That was a bit hotter......

Green Shield Bug eggs

Summer seems to have arrived and like a mad dog I was out in the midday sun. Normally I'm wandering the hills in the morning but my youngest has chicken pox, not ill with it, but bossy! As usual I went out with a plan which came to nothing - I thought butterflies and dragonflies. Turned out a bit different. First up were some eggs in my garden. Twenty four little green barrel eggs with lids on, classic Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina). Most years I get a lot of these little sap suckers in my garden, they love the thistles. The little bugs will hatch out looking a bit like the adult, they will go through five instars before becoming adults. All stages are really rather cute, well as much as any insect can be cute. 

Six Spot Burnet Moth

Feeding in the fields were a lot of 6 spot Burnett Moths. These fantastic little day flying moths are really common around here. Colourful and easily seen they are advertising their toxicity - both larvae and adult are loaded with cyanide. My kids were concerned about this, I told them not to eat them, they seemed to manage this. I suspect you would need a fair few in your diet before they became a problem. If you're a small bird it would be a different it could make very ill. The Burnett moths love knapweeds and we have plenty of these. Some of the grasses have cocoons attached to them and these are pupating caterpillars. So I suspect I will be seeing more of this moth.

Bee Orchid

My best find today though was a new colony of Bee Orchids. Only three plants but just 10 minutes from my front door! They are growing on the stupidly thin soil on top of the old Lady Windsor mine spoil heaps. This makes sense as the orchid struggles to complete with grass but takes up to six years before it flowers. Nothing grows fast on that little soil. The whole area is rather beautiful, it is a rough grassland rich in low growing wild flowers and teaming with grasshoppers and meadow brown butterflies. It was also like an oven today. I came home via the woods to get away from the sun and had my last treat of the day, raspberries growing in the brambles. I did not ask why, I just ate them, rather nice, might need to go back for a cutting.

Looking for Damselflies.....

I'll be straight with you - I didn't see any. It was however my intent as I set out for a local pond and boggy spot I know. I only had a couple of hours due to a busy weekend and I saw too many things to distract me on the way. I heard it said once that life is about the journey not the destination. Sound advice given the destination of life. All the photographs here were taken within a few yards alongside the path. One of the good things about macro photography is that a single footstep can take you pass many worlds.

Abstract Red Clover

My first photographic victim was a Red Clover. I love taking pictures of common plants - I think they are more of a challenge. Things you see everyday you tend not to appreciate. Part of photography is to record, a bigger part is to get people to see anew. As such I did not want a straight shot. I decided on impressionistic abstract sort of approach. My old art teacher was big on this; "an image should evoke, evoke my boy!". His artwork was so abstract it made you feel a little queasy, and he smoked a lot of weed. I treated this weed of mine to a stupidly shallow depth of field, focused on the ends of the flower and filled the frame. I like the effect but I do think it could be improved.

Second victim was the common nettle. I found three in flower all lined up and back lit to boot. All I had to do was line them up in the frame and press the button. This plant is a rather useful addition to any woodland edge or waste ground. It is a food plant for several species of butterfly and many other insects give a good chew on it as well. Even us humans have made use of it as a green vegetable, to make tea, twine and as a fabric dye. If you have some in your garden treasure it. If your worried about young kids remember that they tend to touch it just the once!

Stinging Triad

Common  vetch was up next, but not the flower. This particular plant was host to a small colony of aphids. Aphids, or greenfly, are best thought of as plant fleas. Like fleas they are true bugs and feed on fluids. In the case of aphids it is the sugary sap made by the plant in the leaves and transported down the stem. The colony was still small but growing, one was even giving birth as I photographed. All the little aphids here were produced parthogentically. This means they are clones of the mother, no sex involved. This allows numbers to build up very fast, as I am sure every gardener is aware. The baby being born might already be pregnant itself. The downside to this method of reproduction is a lack of variety, leaving them wide open to disease. Males are produced later in the season and sexual reproduction helps shuffle the genes around.

"It's yet another girl!"

This particular group was being "farmed" by ants. Ants will move aphids around from plant to plant, they do this for honeydew. Honeydew is the aphids waste product, and due to its diet, is mainly sugar. The aphid simply cannot absorb all the sugar it gets from the plant! The ants carry this stick sweet substance away as an excellent food source. By the look of it this colony was started by the two matriarchs at the bottom, which, more than likely, were transported here by ants. Looking at the sizes would also suggest they started further up and have moved down the stem throwing babies out the back.

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Tortoiseshell Butterfly (Aglais urticae)

Small Tortoiseshell scanning territory

Sunning in my garden

The small tortoiseshell butterfly is reasonably common on the hills around my house and in my garden. I managed to observe a matting flight in the meadow. A pair were tumbling through the air at speed, I had to jog to keep up. It looks a bit untidy as they cartwheel over the grass at head height. This ballet suddenly ended as the pair dropped into a tussock of grass. The chase continued through the grass, wings taking a bashing. After a couple of minutes they moved up the grass blades, wing vibrating. The next few minutes were spent in a clumsy attempts to get into position. Good to see that even insects have those less than elegant moments in the bedroom department. The male got his act together, his abdomen curved around and joined to the female. At this point wings closed and all became still. Now looking like a couple of dead leaves. I left them to it. They can stay together overnight, the female will eventually lay her fertilised eggs on nettle.

Numbers are falling, in part due to climate change, the warming has encouraged a tortoiseshell parasite in the form of a small fly. Tidier gardens are probably not helping much. Luckily my garden is not contributing to any decline. In fact I'm surprised I don't have more. I would enjoy them while they are still around, hope they adapt to their parasites, and get yourself some nettles.

Loads of Bee Orchids (Ophrys apifera)

M4 J32 A thing of beauty

This is not the usual sort of picture I would choose to start a post. However what you are looking at is Bee Orchid territory. It is also J32 on the M4. This might seem a little odd but the Bee Orchid likes a bit of action. Bee orchids cannot compete well with grass, as such it prefers recently disturbed poor ground to live on. The opposite of what grass likes. This coupled with the six years taken from seed to flower means finding and keeping conditions to thrive is tricky. Once it flowers it dies, though some plants do go on to flower again. As if this was not enough against it struggles to get pollinated by a

Two Bee Orchid Flowers

bee. The flower mimic a bee feeding on a pink flower. The idea goes that the male bee comes in to mate with the flower and as it does it picks up pollen, this then gets carried to another bee orchid by the frustrated bee. However, it seems a certain species of solitary bee is the preferred pollinator and it does not often do the job. Luckily Bee Orchids are self fertile. Then their is the nature of the soil - it should be slightly alkaline. Having said all that I counted six plants in a small area, all flowering well. Enough of my banter - lets look at the orchid:

Bee Orchid Flower detail

Woodpeckers again!

My mate Rob, who had tipped me off about the Woodpeckers, was down for the weekend. So off we went to share a visit. I took a different approach this time. I set the camera up closer than I would sit. Then I moved twenty feet away with a radio remote trigger. This seemed to work. It also allowed the gnats to feed on me. I think I have midge induced anemia!

Seems to be much less noise coming from the hole now, only one calling constantly, we thought we heard a second. This suggests that the others have fledged. Only the female was observed and she was busy calling to the young. A very relaxed mother and did not seem the list bit put off by two blokes in the bushes!

Elderflower Champagne

The Elderflower tree is in full bloom and it is time to make Elderflower Champagne. Despite the name this is a non-alcholic drink which is very refreshing and very fizzy. Lots of recipes for on the web here is the one I use:

Elderflower Champagne

5 Elderflower Blooms
4 liters (1 gallon) of water
600g (1 and quarter lb) of Sugar
2 Lemons
2 Tablespoons of White Wine Vinegar

1. Boil the water and dissolve the sugar. Allow to cool.
2. Once cooled add Elderflower blooms.
3. Then Juice of one lemon.
4. Slice other lemon and add.
5. Finally add White Wine Vinegar
6. Leave for 24 hours. A covered bucket will do.
7. Strain through muslin into screw top bottles.
8. Leave for 10 days to a fortnight.

The drink works by making use of the natural yeasts that live on the Elderflower blooms. They are really good at making carbon dioxide, hence the fizz. However can be a tad too good. It is best to use plastic bottles, glass ones can explode. I know it sounds odd, but plastic is stronger for this. Once made, drink, and use within a month, this will not be a problem. Recipie scales well.

Melincourt Waterfall and Woodpeckers

Greater Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

 It is amazing what can be done with a little bit of effort. A friend of mine phoned from Birmingham to tell me about a tree stump in South Wales. It may surprise you, but I was interested. This tree stump was hosting a Greater Spotted Woodpecker nest. Given that these birds are suffering from a lack of good nesting trees - less standing dead wood around. Such information can be good for years of woodpecker broods. He was also aware that I was really keen to get photographs of this species, so he rubbed it in for a bit before giving me directions. After giving me the directions I did reflect that he might still not want me to find the nest; "..over the top of the water fall", "...ignore the broken bridge..", "..double back on yourself.." and "over the wonky bridge..". Once my son and myself had followed these directions we found the nest. This did come as bit of a surprise to me.

All birds try and make sure that their nests are well hidden and that while feeding they do not give undue attention to the nest location. This message does not seem to have rubbed off on the chicks as they could be heard cheeping from about ten meters away. The nest hole itself is in a dead oak stump at a height of only six feet, though, to be fair the stump is not that high. It is close to a public footpath that has a fair amount of traffic. It would not seem an ideal location, but needs must. It did mean that are reasonably easy to view and did not seem put off by our presence. I only got a few shots, missed a fantastic shot by a fraction of a second, but did get a chick photo. It looked almost ready to fledge, adult plumage clearly visible. The adults spent sometime calling before feeding, I assume to tempt them out. You would think they would be keen to get out as unlike many birds fecal matter is not removed from the nest........

Greater Spotted Woodpecker Chick

The Greater Spotted Woodpecker lays five to seven eggs usually in mid May. The fact that these woodpeckers are almost ready to fledge suggests an early start. Perhaps this was brought about by our warmest May on recold here in South Wales. While we were watching the parents brought back grubs and insects, this is usual spring woodpecker fare. In the late summer and autumn they tend to switch to berries, cones and nuts. We watched for about half an hour before heading off, I did not want to spook the birds. It all made me think - why can I not find where the Woodpeckers just up my lane are nesting?

On the way back we took in the rather beautiful Melincourt waterfall. This was worth the trip on its own. All in all a good afternoon out in the wilds.

Melincourt Waterfall