Allotment Spots

I don't think I showed you these... I wasn't supposed to be spotting, I was down at the allotment to work! But it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and this green-veined white butterfly caught my eye. Maybe it mistook the chive flower for the knapweed that it seems to be sitting on in the identification photos!

And seconds later something truly amazing .. amongst a pile of wood leaning against a shed was something so bright orangey-red as to seem almost fluorescent, a most un-'natural'-looking colour, a big thing. I watched it .. it looked like a flying strawberry! I followed it as it flew hither and thither, hoping it might settle so I could see what it was. Eventually it did .. a moth, a good size one, but just a drab brown colour with its wings folded.

I managed to get this snap on my phone camera before it was off again, but I needn't have worried as it stayed around the area. I turned to get on with some work when there in the grass before me was another one! And as I bent to look, the first one 'buzzed' into me .. the pair of them set off busily fluttering about each other and away.

You can see the kind of fluorescent orange underparts in the photo, and the big furry body. When I looked it up I identified it as a Ruby Tiger Moth, which are apparently common. But to me they were unexpected, exotic and exciting.. as well as a good excuse to sit in the grass in the sunshine rather than dig!

BioBlitz

Well we had a go in the garden at the weekend.. I'm still looking up and trying to identify many of the things we found, which is great because I'm learning all the time. The little one loved it, and his determined bug-hunting meant that we were able to identify three different types of woodlouse in our patch, including this rosy-coloured one.. I have to admit that before the BioBlitz a woodlouse was a woodlouse, as far as I was concerned!



A really noticeable thing was that we didn't find a single ladybird. Our garden is usually full of them. I've looked again this week, and have only found one or two tiny creamy-coloured harlequins, no red ones at all.

However, we were blessed with a large red damselfly, basking on a rose leaf in the mid-day sunshine:



And as well as white and blue butterflies, we found this tiny daytime flying moth:



I think it must be pyrasta aurata.. during the week I have noticed masses of them: numbers of them fly up as I walk amongst the plants in my herb garden, and now I know why! They feed on mints, marjoram and lemon balm, so I have provided them with pretty much a perfect place to set up shop.

May

A May bank holiday trip to Arlesford today and this amazing view of bluebells and stitchwort..





Heavily laden boughs of may were incredibly fragrant in the sunshine and the grass was colourful with buttercups and drifts of sheep sorrel.





I had a wonderful wander in the ruined old church and its graveyard beyond, where the grass and wildflowers are left to grow, hoping for butterflies.





I was treated to these beautiful white star-like flowers peeping out amongst the grass, which I've been trying to identify... Star of Bethlehem?





We did get to see some butterflies later on, walking in the grass (and nettles!) down near the little streams. We think this peacock must have hibernated over winter, as they're not supposed to be about yet - in the second photo you can see how tattered it is.





This was a beautiful butterfly I've not seen before, a Speckled Wood, which we found in dappled semi-woodland very near to a large stretch of water.



And as a fitting end to a fantastic afternoon, we were lucky enough to see both a blue-tailed damselfly and several large red damselflies, one of which obligingly sat on a leaf in the sunshine for us.

Holly Blue

This year we're going to try to photograph / identify and record the butterflies we see locally.. which will probably generally mean those that visit our garden while I'm pegging the washing out or fetching it in!



I hadn't been overly optimistic about any butterflies sitting still long enough for me to get a halfway decent photograph, but while I was out gardening recently this Holly Blue came and sat very obliging in a puddle for around 10 minutes.. so here is our first record of the season.



I was really thrilled to get close enough for long enough to see the banded antennae and legs and the body was a really fluffy powder-blue .. beautiful!

It kept fluttering around and then coming back for another long sit on the wet paving where I'd been watering in some plants. I wondered whether it was attracted by the wet or by the bit of blue plastic nearby which was exactly the same colour ... see second photo?

Fungi at Fingeringhoe

Went exploring at Fingeringhoe Wick nature reserve last weekend, run by the Essex Wildlife Trust. Amazing views across the flats ..

Further inland we explored a wonderful wooded walk area, full of fallen leaves and secret paths and .. fungi! I didn't get to go on a guided fungi walk this autumn as I'd hoped, so I just snapped anything I could find to look up in books later.

Identifying Trees

I spent a fantastic morning in early September with members of the British Naturalists Association (Central and North Essex Branch)in the woods at Little Baddow, learning to identify trees.

This is something I'd wanted to be better at for some long while, but its not always so easy to be ferreting about in a book looking things up while you're out and about, especially with active little boys around .. better to be playing and having fun! So to have the opportunity of someone more experienced taking the time to actually show me how to recognise a range of the more common trees was a great treat.

I'm sure I won't remember a lot of what I saw, but even if a few trees stick each time then I will be getting there .. and I'll definitely go again next year, as it was such a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours with lovely people in beautiful peaceful surroundings. The things I was most pleased to have seen were the Wild Service Tree, which is apparently quite rare, and the seed pods of Hornbeam which are beautiful .. I would have had no idea what they were beforehand. I can now also distinguish between a Sycamore and a Field Maple! It was also interesting to see healthy young elm trees growing .. I had not realised that they are not affected by Dutch Elm disease until they reach the height of about 10 feet.

I find writing things out helps me to remember (partly why I blog!) but also I am finding that its important when I have been shown things to go straight out again within a few days to look for the trees or plants again, while the new knowledge is fresh. And, later that week, I was lucky enough to stumble across a beautiful area of trees at Wivenhoe Park on the University of Essex campus. This gave me the chance to test my knowledge and take some pictures to reinforce what I had learnt.

Learning about different types of Oak trees.. on the Pendunculate Oak, acorns have stems but leaves don't, as seen here. With Sessile Oaks it is the other way around (am on the hunt but haven't found one yet).

And here is Alder, my favourite tree from the whole experience. Completely new to me, I remembered we were told it liked/could happily tolerate the wet, and here at Wivenhoe were alder trees growing right at the edge of a lake. Its got a nice distinctively-shaped leaf for the novice spotter and, best of all, its cones stay on the tree right the year round giving you another means to identify it.

As we went round I collected a leaf from each tree and wrote its name in biro on the back as a reference (sacrilege, I know, but for the greater good!). Then when I got home I was able to press and keep the leaves in an album. I had scribbled little notes of what were told onto the back of the handout, and I copied these out alongside.