13 June 2019 I found a bud on the small-flowered sweet briar,
Rosa micrantha.
I had not expected it to have any flowers this year and it is very late.
14 June 2019 The more westerly of the two dandelion plants consists
of two rosettes. Myathropa flora rested on vegetation in the shadowy back of Submespilus
Assart. This sometimes known as the Batman
hoverfly because of the pattern on the thorax Not very convincing to my mind. It is also called the dead head hoverfly,
because of the resemblance of the markings on the thorax to a skull.
The goosegrass is flowering.
15 June 2019 One of the roses at the back of the Square metre is
affected by leaf roll ‘galls’ of the sawfly Blennocampa
phyllocolpa (see below), while
the rose at the front of Troy Track has many silvery leaves which
may indeed be silverleaf caused by the fungus Chondrostereum
purpureum, though
the plant seems a little small to host this fungus. I watched a flesh fly for some time as it
foraged among the wood chip near my feet.
Eventually it came and settled on my leg and then on my hand. Seedlings continue to increase in the Dust
Bowl.
16 June 2019 I photographed the sawfly leaf rolls spotted
yesterday. One of the Epilobiums is in flower. I make
it broad-leaved willowherb, Epilobium
montanum but there
are many hybrids of this species with close allies.
17 June 2019 A spider has spun a very fine web across the terrine
pond. Underneath there was at least one
springtail on the meniscus. The
seedlings continue to increase in the Dust Bowl and I found a colony of yellow
Psyllids under a leaf of the cordon oak.
18 June 2019 Massive thunderstorms overnight. Another stone for the stone row. This time from Killingan brick pit.
19 June 2019 Quite warm and steamy.
A second hawthorn bug crawled about the vegetation.
.
Something
has eaten most of the western dandelion.
One flower out on the small flowered sweet-briar. Dust bowl now quite wet after heavy rainstorms. The wood dock as been arched over by a
clinging black bryony bine. Lammas
shoots (somewhat early) are developing on the cordon oak.
20 June 2019 The western dandelion has been further eaten
down. It was warm after overnight
showers. The water in Second meadow Pond
is turning dusky green. Ivy has become a
dominant ground cover in many areas
21 June 2019 Another Midsummer Day but cool and cloudy with a frost
warning for parts of Scotland. Seedlings
are now appearing in the Dust Bowl and getting away well in the damp weather.
22 June 2019 Much detritus in Second Meadow Pond. Even the nearby empty snail shell had fallen
(or been pushed) in.
23 June 2019 Little is now left of the western dandelion and the
leaf eater has started on the eastern one.
Yellow is showing on the marsh bird’s-foot trefoil flower buds. Very warm
and humid.
26 June 2019 The marsh or great bird’s-foot trefoil (Lotus pedunculatus) is starting to flower.
27 June 2019 Showed Clare Blencowe (manager of the Sussex
Biodiversity Record Centre) Emthree. She
collected macro and micro fungi and trampled on the dandelions and seedlings in
the Second Meadow, but without doing any noticeable damage. She found a couple pf toadstools on a chunk
of chestnut wood in the Square Metre itself and was able to identify them (and
have it confirmed) as the white-laced shank (Megacollybia
platyphylla): a new record for the Square Metre.
There are aphids
on the knapweed and Clare found a blackbird’s eggshell in Second Meadow.
28 June
2019 The heat is gathering
strength. There are many mosquito larvae
in the pond and I found a leaf mine on the figwort which might be Liriomyza huidobrensis.
29 June 2019 One of the hottest June days with
the temperature here reaching 29.5°C but more elsewhere in UK.
30 June 2019 The end of another month and
still quite hot. I saw two white admirals (or maybe the same one twice) glide
over brambly hedge. With a pair of
clippers I have been creating a ‘conservation lawn’ to see what permanently
very short sward might do. Essentially
it covers the area I can reach easily from my seat and is the area on the
southern part of the Second Meadow.
Today there was a light snow of birch
seeds with every breeze and I found a leaf mine in a leaf of the easterly
dandelion.
1 July 2019 There was an interesting
article in New Scientist of 22 June 2019 entitled A regular visit to the park is good for
you. It demonstrates
that spending 2 hours a week in nature improves health and says “just sitting
on a bench will do”. With all the time I
spend sitting in Emthree I must be astonishingly healthy.
Two birds, blue tits I think, flew up as I
approached Emthree today. They were I
suspect, drinking at the pond in the Second Meadow. Self-heal flowers have joined greater
bird’s-foot trefoil along the Metre side of Troy Track. The ragwort and eastern dandelion on the conservation lawn have
leaves touching now. Closer to the westerly
dandelion are two beautiful fallen feathers: steel blue on the narrower half,
black on the wider, with a white central quill.
The pond surface is peppered with floating
birch seeds.
2 July 2019 A little cooler now. I observed a white strap sober moth, Syncopacma
larseniella, a gelechiid associated with great bird’s-foot, a plant that is currently flowering across The Metre3. This was recorded on 1st July 2004 and its identity confirmed by dissection of the
genitalia. I am confident that this new
sighting will be of the same species.
There
was also a brown darkling
beetle (Lagria hirta) sunning itself on a
hogweed leaf and an attractive, yellow banded sphecid was exploring the Troy
Trackside jungle. The beetle was a new
record for Emthree.
3 July 2019 If I am quiet,
I can hear the breeze in the trees, small birdsong and the cooing of a pigeon,
occasional wing flutters, the hum of insects, a distant engine. There are also small clicks and tappings from
the undergrowth roundabout of unknown origin, a tiny spaced out percussion. And I can hear the swish of blood in my brain
like an endless sea surge.
A fine cossus hoverfly (Volucella
inflata) rested for a while on a leaf of the cordon oak. It is said to be associated with sap runs and
goat moth (Cossus cossus) trees and to favour ancient woodland.
There are
18 flower heads of greater bird’s-foot trefoil, mostly on the side of Troy Track that bring their own melody to
Emthree.
4 July 2019 The wood
inside the cherry log decays faster than the outside bark leaving an undamaged
tube of dark reddish brown marked with the characteristic cherry lenticels. There
are also several pale brown, polished cherry stones scattered across the Second
Meadow and brought, no doubt, from the wild cherry tree further down the garden. Lots of
debris in the eponymous pond today and it was only half full again.
5 July 2019 Leon
came down to see Emthree today. He has a
major interest in grassland and owns three hay meadows in Ellenwhorne Lane.
6 July 2019 Visits
from a hoverfly, probably Merodon equestris, a large white and a small
skipper. Quite warm and dry. I have not seen any rough meadow-grass, Poa trivialis, this year but there is plenty of Agrostis. The side of troy Track is now dominated by
knapweed, hogweed and marsh bird’s-foot
trefoil.
7 July 2019 Early
morning rain has wetted the Dust Bowl and saved its seedlings from drying up.
8 July 2019 I
watched a black fly, a small muscid, running constantly through an area of
short grass of Conservation Lawn. It
would stop from time to time, perhaps to feed, but made no attempt to fly. One of the hazels has grown quite tall in the
last month. I shall grow it as a single
stemmed tree.
9 July 2019 No notes
just a silent visit.
10 July 2019 Birch
seed everywhere: on leaves, on bare ground, on stones, on water in Second Meadow
Pond (which has an almost subterranean toadstool growing beside it).. A young robin joined me briefly in Emthree.
11 July 2019 Quite
warm and sunny. There is white powdery mildew
Erysiphe
alphitoides on the new oak leaves. Bent grasses in anthesis are at about their
best and there are still a few red campion flowers dotted about.
12 July 2019 The first hogweed flowers have opened. They
are pale pink rather than white. Birch
seeds continue to shower down and there
are drifts of them in some places.
They land on my clothes and even get into the eye pieces of my binoculars. There is a tiny brown toadstool beyond Cynthia’s Ridge, but the one by the pond
does not seem to be developing further.
The decaying wood at the southern end of the new cherry log has been
hollowed out but some creature and now is a drift of sawdust.
13 July 2019 Cooler
and cloudy but still pleasantly warm.
The Dust Bowl needs rain for the seedlings, but everything else is
fine. The Second Meadow Pond was half
empty again. The hogweed is more fully
out and the flowers are now white rather than pink. I clipped the grass on conservation lawn – I would
say there are five or six grass species in the sward. The easterly dandelion is picking up now with
two or three small but uneaten leaves spreading outwards.
14 July 2019 Something
has once again attacked the dandelions reducing both to about a third of their
former size. Whatever has also eaten
some of the new leaves of the ragwort on Conservation Lawn. The Epilobium in Medlar Wood is
flowering now and I identified it as another E. montanum. While examining it I discovered a small but
interesting colony of aphids on one of the developing seed pods. They appear to be Aphis epilobii.
15 July 2019 No
overnight visitor, so the pond remains full and the dandelions and ragwort have
not been further eaten. There are dark
chocolate purple egg rafts of mosquitoes on Second Meadow Pond.
Looking
at a big pouch mine (probably Pegomya solennis) on common
sorrel I spotted towards the back of M3 some
swollen, bright green, unopened red campion flowers. These are caused by the Cecidomyid midge Contarinia
steini.
16 July 2019 Quite
hot again. Visits from a red
admiral, a pair of meadow browns and, on blackberry flowers in Brambly Hedge, a male
gatekeeper. The hogweed
flowers attracted a greenbottle (Lucilia sp.), a solitary bee and a Gasteruption. These latter are gangly parasitic wasps from
the Gasteruptiidae family whose hosts are the larvae of solitary bees.
I
found a powdery mildew I think is Erysiphe heraclei on hogweed
leaves. Like frost on the undersides.
17 July 2019 The
first harvestman of the season made its way cautiously across the vegetation on
the northern side of Troy Track. In the Square Metre I
photographed a constellation of birch seeds trapped in a spider’s web (below).
.
