Moth Highlights

Moth numbers have been drastically down this year, though this weekend we did have slightly greater numbers than we have had so far this year.  There were 40 individuals of 16 species including micros.  The star of the show from the trap however, was not a moth but a beetle.

Great Silver Beetle - Hydrophilus piceus

Great Silver Beetle - Hydrophilus piceus

This Great Silver Beetle turned up.  We've never had one before and we've never seen anything that big before.  In case you are wondering, the coin in the second picture is a 50 pence piece, not a 20 pence piece.  Unsurprisingly it is one of Europe's largest beetles.  You may also be wondering why it is called a Great Silver Beetle when it is clearly black or a very dark brown.  This is because when it is not being distracted from its mating flight by the bright lights of Pett, it is an aquatic species and when it is diving under water a layer of air clings to its back and gives it a silvery appearance.

Eyed Hawkmoth - Smerinthus ocellata

Though the Elephant Hawkmoth tried hard by sheer weight of numbers (we had 8), the contender for co-star was this superb Eyed Hawkmoth.  The eyes that give it the name are hidden in this photo as they are on the hind wings.  It flashes the eyes if it feels threatened, but here it was perched comfortably on the side of the moth trap waiting for darkness.  The second photo is a close-up of the wing-tip, just to see if I could get close enough to see the scales - success!

Green Pug - Pasiphila rectangulata

Pug moths can be very difficult to identify as there are a number of very similar looking moths in the group.  We had two in the trap - a Foxglove Pug that we have seen before and is fairly distinctive, and this one that we'd not seen before.  It looked like a pug and was quite green.  Looking in the book, there was only one that had any green on it, and it was the imaginatively named Green Pug.

Collection Distractions

When I'm out pollen collecting for the Short-haired Bumblebee Reintroduction Project, I'm concentrating totally on the bees and on whether or not they are carrying pollen.  But sometimes something bright or unusual catches your eye and you just have to reach for the camera.

Woundwort Shieldbug - Eysarcoris venustissimus

This tiny, but exquisite little beast caught my eye because I'd never seen a shieldbug so small, and I'd never seen any of this species before.  It is called the Woundwort Shieldbug because the nymphs feed on Hedge Woundwort - Stachys sylvatica.  But the most significant thing from the point of view of afficionados of the bumblebee project are concerned is that they also feed on White Dead-nettle!

Sphaerophoria scripta

Sphaerophoria scripta

This hoverfly is just plain eye-catching.  Not only did it pose on the head of the thistle but it also struck the mid-air pose.  The remarkable thing about the mid-air photo, is not the luck of the photographer in getting the shot, but the fact that even with a shutter speed of 1/800th of a second, the wings are a blur, but the body is as still as if it were screwed to the ground.

Tenthredopsis litterata

This last distraction was a very lively and shy insect - hence the poor photos.  I saw several flitting about in the comfrey, but so far I've been unable to identify it.  I've got feelers out (sometimes you can't resist an antenna pun) but so far nobody has come back with a definite answer.  I think it may be a sawfly of some sort, but I'll update this post when I get more information.

The update is that it is indeed a sawfly - Tenthredopsis litterata but the only thing I can find out about it is that the larvae feed on cock's-foot grass.

Brede High Woods Walk

Pett Nats had an outing on Saturday to Brede High Woods.  This woodland has a mixture of habitats, chief of which are heathland and woodland and the number of species we recorded makes it a bit of a biodiversity hotspot.  At one point Lynne stepped towards the long grass in an open area and was amazed by the number of insects suddenly jumping and flying around.

Most of the bird life was detected by identifying calls - great tits, blackcaps, long-tailed tits, and thrushes to name a few.  The nightingales that we thought we heard on the recce for the walk decided not to turn up for the main event.

There is a huge range of plant life in Brede High Woods - everything from hornbeam and chestnut coppice to the smallest plants like milkwort and speedwell.  The photos below show a good sample of what we saw on a very enjoyable stroll around this fascinating patch of nature.

Pale St. John's Wort

Meadow Brown - seen on the recce, only Speckled Wood and Red Admiral were seen on the walk proper.

Yellow-legged Solitary Bee - Andrena sp.

Common Blue Damselfly - seen on the recce.
Normally Brede High Woods has plenty of dragonflies
and they were about but none posed for photos.

Heath Speedwell - a pretty heathland species much in evidence.

Skullcap - Scutellaria galericulata

Green-legged Sawfly - Tenthredo mesomela seen on the recce

Hoverfly - Syrphus torvus

Common Milkwort - Polygala vulgaris

Silver-ground Carpet Moth - Xanthorhoe montanata

Scorpion Fly - Panorpa communis One of several similar species.
Note the scorpion-like end of his abdomen.

Tree Bumblebee - Bombus hypnorum

Enoplognatha ovata A common spider.
We saw both male and female on the same twig but the female didn't pose

Greater Bird's-foot Trefoil - Lotus pedunculatus.
Sadly not yet in flower.

Common Spotted-orchid -
Dactylorhiza fuchsii

Hoverfly - Eristalis pertinax

Micro-moth Nettle Tap - Anthophila fabriciana

Bee mimic hoverfly - Criorhina floccosa

Micro-moth Yellow-barred Long-horn - Nemophora degeerella

Hybrid Larch (probably)

Meadow Grasshopper - Chorthippus parallelus

Roesel's Bush-cricket - Metrioptera roeselii

not a Speckled Bush-cricket as I first thought

Malachite Beetle - Malachius bipustulatus

Common Green Grasshopper - Omocestus viridulus

Smooth Tare - Vicia tetrasperma

Swollen-thighed Beetle - Oedemera nobilis
Only the male has swollen thighs (probably for show)

Froghopper - Cercopis vulnerata

Robber Fly - Empis tessellata
These flies are usually predators of smaller flies, but this one
with his long proboscis is also partial to a bit of bramble nectar.

Cuckoos

It's probably a bit late to talk about the first cuckoo of spring - many cuckoos will now have long since done their dastardly work and are winging their way back towards Africa.  But there seem to be a lot of cuckoos about at the moment - the ones I'm talking about, though, are cuckoo bumblebees.  Cuckoo bumblebees are at least as dastardly as their avian equivalents - they invade the nest of true bumblebee species, kill or oust the incumbent queen, and coerces the workers to feed and tend her own eggs and larvae.  The reason so many are about at the moment is that that cycle has now finished and a new generation of male and queen cuckoo bees has taken to the air to mate so that the dastardly work can continue.

I've managed to get a few photos of the cuckoos which are at a casual glance no different to the real bumblebees.  Actually their success depends on them looking roughly like the species that they parasitize, so that the workers don't get suspicious when the queen takes over the nest.

Probably the most common cuckoo bumblebee is the Vestal bumblebee - Bombus vestalis.  It is the most common because it parasitizes nests of our most common bumblebee, the buff-tailed bumblebee - Bombus terrestris.  Note the small patch of yellow hair above the white tail, and the dark wings that most cuckoos have.  The hind leg, just above the yellow patch is also hairy.  In the true bumblebees this would be shiny as it is where she sticks her pollen.  Cuckoo bumblebees don't need to collect pollen - the parasitized workers do that.

Another that you may see around - we had one in our garden - is the Hill cuckoo bumblebee - Bombus rupestris.  With its red tail, it's no surprise that it parasitizes the nests of the Red-tailed bumblebee - Bombus lapidarius.

On a recent visit to Sissinghurst gardens with the Pett Gardening Club, I found this Forest Cuckoo bumblebee - Bombus sylvestris.  In this case it's a male (you can tell by the thin line of orange hairs on his tail).  This species parasitizes the nest of the Early Bumblebee - Bombus pratorum, our smallest British species.  Almost as interesting as the bee is the flower that it is feeding from - I think it is chives which normally has purple flowers, but this one being in the White Garden, is of course, white.

Rye Harbour Walk

For those unfamiliar with Rye Harbour - it is a small village with somewhere to moor boats, but locally it is renowned for its extensive nature reserve managed by Sussex Wildlife Trust.

Today we went for a walk led by Trevor Buttle round part of the reserve.  The wildlife came thick and fast, starting before we left the car park when Maya found a Cream-spot Tiger moth (Arctia villica britannica) outside the toilets.

Then came the flora - there are a number of 'always there' species on the entrance drive - like Sea Beet, Alexanders, and Hemlock.  There was also a lot of Salsify.  This is maybe a garden escape but it has seeded itself all along the drive and has now extensively colonized the bund wall.  Here's a photo of one I took earlier.

Along the bund wall, and feeding on the nectar of the salsify was a male Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum). This is one of our smallest bumblebees and is one of the first to establish a colony in the spring and the colony cycle is quite short, hence the emergence of a male before the spring is hardly out.  Here's an example.

A big feature of every bramble patch we saw was the webby cocoons and the caterpillars of the Brown-tail moth (Euproctis chrysorrhoea).  The pretty adult moth is pure white but has brown tufts on the end of its abdomen, hence the name.  The caterpillars have two bright orange dots on their back which serves as a warning not to touch as their hairs are a strong skin irritant.

On one of the empty cocoons, we found this striking spider Tetragnatha extensa which even though it is common throughout the UK, doesn't warrant a common name apparently.

As we progressed through the reserve onto the shingle, some of the iconic Rye Harbour plants were much in evidence - Horned Poppy, Sea Kale (smells of honey to attract nectar-loving insects), Ivy-leaved Toadflax, Viper's Bugloss, and Hounds-tongue to name a few.

Another moth - the day-flying Yellow Shell (Camptogramma bilineata atlantica) put in an appearance though it seemed reluctant to be photographed at first.

A visit to Rye Harbour at this time of year wouldn't be complete without a good display of nesting birds, and they didn't disappoint - Avocets and chicks were well represented as were Common and Sandwich terns, not to mention the raucous (and smelly) Black-headed gulls.  We also caught a glimpse of some distant Little terns - lets hope that they are nesting here once again.  When our ears weren't being assailed by noisy gulls, there were several skylarks to delight the ear as well as the call of a distant cuckoo.

A good walk. Thank you Trevor.

Solitary Bees

It's been a good week for solitary bees, and now that the weather has picked up a bit there may be a few more.  The photos below show the Hairy-footed flower bee which can easily be mistaken for a bumblebee - clinging on to the edge of a leaf with her jaws while cleaning herself (all legs occupied).  It just goes to show what strength there is in insect muscles.

There is also an Ashy mining bee.  This solitary bee will burrow holes into your well-tended flowerbed and neatly-clipped lawn, leaving a miniature volcano-shaped pile of earth.  She will lay eggs in the hole and provision each one with some food - a mixture of pollen and nectar for the larva (grub) to eat when it hatches.  When it has run out of food, the larva pupates (turns into a chrysalis) and it will spend the winter in that state until spring when the adult insects emerge.

The third photo is unidentified as yet.  I think it is the male of a leaf-cutter bee - possibly Megachile species.  It was very small and clearly feeding from a small geranium.  Watch this space for more details if I can get them.

Hairy-footed Flower Bee - Anthophora plumipes

Ashy Mining Bee - Andrena cineraria

Possible Leaf-cutter Bee - male