Fly Agarics

One of the most distinctive fungi growing in our Welsh woodland is the Fly Agaric. This is the fairy tale mushroom. Red background with white dots, little chap sitting on top with a fishing rod, well maybe not. The fungi is handsome, white stipe, ring and gills and that stunning red colour.

A Group of Fly Agarics

 
It grows under Birch and Larch and forms a very close relationship with the roots of these trees. The mycellium, the white threads under the ground, the "body" of the fungus, wraps around the finest of the tree roots. This structure is called a mycorrhiza and allows the tree and fungi to help each other. The fungi gets sugars from the tree and the fungi helps the tree take up minerals from the soil. In fact in many soils the trees will fail to thrive without the fungus. A lot of fungi form associations like this with trees which can be used to chase them down.

Fly Agaric Having Problems

The name seems a little odd as well, it comes from the fact that the caps can be mashed with milk and used as bait to kill flies. I suspect that the smell of the milk on a warm day would probably make you wish you had kept the flies. The fungi is toxic it contains a psychoactive compound called muscimol, and has been used in Siberia in shamanistic rituals to communicate with the spirit world. The outlawing of Magic Mushrooms has not, as suspected, led to a rise in the use of Fly Agaric. The fungi can be eaten if boiled in lots of water, muscimol is water soluble, so avoid the water. Not really worth the effort as its taste is bland.

The main reason why I like them is they just look stunning. They have a magic quality to them, there one day, gone the next and usually appear in good numbers.

Underside of Cap

Just Starting Out

8 legged freaks: Spiders

Plenty of great spider action around at the moment. Heavy dew in the morning makes finding their webs rather easy. Not such great news for the spiders as prey can also see them. Once the sun is on the webs is does not take long for the droplets to evaporate. This is a good time to see the spiders as well. They are cold blooded and not that active in the morning so a close approach is much easier. Will be looking at two species of spider today.

The Hammock spider (Neriene clathrata):

This tiny spider is very, very common. Most of us have seen its webs drapped horizontally over the grass, reflecting the early morning sunlight. The webs vary in size from postage stamp up to nearly a foot accross. The picture shown below is a reasonably large one.

Hammock Spider  Web (Neriene clathrata)

Though these webs are considered more primitive than the orb webs they have a beauty all of their own. From the side the structure is much more apparent. A more or less horizontal sheet web is suspended on hundreds of silken fibres attached to the surrounding vegitation. It is like an ornate tent with lots of guy lines. The spider sits underneath the sheet, unimpeded by all the support structure above the web. The web works from above. Insects get caught up in intricate lattice of silk and eventually fall onto the sheet. The spider then bites through its own web and wraps the poor prey before sucking it dry. The spider itself is rather beautiful, but you will need to get close to notice, it is only about 5mm accross. Finding them is hard work, the larger webs are usualy more productive.

Hammock Spider (Neriene clathrata) about 5mm

 The Garden Spider

Garden Spider building web

 
The Garden spider is an orb web spider, considered the height of sophistication within the spider world. Their webs are stunning and take a bit of building. The photograph shows a garden spider at work building its web. You can see silk being produced by the spinnerets at the rear end of the spider. I had a good idea that this spider would be building its web here today as my dog had run through its web earlier on!

The Fungi Season Begins....

Meadow Wax Caps

To be honest the fungi season never ends, but the numbers are on the up. The very rough old meadow that grows near my house has come alive with fungi. Mainly Waxcaps. The Waxcaps are easy fungi to group, they are often over the top in the colour department, look slimy when wet, and their flesh has a consistency of wax. Hence their name. Individual fruit bodies are often not up that long. They are prone to damage and beloved by slugs. This is not a problem as the mycelium under the ground just pushes up more. Identifying the Hygrocybes to species level is demanding and often requires a microscope. They also have a habit of turning black within a few hours of picking, this is not the most helpful. Some are edible and good, for example the larger Meadow Waxcap. Though none are poisoness I would suggest caution eating this group unless you are confident of the identification. They certainly look good in the pan!

Brecon Beacons: Ystradfellte

Female Keeled Skimmer

A family walk in the Brecon Beacons near Ystradfellte turned up some interesting natural history. Almost at the very start of the walk a female Keeled Skimmer landed straight in front of me and insisted on a picture. I obliged. Despite the colour these guys are easily missed the female is bright yellow and the male bright blue. They are not the biggest, this specimen was about 7cm nose to tail, one of the smallest dragonflies I've seen this year. In perfect condition and bright, I would not be surprised if it was not recently unwrapped. Lots of boggy ground and ditches lined the paths and hawking along these ditches was a Gold Ringed Dragonfly. It landed somewhere in the reeds and had not been for my 4 year olds eyes I would not have found it. Two dragonflies in less than half an hour - saw no more all day.
An old rockfall down by the river had become covered in map lichens. It was great to see these lichens competing for a bit of open space - and it made for an interesting photograph. The waterfalls themselves were great, my favourite was this one (see bottom) Sgwd y Pannwr, impressive.

Click on the captions for higher resolution images.

Gold Ringed Dragonfly

Map Lichens

Sgwd y Pannwr

Queen Ants

Queen ant nest building

Did not have to go far this morning to find a bit of natural history action. In fact these pictures were taken two paces from my front door. Over the last couple of days we have hot and humid weather here. These are the classic conditions for ants to swarm in mating flights. Two days ago the air was full of flying ants. Mating flight now over the queens are looking to set up home. One has decided that my brick pavier drive would be ideal and has started digging down between the bricks. Probably a good choice, the bricks will provide protection and absorb heat that will be released overnight to keep the developing ants warm. At the moment she is on her own, but is full of fertilised eggs. Once she has formed a chamber she will lay eggs and look after the grubs. When they grow up they will be the worker ants that will expand the nest and look after her every need. These could be her last few days in the sun before she becomes an underground egg laying machine.

Burnet Moth Invasion!

Six Spot Burnet Moth (Zygaena filipendulae)

The grassland on top of the coal tips has come alive with Burnet moths. I sort of expected this as the number of cocoons stuck to grass blades was impressive earlier this year. Was not quite ready for that many. I counted 100 in an area of about 5m by 5m. Large numbers flying and a lot more breeding. Seems they mate as soon as they emerge as many couples are right next to empty cocoons. Burnet moths are a stunning example of our daytime flying moths. The handsome blue black wing with a hint of oily irredesence, covered with red splodges that looks like a child's finger painting. They are strong fliers and capable of a fair turn of speed. Even better, from a photographers perspective, they are easy to approach. Perhaps they are made brave as they contain cyanide that they picked up as caterpillars off their food plant, Birds foot trefoil. Those distinctivly moth like antenna are worth a look as well.

Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina)

The butterflies are doing well. Numbers of Graylings and Small Heaths are up and I finally managed to get a photograph of a Meadow Brown. The Meadow Brown is easily one of our most common butterflies but tricky to photograph. Even on overcast days the Meadow Brown is seriously active, in the sun it never seems to stop! This one was far to interested was in feeding on the bramble flower to be disturbed by me.

Dragonflies on the Coal Tips....

Keeled Skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens)

Managed to find three of our larger Dragonflies up on the Coal Tips. The most spectacular the Emperor Dragonfly (Anax imperator) was only seen in passing - it shot past revealing its distinctive drooping abdomen. This is one of our largest dragonflies and it would have been nice to get shot. However it did not favour me with a return flight.
I got a lot luckier with my next spot, it was a Keeled Skimmer. A pair of these rather attractive blue dragonflies were hawking up and down over a boggy stretch of path. By the look of it this area is always wet, it has reeds and sphagnum moss. I suspect that this is an area where water draining through the coal waste emerges. Not that these dragonflies cared. I watched them for some time before taking a couple of shots and leaving. This was not a breeding pair, they both seemed to be males.

Up on the top of the Coal Tip I met up with one of our most charismatic larger dragonflies the Goldringed. This black and yellow stripped  insect defends a defined territory, this makes it easier photograph. Within its territory it will maintain certain prominent positions that it uses as perches. This Goldring was hunting and showing off the flying skills that these insects are renowned for. While I was their it hovered, changed direction at 90 degree angles, accelerated and decelerated hard, and flew backwards. I was also checked out as a perch, being a stationary high point. Much as I would have been honoured it would have made photography tricky! Eventually the dragonfly made a kill and returned to a gorse bush perch to have a munch. I tracked his perch down by sound - you could hear him crunching, what turned out to be a wasp. By the time I had crept up close most of the wasp was history, however the dragonfly hung around and allowed me to get really close. Fantastic creature!

Common Goldring (Cordulegaster boltonii)