Wolf's Milk

I’m a bit frustrated with this one, as last week some alien looking pink/orange blobs looking like melted plastic appeared on a stump of dead wood. They didn’t look right for Coral Spot Fungus, at >1 cm across too big for sure, but thinking I had time I didn’t get a decent photo or check it out properly, and a couple of days later when I had time the orange was gone replaced by these brown spheres. After due research, it turns out that my fungus was in fact a slime mould, Wolf’s Milk (Lycogala terrestre), which is found on dead timber mostly from June through to November. It is sometimes called Toothpaste Slime, because when you puncture the orange blob fruiting body and squeeze a little toothpaste-like orange slime comes out; something I also missed the the opportunity to try…

#626 Wolf's Milk Slime Mould (Lycogala terrestre)

Moth Trap Update

Caught a few new moths earlier in the week. The Buff Tip (Phalera bucephala) is not new, but I like them a lot, so I thought I’d include this photo of one trying hard to be a birch twig in the morning sun. The Common Footman (Eilema lurideola) with its yellow edges was new, as was my third type of wainscot moth, the Smoky Wainscot (Mythimna impura). Finally, all the Riband Waves (Idaea aversata) I have seen or caught so until now have been mostly pale, so it was nice to catch this one that actually had a dark “riband” across the wings.

#612 Buff Tip (Phalera bucephala)

#625 Smoky Wainscot (Mythimna impura)

#629 Common Footman (Eilema lurideola)

#132 Riband Wave (Idaea aversata)

Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus, #631)

I’m really delighted to record my first Hedgehog in the garden. Maybe it’s a relatively young one as it does not seem that big, and it was a surprise to see it out and about in the mid afternoon. It has found a nice place to rest up during the day in a huge pile of leaves behind a dense clump of bamboo, so I’m hoping it will stick around. There should be plenty enough for it to eat around the garden, but we will put some water out for it and maybe some food if we can find a way to stop our cat from eating it first.

Other mammals putting on a show yesterday evening were our resident bats; they are pipistrelles, but I’ll need to buy or borrow a bat detector to be sure exactly which species..

#631 Hedgehog (Erinaceus europaeus)

Plagiognathus arbustorum, #628

Several of these small green Mirid bugs turned up on newly emerging globe thistle flowers. They are common bugs all over UK, but these are the first of this species I found in the garden. This species prefers low vegetation such as nettles and thistles, and is identified by its black & green colour and, if you look closely enough, black stripes on the hind femur. The other insect is also a bug, but in this case a nymph of Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina), which I found in my mini wild-flower meadow.

#628 Plagiognathus arbustorum

#350 Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina) nymph

Gooseberry Sawfly (Nematus ribesii, #624)

I guess it’s one of the good things about a garden nature list that when you find some disastrous garden pest instead of throwing your hands up in horror like most gardeners, you just think it’s cool to add a new species to the list. Case in point is this Gooseberry Sawfly larva, found while I was cutting back the gooseberry bush (where anyhow gooseberry mildew had destroyed most of the crop). These larvae are quite pretty really, but in a bad infestation they will literally strip all the leaves off a gooseberry bush, and then move on to do the red currents. These sawflies have up to 3 generations in one year, so I might be less relaxed about it by the end of the summer.

#624 Gooseberry Sawfly - Nematus ribesii

Trio of New Moths

No rain last night, so the moth trap was out and catching a fair number of moths, the Heart & Dart being the most numerous, with a couple each of Vine’s Rustic and Uncertain moths. With these there were three new species: a Bright-line Brown-eye (Lacanobia oleracea), a twig-like Flame moth ( Axylia putris) and a Barred Straw (Gandaritis pyraliata). The Barred Straw is an unusual looking moth as it rests with its fore-wings completely covering its hind-wings, and in this case fluttered off before (unfortunately) I could get a better photo.

#619 Bright-line Brown-eye - Lacanobia oleracea

#620 Flame - Axylia putris

#621 Barred Straw - Gandaritis pyraliata

Weekend Finds

This weekend there were a few new bugs about. This rather fine leaf mine on a Nasturtium leaf is from the larva of a fly, probably Pea Leaf-miner, Chromatomyia horticola (#616), though there is another species with an identical mine. Chromatomyia horticola mines leaves of different plants, which include Sow Thistle and Garden Peas, both of which I find in the garden with similar narrow white mines.

The smart-looking black & grey fly appears to be Anthomyia procellaris (#617), due to the placement of the block spots. It is not an uncommon fly, often found sunbathing - in this case on my potato plants. Its larval life-cycle is not really known.

The moth trap was fairly quiet on Sunday morning, with this rather burgundy-tinted Middle-barred Minor (Oligia fasciuncula, #615) the only new species caught. On Saturday night I noted several insects flying around the light turned which I thought were stripey micro moths, but it turns out hey were my fist species of caddisfly, the aptly named Long-horned Caddisfly (Mystacides longicornis, #618). Caddisflies are usually associated with water, where their larvae live in a case made from bits of sand and gravel. My garden is quite far from any stream, so either these insects roam further than you might expect, or maybe they are from one of my small garden ponds.

#616 Pea Leaf-miner (Chromatomyia horticola)

#617 Anthomyia procellaris

#615 Middle-barred Minor (Oligia fasciuncula)

#618 Long-horned Caddisfly (Mystacides longicornis)

Clown Beetle & Cockchafer

It’s Cockchafer season, and one of these big beetles dropped in over the weekend. It’s always good to see them. though this one seemed a bit injured.

The round and shiny black beetle is my first clown beetle, Hister unicolor (#614). This family of beetles are scavengers, with a preference for dead animals, animal dung and other rotting things. Hister unicolor is a little less specific than some and can be found in woodland and gardens attracted by compost and rotting vegetation. This individual, as is commonly the case apparently, had several brown mites clinging onto it.

#526 Common Cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha)

#614 Hister unicolor

Parasitic Wasps

It’s been all about moths lately, but there are other insects about. One great thing about moths is the wealth of information about them online. The same is not true for wasps and I can’t even get close to identifying these two that I photographed last month, despite getting some quite okay pictures. They are probably some type of parasitic wasp that lays eggs in other insects, but there’s just too many species - a huge diversity of around 6,500 species, just in the UK - so I’ve thrown in the towel on ever working out what they might be. These wasps typically synchronise their appearance with that of their hosts, usually with more appearing later in the summer. I’m hoping this will include some of the more spectacular big & brightly coloured ones which I might be able to identify.

More Marvelous Moths

After a couple of fruitful trapping evenings I had a bit of a backlog of photos and a few identification challenges I was still working on. I’m impressed how many moths I’ve caught, and the variety of species - I had no idea there were so many around. I particularly love the birch twig imitating Bull Tip and the pattern on the Grey Dagger, neither of which I’ve ever seen before. As the weather has turned a little wet and it looks like it will be windier too I’ll give it a rest until the weekend and see if there’s anything else around I should take notice of.

#612 Buff Tip (Phalera bucephala)

#603 Treble Lines (Charanyca trigrammica)

#611 Grey Dagger (Acronicta psi)

#607 Common Wainscot (Mythimna pallens)

#605 Mottled Rustic (Caradrina morpheus)

#602 Heart & Dart (Agrotis exclamationis)

#604 Vine's Rustic (Hoplodrina ambigua)

#601 Treble Brown Spot (Idaea trigeminata)

#219 Small Magpie Moth (Anania hortulata)

600 Species - Small Elephant Hawk Moth

Moth trapping is getting quite addictive, and I’m very happy to reach 600 species in style with this gorgeous Small Elephant Hawk-moth, found in the trap this morning. I’m still working on identifying some other of last night’s moths - but this ID was pretty straightforward. Nice!

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#600 Small Elephant Hawk-moth - Deilephila porcellus

Mothing for the Weekend

My moth trap arrived, and even though the weather was not great - cold and quite windy - what the Hell, I had to give it a go. Not many species caught, but at least on the plus side I have to spend the whole day identifying moths! A single Heart & Club (Agrotis clavis) was the sole catch on Friday night, but it was a new species - one that is apparently very readily attracted to light. Saturday night was still and a little warmer after some rain, so I woke up to a moth trap with a dozen or so moths in it, including White and Buff Ermines, Setaceous Hebrew Character, an Uncertain, Willow Beauty, Riband Wave, Spectacle, Shoulder-striped Wainscot, Olive Pearl (Udea olivalis), Barred Marble (Celypha striana) and three more Heart & Club moths. Several of those caught were new species for my garden list, and I’m very happy with my new purchase.

#592 White Ermine (Spilosoma lubricipeda)

#593 Buff Ermine (Spilosoma lutea)

#596 Spectacle (Abrostola tripartita)

#594 Setaceous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum)

#597 Shoulder-striped Wainscot (Leucania comma)

#591 Heart & Club Moth (Agrotis clavis)

#622 Uncertain (Hoplodrina octogenaria)

#132 Riband Wave (Idaea aversata)

#595 Willow Beauty (Peribatodes rhomboidaria)

Belas Knapp

Belas Knapp above Winchcombe makes a great walk, listening to the skylarks and visiting the Bronze Age burial mound with its excavated burial chambers. Not that I really want it as a weed in the garden, but the candy coloured flowers of Field Bindweed really are sweet. Plants loving calcareous soil included Quaking Grass and Wild Thyme growing on the long barrow itself.

Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

Bronze Age Burial Chamber

Quaking Grass (Briza maxima)

Wild Thyme (Thymus polytrichus)

Fat-balls for Two

The Blue Tit family recently fledged from next door’s tit box are round and about all day, sometimes up to five of them at the same time taking a break from eating aphids for some fat-ball. These two juvenile birds were pretty tame, so I was able to sit close to the feeder and get some nice photos.

Two Years of MicroEden

So we’re celebrating two years of this blog and the garden list. The list stands just short of 600 species and is still growing fairly fast, at least in the spring & summer seasons. As a result I’m still learning plenty about the nature in my garden, which after all was the driver for doing this blog in the first place. I’m not sure how many posts I’ve written as I can’t find that statistic on the Squarespace analytics, but it is quite a lot, and I hope the visitors from UK and 61 other countries who have been to the site have found some of it interesting/useful. It’s fun to think of people in places as different as Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, Moldova, Ethiopia and El Salvador reading about the wildlife in my Gloucestershire garden.

The Footballer

This striking hoverfly, Helophilus pendulus (#167), is a pond and sun lover, which was hanging around the “sunny” basin over the weekend. It’s also called the “Footballer” Hoverfly thanks to it’s neat soccer-strip colours. This species is common around ponds and dirty drains, as its larvae live as filter feeders in organic-rich water.

Catted!

The cat caught this just-fledged blackbird the other evening. I freed it pretty quickly, and put it on the shed roof, but the bird was couldn’t fly and after a while its parents gave up trying to encourage it to move. One wing was clearly damaged. After keeping it overnight the bird was still alive and quite perky, so I took it to Vale Wildlife Hospital, which is just up the road. At 10.00 AM on Saturday morning, the chick was the 7th “catted” bird to be brought in that day. It tuned out the wing was broken, and likely would not mend easily, so there’s probably not much that could be done. Young ground feeding birds, such as blackbirds, which can’t yet fly very well are easy prey for cats, so it’s a grim time of year for nature loving cat owners.

After being a bit quiet for birds lately, the garden is now full of families: blue tits, long-tailed tits, bullfinches one day, robins, noisy starlings, jackdaws and magpies. So far there are no other bird casualties, though the cat did catch and kill one of the grey squirrel pups. As well as cats there are a variety of avian predators the birds have to look out for, with sparrowhawk, red kites, buzzards, kestrel (a new species for the list) and even a wandering peregrine passing over in the last few days.

Shredded Hawk-moth

Presumably I have the cat to thank for my finding this Eyed Hawk-moth (Smerinthus ocellata, #590) by the back door, and unfortunately also for the state it was left in. The brown stripe on its head, and pink on the wings and even a small bit of remaining blue eye identify the remains as this species. The Herald Moth (Scoliopteryx libatrix) on the other hand was caught in the garden shed in a spider’s web.

I took the plunge and invested in a moth trap, which should arrive in a week or so. It looks like I’ll have to lock up the cat on trapping nights.

Beetles on Daisies

Back at the allotment the Ox-eye Daises are attracting some beetles that I don’t see in my not-so-sunny garden. I did fish a Swollen-thighed Beetle aka False Oil Beetle (Oedemera nobilis) out of the swimming pool the last summer. This is a pretty iridescent emerald green beetle with thickened back legs; more striking than it’s smaller relative Oedemera lurida, two of which were facing off over this daisy. The third beetle with it’s reddish coloured markings is Stenurella melanura,

Swollen-thighed Beetle (Oedemera nobilis)

Oedemera lurida

Stenurella melanura

Pondlife

In the dry weather a couple of frogs, plus their tadpoles, are keeping cool in the shady basin - seems like a pretty decent idea to me. My other basin was getting choked with blanket-weed so I moved it to a sunnier spot in the garden in the hope of keeping it clear and attracting a few pond insects. There was a damselfly around the last few days, but so far I didn’t catch it visiting either pond, or in fact landing anywhere at all. To deal with the blanket-weed I introduced a few Great Pond Snails, who seem to be thriving.

#1 Common Frog (Rana temporaria)

#588 Great Pond Snail (Lymnaea stagnalis)