Grassland fungi and books

As my list of waxcaps from our neighbour's lawn grows, I am becoming increasingly interested (again) in grassland and other fungi.  Working alone, as I do, I have to rely on literature and the Internet to identify what I find but I seem to be making progress.  One recent boost has been my investment in the new book Grassland Fungi a field guide by Elsa Wood and Jon Dunkelman (2017) and published by the Monmouthshire Meadows Group.  With the help of this I was quickly able to name the toadstools below as the yellow fieldcap Bolbitius titubans.

These were quite common by the footpath along the eastern side of Churchland Fields in Sedlescombe (TQ781188).  It grows on rotted dung and vegetable material and this area is a permanent pasture grazed by both sheep and cows.

When I think I have a handle on the identity of something like this, I always cross check with other literature.  The book I have had the longest - for over 60 years - is Handbook of the Larger British Fungi by John Ramsbottom and originally published by the Natural History Museum in 1923.  It is quite a slim volume of 22 pages and with only black and white line drawings, but it includes detailed descriptions of many of the species that feature in today's colourful literature.  It also often provides snippets of information that other books don't.  Of Bolbitius, for example, it says the name is derived from Greek bolbiton meaning cow-dung.  It also says, rather ominously, that there are about eleven British species, but I have so far failed to find details of most of these.  Grassland Fungi (q.v.) only features B. titubans.  Ramsbottom's book is still readily available for under a fiver.

My second oldest book is Common British Fungi by Wakefield and Dennis (1950).  My copy came from Foyles in Charing Cross Road and I must have bought it not long after it was published.  This gives detailed descriptions of a wide range of species and has wonderful painted illustrations, including drawings of spores, by A. C. Dennis and the authors.  Also regularly consulted is Michael Jordan's The Encyclopedia of Fungi of Britain and Europe (1995).  From the photograph there my Bolbitius would actually be B. vitellinus but, according to the National Biodiversity Network (NBN), vitellinus is a synonym of titubans.

Another big point of reference is Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain & Europe by Roger Phillips (1994) which also depicts what appears to be my Bolbitius as B. vitellinus and I nearly always look through Mushrooms & Toadstools of Britain & Europe Courtecuisse & Duhem (Harper Collins, 1995).  This lists and illustrates six Bolbitius species and again equates by titubans with vitellinus.

Thus it would seem that, given the usual taxonomic squabbles, the toadstool growing in Churchland Fields is best called B. titubans.  I often have to remind myself that scientific names are devices for trying to ensure that different people are talking about the same thing.  Bolbitius toadstools don't call themselves anything.  We are promised that DNA analysis will resolve all these problems, but I wouldn't mind betting that taxonomic arguments will continue to rage long after I am dead.

So far as the grassland waxcaps are concerned, all the books I have mentioned are helpful in varying degrees.  But there are two other cribs worth getting hold of.  One is the online Quick Waxcap Key by Patrick Leonard (2009) based on David Boertmann's book The Genus Hygrocybe published (expensively) by the Danish Mycological Society.  The 2-page Quick Waxcap Key divides Hygrocybe species up by cap colour and stickiness of cap and stem which guide one to mini keys of the likely species options.  The other crib is in the British Wildlife article (Vol 9 No 3 February 1998, page 164) Fungal Flowers: the Waxcaps and their World by Peter Marren.  Marren, also over 2 pages, lists 46 british species of waxcaps giving details of colour, key characters, habitats and distribution.  Both these 'quick keys' can easily be folded and taken into the field.  There may be more in Peter Marren's Mushrooms: The natural and human world of British fungi published by British Wildlife Publishing, but this is not a key and will have to wait, I fear, until Christmas.

And here's a picture of blackening waxcap Hygrocybe conica from our neighbour's lawn.   Not very conical but easy to determine from its predilection for turning black (which one of these did later in the day).

Waxcaps and more

I have been inspired by Clare Blencowe's website 'Misidentifying fungi' http://misidentifyingfungi.blogspot.co.uk to report on some of my own painful efforts to make some sense of what seems to me to be a taxonomic minefield.

Part of my inspiration is that our neighbour's lawn (TQ781288) has an interesting crop of waxcaps.  The lawn is regularly mown and the cuttings removed, but no fertiliser or weedkiller has, to my knowledge, ever been applied.  After 30 years or more this makes an ideal waxcap sward.

Although they are very attractive, waxcaps often seem to me to be hard to name exactly and there have been many taxonomic changes over the years.  I have the feeling that what is going on has not, in many instances, been settled yet, so in my case I can only say what I think I have found.  I do have lots of books on fungi with lovely coloured picture but most do not seem to give the definitive data that ensures certainty in an identification.  In her blog Clare mentions some of the no doubt excellent Scandinavian books, but they are expensive and, as I said, I suspect there will be more changes in the future.

So far as waxcaps are concerned though, there is a useful quick guide issued by the British Mycological Society:.
http://www.britmycolsoc.org.uk/files/4513/3026/1442/Quick%20Waxcap%20Key.pdf

Perhaps the most obvious species on the lawn at present is the group below.

I think this is the meadow waxcap (Hygrocybe pratensis).  This is also often listed as Cuphophyllus pratensis or H. pratensis var. pratensis but I have not been able to discover the attributes of var. pratensis or any other 'var'.

Another firm identification was of the parrot waxcap (Hygrocybe psittacina).  This little toadstool has a distinctive mixture of red, orange, yellow and green colours, though this does not show up well in the picture below.  I will try to get a better one though I suspect there are several small waxcaps in the same area that have red or orange caps.

There is a number oif pale grey or white waxcaps on the lawn and I think the one below may be the snowy waxcap (Hygrocybe virginea).  And yes, well-spotted, it is a fallen leaf from a nearby wild service tree.

Then there are those which, as they say, need further work:

An additional pleasure in the waxcap area is that over the hedge in the neighbouring fields (which are in Countryside Stewardship), I have found one or two small groups of the blackening waxcap (Hygrocybe conica sensu Quick Waxcap Key).

Away from the waxcap theme our neighbour's lawn also produced a small colony of the apricot club (Clavulinopsis luteoalba) growing in an area that is more moss than grass.

Decline of flying insects

The decline of (flying) insects over recent years has once again hit the headlines following a study of 60 sites in Germany: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41670472

I, and many other entomologists, have been aware of this for a very long time.  In the early 1960s I lived on a farm at Robertsbridge in the East Sussex Weald and spent much of my time collecting and studying mostly flying insects around the fields, hedges, woods, ponds and rivers in the area.  In most weathers there were swarms, often very large ones, of non-biting midges, short-palped craneflies and other insects in sheltered places alongside hedges, in woodland rides and around the wetlands.  I must have come across several hundred species most of which, fortunately, I recorded in notebooks which I still have.

One very abundant non-biting midge was Smittia aterrima, a species that breeds in cow dung.  Mainly in the cooler months of the year this would swarm in the lee of the field hedges in one continuous band many metres long.  It must have been a boon for any birds, bats and spiders that were about and I imagine that the little corpses that would have littered the ground were much appreciated by shrews, ground beetles and I am sure other animals.  These in turn supply food for predatory birds and mammals.  This midge has gone into steep decline since the widespread use of ivermectins to control internal parasites in cattle.  It effectively kills most, if not all, the many insect species that would have bred in the dung.  It should also be remembered that many bee species are thought to be in decline because of the use of neonicotinoids as dressings for crop seeds.

In the late 1970s we moved to the Peak District in Derbyshire and made many journeys around the area and to Wales, the Lake District and Scotland.  As recently reported, the cars' windscreens were thickly spattered with flying insects after most journeys, but this no longer happens.

Flying insects have also declined elsewhere.  Due to work and family pressures I stopped my entomological work from the late-1960s until the late-1970s.  On my first foray back into the field in Brede High Woods in East Sussex, I wondered where all the insects had gone.  The large swarms that were so familiar a decade before had vanished, though there were a few familiar species hanging on in small numbers.

Since then I have occasionally found sites with a fairly rich insect life, but never like those places I was familiar with in my youth.  I have, however, noticed that one or two species seem to be suffering less than others.  Those whose larvae live in mud, for example, rather than in water, dead wood or dung.  I am not sure why this should be.  One little warrior I am very fond of, and which is still quite common, is the winter-flying non-biting midge Gymnometriocnemus brumalis whose picture I have posted at the top of this page.  It is sexually dimorphic with yellow females striped with dark brown, and black males.  It is thought to breed in wet fallen leaves.  It can be very common, especially in woodland, and I have often seen small swarms on sunny mornings after hard frost.  It also occasionally forms a small swarm, of the kind that now seem so scarce, outside our sitting room window.  I have seen these gyrating lazily up and down in cold, hard rain and still do not quite understand how the midges avoid being hit by raindrops, though I surmise that each drop has a bow wave of air that can push a fragile flying insect out of the way.

In some cases species have no doubt declined to a low level but are still about and may recover once conditions are more to their liking.  Others I am sure will be locally and even globally extinct.  I think all we can do about it is continue with the good conservation work that has been developing and keeping a very close eye on the effects of agrichemicals on insect life and the food chain generally.  Whatever the case, the insects may often seem insignificant but the part they play, or no longer play, in our wider environment will bring changes that affect us all.

Ice plants & orpines in 2017

Since last year my interest in the genus Hylotelephium has grown.  Hylotelephium includes many species and varieties that used to be in the genus Sedum but in most cases they are quite large plants with ovoid fleshy leaves, often grown in borders and beds.  Some, but not all, have flower heads that are attractive to butterflies, bees and other insects during their period of bloom which stretches from the end of July well into October.

My personal interest was aroused by the occasional patches of orpine (Hylotelephium telephium subsp. fabaria) I came across in Brede High Woods, East Sussex.  Where it occurs it seems to grow and flower quite well in shade or semi-shade and is considered to be an indicator of ancient woodland.  It also grows by wayside hedges and ditches and I know several sites where it occurs in our parish of Sedlescombe.  It is our only native species of Hylotelephium though some others have escaped into the wild from gardens and parks.

The picture below shows how it grows in Horns Wood near Brede.  The stems lay themselves down naturally and, as they can root and produce new plants from the leaf nodes, the species is able to spread vegetatively.  Seeds also germinate quite freely in the spring after they have set.

The flowers last for several weeks and are attractive to a wide range of insects, particularly bees, butterflies and hoverflies.  I have several plants in my garden and the meadow brown butterfly below was nectaring on the flower heads for over an hour.

An interesting garden plant related to H. telephium fabaria is Hylotelephium 'Matrona' with upright stems and purple stained leaves and pale pink flowers in compact heads that are also very popular with butterflies and bees, especially in my garden, carder bees.  It has an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Another garden variety that must have much H. telephium in its genes is Hylotelephium 'Rosetta'.  This has the most beautiful rosettes (hence the varietal name I suppose) of blue green foliage as it develops in early spring and summer followed by rather small pinky-white flower heads.  It attracted few bees and no butterflies, but I did find the moth in the photo below busily imbibing nectar from the flowers.  It is a beautiful plume (Amblyptilia acanthadactyla), a species well-established in our garden and quite well-camouflaged on the flowers.

I have two other H. telephium varieties: the nominate subspecies H. telephium telephium and H. telephium maximum.  Both came from a seed distribution organised by the Sedum Society.  In the case of the nominate subspecies I raised seven seedlings several of which flowered in the same season, the flowers varying from pale to darker pink.  They were smaller that our native H. t. fabaria and had a tendency to spread sideways rather than grow upwards.  The mother plant grew by the 'river Ourthe, Warempage' in Belgium and I ought to try and investigate it further.

I found a small caterpillar on one of these plants and it turned out to be a migrant species, the pearly underwing (Peridroma saucia) which I bred to maturity and released.

Hylotelephium telephium maximum is a white-flowered plant of mainland Europe, often growing in rocky places or on waste ground.  It has larger leaves and is generally more robust that the other subspecies of H. telephium I have seen.  I grew my plant from seed collected in Lozere in the south of France.   In Norway it is called smørbukk - butterball - perhaps because the creamy white flowers look slightly like a rounded lumps of butter.  As it is in its first year it has flowered quite late, but so far does not appear to be attracting any insects.

The real insect-attracting ice plants are Hylotelephium spectabile and its various forms, still generally sold as Sedum spectabile.  They seem to have a plentiful supply of nectar and are constantly visited by bees and butterflies.  However, because they get so efficiently pollinated they tend to go over quite quickly whereas the well known hybrid H. 'Autumn Joy' aka 'Herbstfreude' has longer lasting flowers but lacks nectar and is seldom visited by insects.  'Autumn Joy' is also sometimes the only Hylotelephium on sale in nurseries and garden centres and gets itself wrongly billed as attractive to insects.

The upper of the two pictures below is of Hylotelephium spectabile 'Brilliant' with a peacock butterfly and the lower of of H. 'Autumn Joy/Herbstfreude'.

An inky story

Yesterday I came across a fine clump of the common ink-cap (Coprinopsis atramentaria) growing in the newly sown grass of a house just up our lane.  Quite a bit of wood had been buried during the laying of the lawn here and this was, no doubt, what the fungus was growing from.

These dark and delicate caps looked too fragile to last and by this morning they were autodigesting, dissolving away into the eponymous ink of their vernacular name.  As the old saying goes sic transit gloria mundi.

The common ink-cap is edible and it has been used when young in much the same way as field mushrooms.  After deliquescence the 'ink' has even been used to make ketchup.  There is a health warning though - this species must not be consumed with alcohol as this produces a toxin that can make one very unwell.  Another name for this fungus is 'tippler's bane'.

The black deliquescence of the caps was also used to make ink for writing by boiling it with gum arabic and/or other substances.  At one time it was suggested that this ink was used for legal documents to try and counteract possible future forgery. The spores in Coprinus-ink would be visible indefinitely under the microscope.

Acornish

There is a litter from oaks and other trees after storm Aileen all over the lane and the field edge.  I found spangle and pincushion galls on one small oak sprig and a hazel nut neatly chiseled into by a mouse.  There are knopper galls everywhere on the ground but this year lots of acorns too.

They are very beautiful with their smooth, semi-gloss melon green fading towards the base to pale yellow and ivory and with a tiny point at the top.  Some have fallen still inside their cups of dusty grey embossed with darker markings like antique bowls.

After a few days they turn nut brown, but keep their shine, and provide a welcome food source for various animals and birds: mice and voles, squirrels and wild boar, jays and woodpigeons.  There are insects too - acorn weevils and some tortrix moth caterpillars.

There is a round disc at the base of each acorn like a flatbread with char marks around the rim or a stone disc with a mystical circle of characters in an unknown language - acornish.  Do all these characteristics have a purpose that makes them 'fitter' than other seeds I wonder.  Why are they egg shaped?  Why to they sit in a cup?  Why do they have a point at the top?

In the autumn sunshine as well as acorns there are buttercup and smooth hawksbeard flowers, but the finest is the late flourish of dandelions with their wonderfully ragged symmetry and a bright, even yellow.

A moth romance

A few days ago a female white ermine moth (Spilosoma lubricipeda) settled on the glass of our kitchen window where it had been attracted by the light.

The following day this female (which was not there in the daytime) re-appeared in almost the same place and was found by a male when events followed their natural course.

After mating, however, the moths did not leave the window pane but rested motionless side by side for several hours

.

They were still there when I turned the light off just after midnight, but by the morning they had gone.

A landscape of fear

I have read recently about the ecological phenomenon described as 'Landscapes of Fear' where the introduction of large predators can change the flora and fauna of an area quite radically.  The re-introduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park is a good example.  See:
http://www.cof.orst.edu/leopold/papers/Laundre_etal2010.pdf

A couple of years ago our granddaughter came to live with us and brought her cats into a cat-free garden and this has had quite a marked effect on biodiversity.  On part of the lawn, for example, an impressive stand of cuckooflower or lady's smock (Cardamine pratensis) has developed whereas in the past the plants would have been eaten down by rabbits.  In the picture above note the rabbit and mouse hunting tortoiseshell cat in the background.  Ground feeding birds also avoid the lawn and there has been a marked increase in slugs and snails.

Although many species have suffered, others have done well.  The cuckooflowers attracted solitary bees, bee flies, hover flies and many other insects which often find nectar and pollen providing plants scarce in early April.

The cuckooflowers are over now but yesterday a male orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) spent some time exploring the green seed heads looking, no doubt, for a female searching for the food plants on which to lay her eggs.  Eventually the butterfly settled on some hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) which, I have noticed elsewhere, often seems popular with orange tips.  Though not so showy the bittercress has no doubt been able to flourish in the absence of rabbits kept in check by the cats.  Both cuckooflower and hairy bittercress are used as food plants by orange tips.

We are mowing round the cuckooflower area and will report on any other interesting developments.  As with all such matters, issues of management will arise: when should we cut the 'meadow', for example, and where do we expect whatever programme we follow to lead us?

Bread and cheese

Hawthorn leaves (Crataegus monogyna) are now sprouting liberally in the garden.  Every year I think they are earlier than ever, but this may just be a delusion as I do not keep any proper phenological records.  To be of any value I think the first record of anything in a particular year should be made under the same conditions as in previous years.  One should return to the same hawthorn bush and be sure that local conditions round about it have not changed.  Around our lane there is a 50 metre stretch of hawthorns that always seems to sprout before any others.  I suspect this is because they are an early leafing clone that was bought in and planted, but roadside plants often behave rather differently from those elsewhere.  The road and its traffic perhaps creates a microclimate or possibly more carbon dioxide and other exhaust gases accelerate growth.

As a child my friends and I used to eat young hawthorn sprouts and called them 'bread and cheese'. This seems to be a very widespread habit in the British Isles and the shoots are quite palatable, if not very exciting.  How they came to be called 'bread and cheese' I have been unable to discover - they are certainly nothing like bread and cheese either in appearance, in shape, or in colour.  A probable explanation is that they were eaten by the very hungry as a replacement for bread and cheese.  The expression is also not confined to hawthorn - much wild leafy food has the bread and cheese accolade.

Slow traveller

I found this solitary wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) in a shady spot under some ornamental trees at the base of an old dead eucalypt in our garden the other day.  Wood anemones are ancient woodland indicators in South East England, but this was definitely not in ancient woodland.  I reckon the nearest population is about 75 metres away in Churchland Wood.

The plant is known to be able to colonise suitable new sites, but it can, so they say, take hundreds of years.  I suppose though it only takes one successful event for the colonisation to start and this could be one season from year zero or a good deal longer - I don't think the plant is particularly fussy about where it grows: I have seen it in undisturbed grassland as well as woodland.  Once established it will, of course, spread vegetatively as a clone of the original, so perhaps several different clones would make a healthier woodland population, but maybe not.

It has been suggested that new arrivals of this kind may have been transported mechanically as bits of rhizome in some way - on a vehicle, or the sole of a boot.  It is possible that someone walked this one in but the rarity of the plant's arrival in new places means that this is the sort of thing that seldom happens.

The plant is flowering, of course, to attract insects to that central ring of yellow anthers around the green stigmas, and early insects often do visit wood anemones, but successful dispersal of seeds does not appear to be of great value in establishing the plant in new sites (I wonder why)

Flowers that "waste their sweetness"

I have always been puzzled by flowers that go to some lengths in terms of colour or scent to appear attractive but, in my experience, are visited by very few insects.  Among those in the garden at the moment are spurge-laurel (Daphne laureola) - see below - which I visit regularly but have found nothing on but a few springtails of the kind that can be beaten out of every tree or shrub.  In mainland Europe they have been shown to be pollinated by pollen beetles (Nitidulidae: Meligethes) but, while several species are not uncommon here, they are either not yet about, or prefer something else. Maybe moths or other insects visit the flowers at night as it fruits well.

Very close to the spurge-laurel we have an ever-extending bed of lesser periwinkle (Vinca minor), Blue flowers are normally rather attractive to insects but, again, these little flowers appear to entice nothing.  Our patch was started many years ago when we first moved to South View and newly weds in the past would often plant periwinkles in their first gardens as it was supposed to promote love.  It seems to have kept Cynthia and I together very successfully.  Its flower is also said to be the item referred to in recommending that wedding gifts should include 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'.

My third 'tries hard' flower is that of the cherry-plum, Prunus cerasifera, also known as the myrobalan.  It is an alien March-flowering species not known anywhere in the wild, but probably from western Asia, and often grown in this country as a hedge or used as a stock for grafting with other fruit trees. Bullfinches are very fond of the buds and these often the reduce the quantity of flower but, clearly, they had not found the branch below though they were going round the garden a week or two ago.

Although I have seen no insect visitors, it is said to be pollinated by bees and, as well as bumble bees, we have at least two species of Andrena on the wing in the garden just now.

Behaviour of Eudasyphora cyanella, the green cluster fly

Eudasyphora cyanella, a muscid sometimes known as the green cluster fly, emerges from hibernation at this time of year.  I noticed twenty or thirty of them yesterday settling on shiny sunlit leaves of cherry-laurel in our lane.  They did not seem to be interested in other leaves and, if disturbed, quickly returned.

I think the attraction might be that they think the leaves are wet and they might be thirsty.  Some years back I made, in our garden, an artificial tree hole in a bucket filled with water and dead wood over which I hung a sleeve cage so that insects could get in via the lower open end. 

I wrote the below at the time:

On 18^th April 2000, a cold, grey day with heavy showers there were, unexpectedly, seventeen of the distinctive muscid greenbottle  Eudasyphora cyanella (Meigen), all female, in the trap.  Several females of this species had occurred during the autumn, but none had been recorded since then.  E. cyanella breeds in fresh cow-dung and larvae have also been recorded from sheep dung .  Both cattle and sheep graze regularly in pastures about 100 metres from the trap, but the insects would have had to fly through woodland and scrub to reach the rot-hole. 

During the next few weeks numbers of E. cyanella rose steadily, though there were several days when none, or few appeared.  Females were quite quickly joined by males and, on the 25^th April, there were at least 200 examples in the trap showing a marked clustering behaviour as they gathered on the ‘roof’.  Though they were extremely active, no mating was observed.  During this period several other species of Diptera were, as usual, found in the trap but in nowhere near the quantity of E. cyanella.

On 24^th April, a reasonably sunny but quite cool day, I spent some time watching the trap area in the early afternoon.  E. cyanella were sunning themselves on leaves at ground level near the trap and some would rest on the side of the bucket.  On one occasion one was observed on the rim of the bucket apparently drinking from the moisture there and on one of the projecting pieces of wood (these had by now absorbed much water).  On leaving they tended to fly up into the hanging sleeve.  The flies seemed to make little distinction between warm, sunny days and cool, cloudy ones, but numbers were much lower during or after rain, the inference being that there was plenty of free moisture available to drink from vegetation.

By 18^th May the numbers of E. cyanella had fallen to virtually nil, but the species was frequently observed in the wider countryside and singletons turned up in the trap until mid-August.

One of the characteristics of Eudasyphora is that, unlike nearly all other Muscids, the adults hibernate in winter.  One of the possible explanations of the observed behaviour was that, after their winter rest, they needed to drink, though why they should be particularly attracted to a rot-hole at a period when plenty of alternative sources of water were available is not clear.  Whatever the reason for their behaviour, it had some further ecological consequences.  They produced, for example, a substantial amount of excrement much of which must have finished up in the rot-hole, thus significantly increasing the nutrient-level of a habitat which is normally nutrient-poor.  At this time the trap also attracted a considerable swarm of the biting midge Culicoides obsoletus (Meigen). They would settle in some numbers on the black netting and in rather smaller quantities on my arms and face.  They bit occasionally, but their main interest seemed to be the trap.  On looking carefully at these midges, they seemed to be more interested in the droppings of the Muscids (which adhered to the netting) than the flies themselves, though I did see them settle on some of the larger species as though to bite.  C. obsoletus breeds in a wide range of moist decaying matter and it has been reported from both rot-holes and sheep dung.  It was not, however, biting in other parts of the neighbourhood and would therefore appear to have been attracted by E. cyanella and the other flies, rather than by myself.

Mystery topless tables

The other day, while walking in the 'ancient' wood at the end of our garden, I came across two iron structures with no apparent function that I could guess.

I have discovered today that they are temporary protectors to go over coppiced stools where dormice might be hibernating to protect the animals from any accidental damage.  Electricity wires run right through the wood and the power company has to clear the trees back to stop them fouling the wires.  Because it has had dormouse records over a long period to 2016, special precautions have to be taken as it is a legally protected animal and I am told that a licensed dormouse worker oversees the felling and cutting operation throughout.

The work looks pretty drastic, but it should open up the habitat in the traditional way and make it easier for the dormice to flourish.

New corridor in Churchland Wood

In Churchland Wood, Sedlescombe (TQ783189 - centroid) a corridor has been cut underneath the electricity transmission lines to stop vegetation from fouling the overhead wires.  This ancient woodland is rich in wildlife and I am minded to make this new corridor and its surroundings my wildlife project for the year, especially as it is only a very short distance from the end of our garden. It will also be easy to undertake some fixed point photography to show the changes as the vegetation returns.

Above - February 2017

I have know this ancient wood for over half my life and it has many treasures including dormice, badgers, fallow and roe deer.  The tree cutters have chipped the brushwood and left heaps on the ground, heaps that might prove interesting in their own right.  Yesterday, 13tth February, I saw a butterfly, a peacock I think, though it would not stay still.  The temperature was only around 9 degrees C, so it was surprising to see it but I hope a good omen.

On 23 February I found a photo of virtually the same scene taken in 2012, when the corridor was last cleared (see below).  The main difference seems to be that the brushwood was not chipped.

10 March 2017.  The power company's woodman started to make this central ride much wider and (see post dated 11th March) are taking special precautions to protect and conserve the local dormouse population.

House circuit (18): wasp, fly and two plants

Note: House Circuit posts are drawn from the many 50 metre walks I make every day around our house.

On August 10th 2016 I saw a solitary wasp attacking a solitary bee as big as itself in a flower of Geranium ‘Claridge Druce’.  I grabbed both plus flower; one stung me in the palm, but later I managed to identify the wasp as Cerceris rybyensis, the ornate tailed digger wasp.  This makes a burrow in the ground which it stocks with paralyzed solitary bees to feed its young.

The wasp was named by Linnaeus after a place called Ryby near Stockholm in Sweden which the great taxonomist visited with his friends.

The above is an Anthomyiid fly, Anthomyia ? procellaris I think, though there are a number of lookalikes.  I once bred several from an old cormorants nest that was kindly donated to me from the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve and contained many invertebrates.  For a full account see here:

https://sites.google.com/site/ropersmiscellany/Home/the-cormorant-s-nest

Wild marjoram and carder bee

Blackberries

Mysterious 'bluebottle'

I recently found a rather strange and distinctive fly in our garden that turned out  to be Stomorhina lunata a member of the Calliphoridae, the bluebottle family, though it does not look anything like a bluebottle and has been compared to some of the hoverflies.

(There are many better pictures on line).

Widespread in England, especially the south, it is said to be scarce, though Steven Falk has found it in many locations on the South Downs in recent years.  Most accounts say that it is probably a migrant from mainland Europe or even further afield.

In Africa the species is known to breed in the egg cases of locusts and some suggest that it turns up in Britain when large swarms of locusts are on the march in Africa.  This hypothesis has metamorphosed into the idea that since the early stages have only ever been found in locust egg cases, the adults must be migrants in the cooler parts of Europe - a good example of the absence of evidence being taken as the evidence of absence (in this case of the fly breeding in Europe).

In this Internet age, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations monitors locust swarms and there does not appear to have been anything exceptional, or close to Europe, in 2015 or 2016 (http://www.fao.org/ag/locusts/en/info/info/index.html).  I therefore suggest that Stomorhina lunata can breed in places other than locust egg cases, though maybe in mainland Europe rather than the UK, so our records could still be of migrants.

The spotted-winged fruit fly, Drosophila suzukii

A small fruit fly (Diptera: Drosophilidae), Drosophila suzukii, was found by the author of this blog in his garden in Sedlescombe, East Sussex (OS grid ref. TQ782188) on 10 September 2016.  It was the first Sussex record submitted to the Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre of this species which is spreading globally from its original home in the Far East.  It was first recorded in the UK in 2012.

In general appearance it closely resembles the Drosophila species associated with overripe fruit, vinegar and wine bottles but is distinctive on account of the dark area at the tip of the wings in the male (hence its English name -.  this name is often abbreviated to SWD).

The female lays her eggs within a wide range of ripening fruit and the larvae then develop inside the fruit.  Because of this it is regarded as a major pest, or potential pest, of soft and stone fruit both on a commercial scale and in gardens.  It can also attack blackberries and other wild fruits so it may have an effect on the wider countryside.

Much research into this newly arrived species is being done by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and East Malling Research (EMR). Details of the fly and its habits are summarised here: http://horticulture.ahdb.org.uk/swd-identifying-pest  One of the problems of identification is that it is not featured in any of the European pre-2012 literature dealing with the Drosophilidae.  The females in particular are likely to be overlooked or misidentified because they do not have spotted wings.

Scott Raffle of AHDB currently works as the industry co-ordinator for much of the SWD work that AHDB fund and says (September 2016) “the pest has been present in the South of England since 2012. It can be found everywhere in the South irrespective of whether the location is near to commercial fruit growing farms.”   Accounts of the spread of the species have been published in Dipterists Digest, but few records seem to have got through to the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) and other national and regional wildlife recording agencies.

This new species may not be very tolerant of winter cold, so its survival here could be of limited duration.  Records are however important in showing how far north it might have reached thus indicating areas that are (so far) free of the pest.

REFERENCES

AHDB Horticulture (n.d.)  SWD: Identifying the pest.  http://horticulture.ahdb.org.uk/swd-identifying-pest

CABI (2016) Drosophila suzukii on the invasive species compendium. http://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/109283#20107000720

Clemons, L. (2013) Kent Diptera 2012.  Bulletin of the Kent Field Club 58, 117-135

Defra (2012) Consultation on policy against Drosophila suzukii.  http://www.fera.defra.gov.uk/plants/consultations/index.cfm

Martin Drake, C. & Stubbs, A.E. (2014) First record of Drosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera, Drosophilidae) in Great Britain.  Dipterists Digest 21 (2) 189-192.  Note, pages 192 to 195 contain notes from various authors on the species in London, Suffolk, Kent, Essex, Northamptonshire, Norfolk and Middlesex.

House Circuit running diary

20 August 2016.  Very windy and showery after the warm summer spell.  I did see one butterfly – a holly blue - from the sitting room window.  Despite the cool, hoverflies and bees seemed to remain active.  I noted Bombus pascuorum on orpine flowers – I have a growing list of insects visiting the plant.  Among the hoverflies the snout-faced, Rhingia campestris and the long-tailed, Baccha elongata, seemed to enjoy the cooler weather.

On a hazel leaf I found a long, narrow mine characteristic of the tiny moth, the least nut-tree pigmy, Stigmella microtheriella.  According to A. Maitland Emmet in his book on the scientific names of British Lepidoptera the specific name derives from Ancient Greek micros (small) and therion (a small creature) – splendid example of a tautology.  When the name was given to the insect by Stainton in 1854, it was thought to be the smallest moth.

There is a rather fine honeysuckle flowering outside the back door.  It looks like Lonicera periclymenum ‘Graham Thomas’, with its dark green leaves and late flowering habit.  It seems to agree with many of the pictures on the Internet.  It is certainly a cultivar, probably one that Sammy bought in a pot that has somehow managed to survive in the dark recesses on the north of the house.

19 August 2016.  Rain showers for much of the day bring some needed refreshment to the countryside.  Because of my leg ache from yesterday, I went out rather little.

18 August 2016.  The blue pimpernel, Anagallis arvensis ssp. foemina was flowering in the Old Woodyard and later, at home, I found the rather fine plume moth Amblyptilia acanthadactyla, the beautiful plume, on the lighted kitchen window pane.

17 August 2016.  Two moths late last night on the kitchen window the common grass veneer Agriphila tristella, and the red twin-spot carpet, Xanthorhoe spadicearia.  The identity of the latter had to be checked via an examination of the genitalia.

Butterflies remain rather scarce, though a brimstone put in an appearance on the buddleia and I saw a small white briefly visiting the orpine flowers (which are still regularly patronised by bumble bees).

There were several holly blues in our large buckthorn bush.  They were flying from one place to another and constantly settling as though laying eggs.  Alder buckthorn is an alternative foodplant and in France the butterfly is called the 'buckthorn blue' (azuré des nerpruns).

16 August 2016. Butterflies rather scarce again, though I watched a holly blue laying eggs on ivy in the northern hedge.  A migrant hawker hung itself up here and I found a very dark worker middle wasp very sluggish on buckthorn flowers.  I found a figwort beetle, Cionus scrophulariae, on flowers of Buddleja x weyerana ‘Sungold’.  Usually found on figwort, it also occurs on yellow and orange buddlejas, and these plants formerly belonged to the Scrophulariaceae.  Perhaps the beetles know something the taxonomists don’t.  A brimstone moth, Opisthograptis luteolata, on the lighted kitchen window.

The single flower on the globe thistle, Echinops ? bannaticus, in the northern border (it has been there for about 25 years) is very attractive to bumble bees, with often three on it at any one time, but the flowers are over quickly.

I have a bit of mint found in the Old Woodyard in Brede High Woods yesterday.  It looks a bit like pennyroyal, but I shall have to try and grow some on to get a conclusion.  It isn’t anything I am familiar with.

15 August 2016.  The vanessid have returned in small numbers with small tortoiseshell and red admiral around the buddleia.  I also saw a meadow brown and there was a gatekeeper visiting the orpine plants.

14 August 2016.  It remains very warm but, strangely, most of the vanessid butterflies so abundant yesterday seem to have disappeared and I only saw two rather sluggish red admirals resting on buddleia leaves.  Non-vanessid species seemed to be at about their normal level.  There was the hoverfly Rhingia campestris visiting flowers of orpine and Syritta pipiens on the mint I moved yesterday.  I caught a light brown apple-moth, the tortrix Epiphyas postvittana, on vegetation outside my study window.  Originally an Australian insect it has spread widely through England and Wales since it arrived in Cornwall in 1936.

On a dusk expedition around the house I netted a mother of pearl moth, Pleuroptya ruralis.

13 August 2016.  I moved the strawberry mint Mentha x piperata ‘Strawberry’ to the area opposite the kitchen window as it is in bloom and attracts some interesting insects.  I bought the plant last year at the Blackbrooks Garden Centre but there does not seem to be much strawberry in its smell.  Looking at pictures on the Internet there seem to be many shapes and sizes of mint called 'Strawberry'.  I caught a small hoverfly attracted to it later.  I also found a large number of very active pollen beetles and took a good set of photos of the butterflies on the buddleia.  Also a neat picture of Episyrphus balteatus, the marmalade fly, attracted to a flower head of orpine.

Queen bumble bees are quite abundant just now – feeding up for hibernation I suppose.

12 August 2016. Warmer, 25C at midday.  Many butterflies on the buddleia including small tortoiseshell, comma, peacock, red admiral.  Elsewhere holly blue, meadow brown, large and small whites.

There was a meadow brown nectaring on the orpine flowers, the plant from Hurst lane.  It was there for around 2 hours and, I suspect, only departed when disturbed by a bumble bee.

For the first time since last year I went out with the sweep net and, among other things, caught a reduviid bug, the wandering thread-legged bug, Empicoris vagabundus in the hedge by the lane, a new species for me that feeds upon other small insects.  Another tiny (under 3mm) lace bug was Physatocheila dumetorum.  It seems to like lichen covered trees, especially Rosaceae, though where I found it is not noticeably lichenised.  I have found it in the garden before.

11 August 2016.  Muggy after a rather cool night.  The first flower has opened on the orpine (Hylotelephium telephium) from Horns Wood.  I also noted some jasmine flowers, white convolvulus (Calystegia) rapidly smothering the back of the house and the first ripe blackberries in the hedge by the lane.

Yesterday I saw a solitary wasp attacking a solitary bee in a flower of Geranium ‘Claridge Druce’.  I grabbed both plus flower; one stung me in the palm, but later I managed to identify the wasp as Cerceris rybyensis, the ornate tailed digger wasp.  This makes a burrow in the ground which it stocks with paralyzed solitary bees to feed its young.

A mining bee was discovered burrowing into a blue planter on my houseleek table.  I think it is Megachile versicolor from the orange pollen brushes underneath its abdomen.  I also got some photos of a carder bee on a marjoram flower.  Bombus pascuorum I think, but difficult to separate from B. muscorum with a specimen.

House Circuit (17) 35 years agrowin

Note: House Circuit posts are drawn from the many 50 metre walks I make every day around our house.

The other day I noticed a clump of off-white flowers thrusting itself up, like an aerial cauliflower, from somewhere at the overgrown rear of our old caravan.  I got as close as I could and concluded that it must be an Olearia, a daisy bush, and one of the many New Zealand plants I had acquired over the years.  It looked most like Olearia x haastii, a natural hybrid.  Searching my computer I found a diary entry for the plant and discovered I had bought it from a local nursery in 1981 and planted it at the back of this self-same caravan. Presumably it has been struggling through brambles and nettles for 35 years finally to emerge into the sunshine.

Whilst scrambling about at the rear of the caravan I spotted some clematis flowers high in an old damson tree here.  It turned out to be Clematis viticella 'Huldine'.  This may be a plant I bought as C. flammula at the same time as the Olearia above.  I certainly have no record or recollection of putting C. 'Huldine' anywhere else in the garden.