Interesting Insects

The last few weeks have seen an explosion in the number and variety of insects around so today's post is an insect special!

Let's start off with a dragonfly, one I spotted sheltering in the long grass at the side of one of the lakes at Blashford.

This is a black-tailed skimmer, probably a female or an immature male due to the lack of clear anal appendages. This species was first recorded in the UK in 1934 but is now a common species. It is thought the creation of gravel pits is a factor in their increase as they like extensive open unvegetated areas. 

Like much of the UK, the most common dragonfly or damselfly species locally is the common blue damselfly. 

This species lives in a wide range of habitats from small ponds to rivers but is especially common around lakes and reservoirs. 

There are just two species of damselfly in the UK which have obviously coloured wings- they belong to the Calopteryx genus and are a type of damselfly known as demoiselles1. 

The more common of these two species is this one, the banded demoiselle. The spots on the wings start of as dark brown in immature males before developed into the black of adults. 

The other species is slightly less common, though is still fairly abundant and is the beautiful demoiselle. 

This similar species is generally only found in the west of the UK2.

I haven't seen that many moths yet this year but I did see one of the easiest to spot and identify, the cinnabar moth. 

As usual in nature, the bright markings are a warning to potential predators. They eat ragwort, a plant which is poisonous to mammals and unpleasant for birds to eat3.

Some moths are much harder to spot but if you look in the hedgerows and bushes you can spot all sorts of interesting species. 

This is a yellow-barred long-horn moth. This is a day-flying moth and you can tell from the pale tips to it's antennae that this individual is a female. Male antennae are actually twice as long as female antennae which seems ludacris- the antennae on males are four-times longer than the moth itself!

I am also discovering new insects I haven't seen before and they are endlessly fascinating. You might assume this species is some form of ladybird at first glance but when you more closely it doesn't seem to fit the bill. 

This is actually a red and black froghopper. Like the cinnabar moth, the markings highlight it's unpleasant taste to predators. This froghopper mainly gets its food from sucking the vegetable juices of grasses. It can both fly and jump up to 70 centimetres. 

A beetle next and this is a garden chafer.

I couldn't find much information about this beetle but I am intrigued by it's look- you don't see many insects with such different colored wing casing to the rest of the body. 

I'm seem a couple of interesting looking flies lately too. 

This fly belong to the genus Tenthredo and like many insects has the markings of a wasp despite being completely harmless. 

This one is of the genus Panorpa which means it's a type of scorpion fly. These are so called because the males have what looks like a scorpion tail but is actually claspers for mating- this individual is a female4. Scorpion flies scavenge dead insects are regularly steal food which is trapped in spider webs. Males are often killed by the females when they mate so they placate females with a present of a dead insect or a mass of saliva. 

To conclude, here are some recent photos of two more insects I've discussed on the blog before:

Swollen-thighed beetle

Roesel's bush cricket

That's all for today but there will be more next week with a focus on the larger wildlife I've seen lately.

1: British Dragonflies: Banded Demoiselle

2: British Dragonflies: Beautiful Demoiselle

3: The Wildlife Trusts: Cinnabar

4: The Wildlife Trusts: Scorpion Fly

Thanks also to Chris Brooks on ispotnature.org for confirming the identities of many of these species.

RSPB Weymouth Reserves

For the first time in a little while I went on a wildlife expedition today. I headed over to Weymouth, a seaside town on the Dorset coast which is home to two small RSPB reserves.

First up was Radipole Lake, a reedy lake in central Weymouth. It reminded me a lot of one of my favourite nature reserves, Winnall Moors in Winchester, but this is even more urban. You can see just how close it is to the town in this photo.

My first sightings were members of the heron family, a grey heron and a little egret. Both are always welcome sights. 

There were also plenty of ducks around including tufted ducks and mallards. 

You can see a mallard here who looks a little different. It's possible that this individual is still undergoing losing it's eclipse plumage. Male mallards moult between June and September and look very similar to females during this time. It's also possible that this individual might be a cross breed, the result of a mallard breeding with a domestic duck or another species. 

I spotted a few cormorants sat on a pile of rocks near these ducks. 

Whilst some cormorants are resident in the UK, the numbers vastly increase over the winter months. I've started to notice cormorant numbers increasing significantly everywhere I've been over the last few weeks. 

It wasn't just birds that I saw at Radipole. It may be late September but there were still plenty of butterflies and dragonflies around including this peacock butterfly and common darter. 

Though not as glamourous, I also saw a large slug. 

Then it was on to Lodmoor, which houses another large reedbed. It too is located very close to the town centre. 

It was something of a feeding frenzy at Lodmoor with every bird I saw intent only on finding food. I saw my third species of duck of the day, a teal. 

This individual is almost certainly a wintering bird from Europe, probably having come from the Baltic or Siberia. 

Nearby was a moorhen with two juveniles still sticking close to it. 

Moorhen chicks can feed themselves within a few days of birth but clearly stick near their mother for some time. Moorhens lay between four to twelve eggs but it's common that only the two eldest survive as had probably happened here.

I was pleased to be able to get closer than I ever had before to black-tailed godwits at Lodmoor. There were good numbers Lodmoor and a few at Radipole too.

Most appeared to still be in their browny-orange breeding plumage but the odd one, like the last photo here, were already in their winter plumage- it may be that this was a juvenile. 

Another, much smaller wader that was present at Lodmoor were dunlins. 

Dunlins are the most common wintering waders with around 360,000 birds feeding on our shores.

I'll leave you with a few more photos of the lovely Weymouth reserves. 

Fabulous Flies

Today is a fly special! OK, so technically only a few of these species is a member of the true fly order (diptera) but every single one has the word 'fly' in it's common name.

First up is a butterfly, a beautiful small tortoiseshell on some buddleia.

This is the 20th species of butterfly I've seen this year, all of them within 20 miles of home. Unfortunately the number of tortoiseshells has dramatically decreased over the last few years. The popular theory for this is due to the increase of the parasitic fly Sturmia bella. The fly lays its eggs on the foodplant of the butterfly larvae. The larvae accidentally eat the fly eggs and the fly grub feeds on the inside of it's host, eventually killing it when the larvae is full-grown or even pupating. 

I've seen lots of dragonflies lately but most are impossible to photograph as they fly so quickly. There are several that I managed to capture though- this first one is a common darter. 

This individual is an immature male- adult males are red. Indeed the lack of red on this individual suggests it might be teneral, meaning it has just shed its exoskeleton. The exoskeletons are necessarily hard and inelastic so in order to grow the dragonfly has to shed its exoskeleton. 

Another dragonfly I saw recently was this Southern Hawker. 

This too is an immature male. Male Southern Hawkers are often seen patrolling the edge of a pond or river where they fight away rival males. This is an inquisitive species and if you see one it may fly quite close to investigate you. 

Onto the dragonflies smaller relatives now, the damselflies. A recent damselfly sighting was of this red-eyed damselfly. 

This is a female and you can separate it from the small red-eyed damselfly by the length of the stripes- this species has shorter ones. 

I was amazed to see that this common blue damselfly was still able to fly with the obvious injury to it's tail.

This may well have happened when it was newly emerged as that point they are very vulnerable to strong rain and wind, and of course attacks by predators. 

Onto the proper diptera now! This is perhaps one of the country's most unpopular insects, a cranefly. They are also often known as daddy longlegs and they are plenty of other local names from them too. 

Cranefly is the common name of members of the 'tipulidae' family of which there are over 15,000 species. Most adult craneflies only have a lifespan of 10-15 days but often even that is not needed. Female crane flies usually contain mature eggs as they emerge from their pupae and are able to mate immediately if a male is around. The males spend their time flying and walking around looking for females to mate with. 

Here's an odd looking species of fly, Coremacera marginata:

This species is also known as the Sieve-Winged Snailkiller. Whilst the adults visit flowers, the larvae feed on snails, hence the name. Unfortunately, like most flies, there is very little information about the life cycle of this creature available. Flies are really fascinating insects yet are largely ignored or despised by most people.

Finally for today, this is a hornet mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria).

This is the largest species of hoverfly in Britain and does look fairly similar to hornets, though this species of course has no sting. I've seen many of these around this summer- hornets are usually seen in the Autumn. This was a rare species when it was first identified in the 1940s but it is now common in Southern Britain and is spreading North. The individual above is a male as the eyes touch- females have eyes which are more separate. 

Bird Bonanza

Last weekend I visited Lymington-Keyhaven Nature Reserve and was delighted to find it teeming with bird life. There were a few species I see all the time but are still lovely to watch like black headed gulls and little egrets.

But actually the majority of species I saw were ones which I don't usually get to see. First up were some little plovers plodding around looking for food.

In the same area were lots of sanderlings, also having a feed.

There were a few lapwings around too, though most of them were looking pretty sleepy.

I took that photo for the lapwing but it was only upon closer inspection that I realised the ducks were more interesting than they appeared from a distance. It's difficult to see when they are so tucked up but you can just make out that they are in fact teals.

The most magnificent bird of the day was this stunning bar-tailed godwit. It's a really beautiful bird.

Even that though wasn't the most exciting spot of the day- that accolade goes to this wheatear.

I've never seen one before and was lucky to see several on what may well have been one of the last days they were around before migrating South.

Whilst I'm on the subject of birds I don't usually see, we had an unheard of visitor to our garden this week. We've lived in this house for 19 years now so getting new bird species these days is extremely unusual. I was surprised to see this female pheasant poking around the garden when I came home from work one day.

It was a surprise because we live in quite a built-up suburban area and even in the farmland not too far away pheasants are pretty unusual. We had some really heavy rain earlier in the day so I am theorising that this pheasant was driven to go somewhere more sheltered and perhaps was struggling to feed on water-logged land where it usually goes.

Something else which has also appeared in our garden recently are these great Sulphur Tuft mushrooms. We've had fairy ring mushrooms on the lawn before but these are new and they look great. They also seem to be proving popular with our resident slugs which is why some of them look a little chewed.

It still seems plausible that I may see a butterfly in November this year. There's still plenty around- I saw both speckled woods and a large white today and a rather battered looking red admiral at Lymington-Keyhaven last weekend.

I even saw a dragonfly today which goes to show that the weather is still proving fairly mild. This is a very dark female common darter.

It's interesting to see that Autumn is so late this year. The leaves have taken long to start to change colour and drop off too. Other than a couple of days of very heavy rain it's been very dry and though it is certainly colder now it's actually relatively mild- I don't think it has dropped below 4° at night yet. A longer summer must be a good thing for the majority of wildlife- the shorter the winter the higher number of individual animals will survive.