bugs because that's when they emerge.  The larvae of the cockchafer live underground for a couple of years where they then pupate and subsequently turn into the adult beetle.  The adults then stay underground until either their internal calendar or the ground temperature tell them that it's time to go and locate a member of the opposite sex.  This they do above ground and at night.  Unfortunately they can get side-tracked by bright street-lights or moth traps.  If you want to know a male cockchafer from a female cockchafer (henchafer?!) then look carefully at its antennae - males have seven leaves, females six.

Other things named after the month include may blossom or hawthorn, and mayflies.  We are not near enough to a river to commonly see mayflies in Pett, but there is plenty of may blossom.

Cockchafer - Melolontha melolontha

Cockchafer - Melolontha melolontha

May Blossom - Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna