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.