On the Bike in Avignon - Day by Day (Part 2)

Day 3

The day started at Avignon Station, where I had a bit of spare time before catching a train to Orange and noticed there was an interesting bee feeding on some lavender.

Digger Bee

I haven't managed to dig into digger bees much but a suggestion on iNaturalist 
of urbane digger bee seemed fairly definite at the time. One slight problem is that anthophora urbana occurs in North and Central America so I think digger bee is as near as I'll get.

At Orange the idea was to launch North to Uchaux but ultimately I didn't fancy the road and turned back.  Before I did, I discovered another flower meadow, this time quite a large one, where several butterflies could be seen.  I very quickly found some dingy skipper (yet again after a near blank last summer) but also a skipper that was different.  Past experience in the Camargue (and for a change my memory) came in handy and I soon realised it was a mallow skipper.

Dingy Skipper

Mallow Skipper

There were a good few spotted fritillaries around and one kindly posed to allow me to get a good shot of the upper wing

Spotted Fritillary

Also seen but not photographed at this sight were clouded yellow, ringlet and brimstone, plus an annoying hairstreak that I narrowly missed. I wondered about ilex hairstreak but didn't get a good enough view.

After turning back to the Arc de Triomphe in Orange (yes there is one!) I joined the Via Venaissia aiming to join the Via Rhôna North of Carpentras. About 10 km out of Orange I encountered a farm garden where there were a few marbled white (which always seemed to be a sign that others were present) and stopped to check out what looked like large fritillaries. In fact they all turned out to be wall browns, painted ladies or spotted fritillaries. In fact the spotted fritillary proved to be the only fritillary found. Anyway I did this time get a good shot of another scarce swallowtail that appeared.

Scarce Swallowtail - Upperwing

One interesting point here was that a lady exiting the farm by car stopped specially to tell me to lock the bike up (which was no more than five metres away) as the area was often patrolled by "bandits" who would escape with it high speed given the chance.

Unfortunately the remainder of the ride proved to be somewhat disappointing.  The rest of the Via Venaissia led mainly through farmland with little to note and a lively Mistral to face. At the Via Rhôna I encountered rather arid country, with the occasional outburst of painted ladies where there were a few flowers.  Otherwise the main butterfly sightings were individuals blown across my path at high speed in the wind, not to be seen again.

At one area I investigated as promising I thought that I had found an interesting moth, which actually proved to be a couple of short-horned grasshoppers caught "in flagrante delictu."  A good job I'm having an eye test shortly!

Short-horned Grasshoppers

I was beginning to reflect that the lack of moisture in most areas was having a clear effect on sightings. There was not a drop of rain the whole week as temperatures gradually rose.

A little way North of the Île de Barthelasse, I did actually find a nice looking neglected path with plenty of vegetation and a few marbled whites.  What I actually sighted was largely a repeat of those seen in the morning including, annoyingly, a repeat of mystery disappearing hairstreak.

In the end I had to settle for a cleopatra and a pretty banded demoiselle.

Cleopatra (underwing)

Banded demoiselle

Day 4

In temperatures up to 35C, Day 4 turned into more of a survival exercise.  Starting out from Tarascon, I took a run across the North of the Alpilles.  This was firmly the day of the cleopatra as both males and females turned up repeatedly especially in the morning.  They were also extremely reluctant to settle but in the end I managed to get a video capturing a bit of both and showing the colouring.

Cleopatra

Matters were made considerably worse when I realised I had an hour less than planned to catch a train at Cavaillon, and so was forced into cycling at as much pace as I could manage for the last 25+ km.

I did stop briefly for a rest and had a bit of a surprise when on a rare plant I found a stripey bee that appeared to have a bloated white abdomen. It clearly noticed me and took off towards me and started flying from right to left repeatedly in what appeared to be some sort of threatening behaviour before finally moving off.

Unfortunately the camera couldn't help with even video evidence but I was able to establish that it was  a wool carder bee.

Day 5 

Increasingly tired and interested in creature comforts I decided to roughly repeat the run from the first day as it passed through the best area for nature.  The result was perhaps inevitably that, having dispelled any notion of finding the hungarian glider, I saw pretty much the same species - white admiral, marbled white, spotted fritillary etc. but with one major difference.

Regiscola Bidens

At the spot West of Les Angles where I first stopped on Day 1, I found up to twenty massive insects circling an area of broken bushes.  They were black, about as long as a dragon fly, thicker than most caterpillars, and had two bright yellow stripes.  They also had antennae suggesting they were bees or wasps

On the way back later in the day I encountered a French Natural Biologist who told me they were regiscola bidens, i.e. mammoth wasp, a species that predates on the rhinoceros beetle.  Whilst it looks highly dangerous, it is actually very placid and rarely stings. Apologies for the poor photo.

I got chatting to the French chap who, as well as complaining about the local authority's failure to protect the area, for example by cutting it as on Day 1, told me that it held over 500 distinct species, of which over half had special protection status.

There was something about that that made me feel I had made the right decision!

On the Bike in Avignon - Day by Day (Part 1)

Day 1

Not far East of the Avignon suburb Les Angles, there was a nice South facing bank where I spent a bit of time.  It was quickly possible to see marbled white and a number of suspected fritillaries and brown butterflies, which turned out to be meadow browns. (I had hoped for gatekeeper!)  Very conspicuous also was the violet carpenter bee, as was the case throughout the whole trip.  I hadn't realised how big their wingspan is in flight. Nearby I noticed a parked lorry whose driver seemed to give me an ironic glance as I cycled past..

Not far down the road the first white admiral appeared, as did a single, slightly dilapidated holly blue, the only time I saw one on the whole trip. 

Violet Carpenter Bee

Holly Blue

In roughly the same area the first painted lady occurred as did the almost inevitable speckled wood, the South European version obviously.

Painted Lady

Speckled Wood

More excitingly the first for me new insect was this scarce chaser, a fine looking thing:

Scarce Chaser

It does occur in the UK but rarely according to AI:- "Threatened, it primarily inhabits slow-flowing river flood plains and marshes in southern and eastern England."  However the cycle track to Aramon was as dry as a bone.

After a break in Aramon I investigated a hilly area near Théziers where there a lot of white admirals and my fist sighting of a male cleopatra while I sat eating cherries bought in Aramon market.  Here, remembering my one off experience near Bordeaux last year, I started to wonder if some the really large butterflies I could see down the hillside were in fact hungarian gliders.  In retrospect however the flight

Spotted Fritillary

pattern and wing shape were wrong, though the upper wing position could easily lead to mistaking the vertical wing stripe of the admiral for the horizontal stripe of the glider. I hope that makes sense?

On the way hope I took a rest on a lone bench near Avignon and was eventually able to identify a spotted fritillary, which was particularly interested in the orange reflectors on my bike.  It must have been feeling amorous.

I was keeping an eye open for the South facing bank near Les Angles again but all of the vegetation had been cut back and I remembered the lorry driver from earlier.

Day 2

This was the day that I planned to tour all the gardens I could find in  Avignon, partly because this proved a successful approach when I visited Bordeaux last year and partly because I was looking to find at least some shelter from very strong winds gusting up to 40 mph.

Unfortunately none of the Avignon parks I visited had much to offer the naturalist although the Jardin des Doms is a big project with potential (and was the most windswept) and I elected not to join the hordes of tourists visiting the Palais des Papes.

What I did find however was a very nice piece of flower meadow sitting for no apparent reason next to a car park near the Chemin des Canaux cycle track.  Here there were a lot of small coppers for whom the mating season had clearly begun, making it easy to spot the difference between the males and females.

Male Small Copper

Female Small Copper

I don't think I've ever noticed this gender difference before.  The male is well darker.

Common blues were also mating and less easy to catch up with as constantly on the move and a few large skipper were also sighted.

However, the one that got me really going was a scarce swallowtail, drifting repeatedly around the sight.  I have seen them before but seldom and did not know that they were to turn up again over the coming days.

Scarce Swallowtail (underwing)

A couple of interesting bees turned up too, and I think the one on the right might just be a white-tailed bumblebee

Furrow Bee

White-tailed Bumblebee?

I can't identify the furrow bee more closely.

On the bike in Avignon - Overview

Last week I managed five days of cycling and nature watching in the Vaucluse area of France, during which I covered the following excursions:-

Day 1 Avignon - Via Rhona - Théziers and return

Day 2 Avignon parks circular

Day 3 Orange - Avignon via Via Venaissia and Via Rhona

Day 4 Beaucaire - Cavaillon (on  EuroVelo Route 8)

Day 5 Same as day 1 but continuing on Via Rhona to include part of the Pont du Gard Greenway

Part of the idea here was to visit some areas where there was an admittedly very remote chance of finding a two-tailed pasha. Unsurprisingly it never materialised.

Conditions overall weren't ideal.  Temperatures were high, rising to 35C on Day 4 and there was a persistent strong northerly breeze, which on Day 2 was gusting up to 40 mph. hence the decision to stay local, also avoiding a widespread train strike.

Marbled White

It was interesting to note that on each day, certain butterfly species dominated.  So Day 1 and Day 5 were definitely the days of the marbled white and the white admiral. Apart from the common whites, Day 2 heavily featured the small copper, and to my initial delight, scarce swallowtail (then seen on each subsequent day) while Day 3 produced a large number of painted ladies.  Having made so much effort to see one in Madeira, it was ironic as well as pleasing that Day 4 was dominated by cleopatras.  All days also produced a species of insect I hadn't seen before.

Generally though the number of sightings decreased over the later days as understandably there were many repeats, and frankly because my increasing level of exhaustion made me less keen to stop at every hint of a sighting.

For more specifics on each day, see subsequent posts "On the bike in Avignon - Day by Day."

Out and About Again!

After my visit to Teesside, I set off again in a Westerly direction on Thursday.

Plan A was to catch up with the fritillaries at Mabie Forest near Dumfries as I had done last year at about this time last year with some success.  

Unfortunately the good weather had already broken in South West Scotland to be replaced by dull and windy conditions so that not a single fritillary was seen. In fact there were hardly any pollinators at all and the only one that appeared regularly was the speckled yellow moth.

Speckled Yellow

We encountered exactly 15 of them all told.

The only other two items of note seen were harder to identify and I was initially only able to find suggested genera.

 

Genus Oedemera?

Genus Orthotaenia?

The only UK representative of the latter genus is the dusky marble moth. which can however be confused with the dark strawberry tortrix so you can take your pick...

However Oedemara Virescens, the false blister beetle, is common in the South of Scotland and so seems a good bet. Anything rather than another 'impossible to say' verdict!

On Friday I returned to England in rather better weather to take part in a course on conducting survey counts near Hadrian's Wall with the Butterfly Conservation "Making Peatlands Work for Lepidoptera" project.

The practical session was a bit of a mixed bag in that we only saw one of our target species - a total of five green hairstreak - in a one hour session. But we did see some interesting things including two bees I was pleased to have definite sightings of.

Unfortunately I was busy changing my hearing aid and only got a quick glimpse of the first one - a moss carder bee, which was thought to be a queen starting a nest on the edge of our marked walk.  I may have seen this on a couple of previous occasions but have not been able to confirm.

In terms of butterflies there were a few small heath (first for me this year) on the borders of the site we were surveying but I was supposed to be counting large heath and duly registered a nil return! A few large butterflies were seen in flight but were thought to be painted ladies. Otherwise we only saw whites in flight and the only one I saw close up was a green-veined white.

On the other hand we did find a couple of caterpillars.

Drinker Moth Caterpillar (underside)

Oak Eggar Moth Caterpillar

Also seen was a nice example of the Silver Y Moth which was captured in a bug box.

Silver Y Moth

However the best for me was the last - a heath bumble bee, which I definitely have never seen before:

Heath Bumble Bee

It was also good to see that numerous peatland flower species were doing well including hare's tail cotton grass, common cotton grass and cross-leaved heath.  There were probably others but plants were not for me a priority for the day.

Out and About

Last Wednesday I took a trip to the Tees Estuary hoping I might be in with a chance of catching up with a couple of rarities - the glossy ibis and the small blue butterfly. In the event I was successful with neither but still found a few things to catch my interest.

Starting at Saltholme RSPB I headed initially to Paddy's Pond, having found the pollinator garden virtually free of pollinators.  Here the view was largely dominated by a huge number of black-headed gulls with just a few pochard and shovelers for a little variety.  Turning back afterwards however, I did start to see some butterflies and was pleasantly surprised to find, on a path interestingly marked "Wrong Way", my first wall brown of this year.

Not sure how I missed it earlier, but I then immediately happened upon a nice area of banked flower meadow where there was another first of season sighting - at least 15 common blues, all but one of them male.

Wall Brown

Common Blue

A couple of orange-brown butterflies passing over the same area couldn't be identified.

The common blue turned up at several points as I wandered around the site but only one other female appeared.

Adjourning for lunch in the café, I was able to observe some common (I think) terns hovering to hunt insects from the surface of the water, the view occasionally interrupted by hunting sand martins from a man-made nesting wall. 

Tern hovering...then diving

Unfortunately I didn't manage to film one of the terns actually splashing into the water.

Here again there were a few pochards and shovelers.

Pochard

Next destination was the Fire Station Pond, which was where the glossy ibis had been reported. However I knew the chances of seeing were slim as the last sighting noted on the whiteboards was a few days earlier on 21st May, after having appeared fairly consistently for some while beforehand.

What I did see was two juvenile and one mature avocet and still more shovelers. Simply because it was so big and placid, I finally persuaded myself to photograph the single black-headed gull.

Young Avocets

Female Shoveler

Black-headed Gull

It seems I forgot to get one of the male shoveler.  A bigger miss however was a flyover by a marsh harrier which was too brief to do much about.

Next I drove to nearby Dorman's Pool, the possible site for the small blue.  Being unfamiliar with the site though, I made the error of following the signs to the hide, which turned out not to be the right place at all and only resulted in me seeing a damselfly.

Azure Damselfy?

A more promising area proved to be the walk along the private road and North towards the viewpoint.  here there was some kidney vetch, the larval food plant for the small blue, though much more bird's foot trefoil and hence several more common blue, this time including several females.

Female Common Blue

There was another wall brown and, noticeably scarcer this year, a speckled wood as well as - so hard to find last year but hard to avoid this - a single dingy skipper.

Speckled Wood

Dingy Skipper

It was more than a little frustrating that, with other things to do, I ran out of time to complete the whole of the path. So no small blue but hopefully I'll start looking in the right place next time!

An Eventful Weekend!

Last Saturday morning I was on my way to Newcastle in bright weather and decided to to stop off at the place where I saw a good number of small heath butterflies last Spring, a derelict brownfield location abounding in litter that must now be described as 'somewhere between Swalwell and Dunston.'

I started seeing butterflies as soon as I arrived but instead of the expected small heath, they were clearly dingy skipper and in considerable numbers.  There were also very brief sightings of a flying blue shape I thought to be a possible holly blue and a brief stop by a pale looking moth.

Unfortunately all were decidedly skittish and I had big difficulties getting any sort of a photo. So instead of visiting Ryton Meadows after I finished my shopping, I returned again in the afternoon.

By now it was really warm and the skippers were much more placid.  In total I reckoned that I saw about thirty of the supposedly declining dingy skippers in all, some of which were clearly trying to mate.

Dingy Skipper

Dingy Skippers in love

So I reported all this to the North East Butterfly Conservation website only to receive an instant message saying the sighting was noted but would not be displayed to members as it contained 'sensitive information.'  All very John le Carré!

I also solved the mystery of the moth and the blue flying objects, which proved to be one and the same thing - a treble bar or perhaps more likely for a daytime appearance, lesser treble bar moth.

(Lesser) Treble Bar Moth

In sunlit flight they do have a somewhat azure appearance, hence the illusion of holly blue.

What attracted me to the area was the abundance of bird's foot trefoil nearby, which also meant numerous red-tailed bumblebees were about, but interestingly no common blues.

Red-tailed Bumblebee

Earlier on I had found a couple of items in the garden that I was able to tentatively identify as narrow-waisted wasps.  Again these had the experts humming and hawing as to their precise identity in Latin. Though there is a clear difference between the two, in broad terms and plain English they are apparently potter wasps.

Potter Wasp 1

Potter Wasp 2

On the Sunday I decided to check out the Calaminarian Grassland at Wylam to see if I could find the red-girdled mining bee there as suspected, and then proceeding to the Spetchells at Prudhoe in the hope of finally seeing my first ashy mining bee, which I had read is a bit of a rarity also with only about ten sightings a year - mainly by the River Tyne.

On arrival by bike I had no difficulty in finding bees buzzing around that had an amount of red on the abdomen and saw roughly around 20 examples, some larger and some smaller ones.  The trouble was that they were all hyperactive and only landed so briefly a snapshot was near impossible.

The big surprise was that two or three times a very dark bee of near bumblebee proportions turned up behaving in a similar manner before jetting off at speed.  When one did land it was unmistakeably  - an ashy mining bee.  In total I made about ten observations of an ashy bee but suspect at least some were the same individual.

I decided to take videos of both to enable proof of the identity of each.  Unfortunately, feedback on the item with the red abdomen was that it was unidentifiable and more likely to be a member of the Sphecodes species (Latin for blood bee.)

Here are both videos so you can judge for yourself! 

Ashy Mining Bee

Probable Blood Bee

I was well-pleased with my first ashy mining bee and blood bees are a known difficult area. It's also a pity that the second bee managed to spend all its time in the bug box under a slightly blurred area. However you can probably gather that I'm getting a bit fed up with the problems of insect identification. 

Basically I learnt what I know about bees from CR, who was a brilliant populariser and encouraged one's attempts to identify them using everyday English names.  Now I seem to only find amateur experts, clearly more knowledgeable than me, who complain about the quality of photos submitted, spout Latin terms that need to be looked up and frequently claim detailed identification is impossible.

I feel like telling them to tell they should give me their best opinion.  After all my field guide suggests there are predominantly three species of blood bee in North East England - Geoffroy's, box-headed and sandpit so it's a fair bet that it was one of them.  It would be no problem for me to explain that an identification is possible or probable rather than obscuring the issue with broad species types.  It's as if they fear losing their expert status if they actually get an identification wrong once in a while.

Anyway I never bothered with the numerous nomad bees I saw at Wylam, knowing that a clear verdict was unlikely.  I did see a couple of chocolate mining bees (andrena scotica for the Classics scholars) and a single, slightly worn holly blue butterfly.

Holly Blue

It's so much simpler with butterflies - in the North East at least.

More Flies and Other Creatures

A rather cold and intermittently wet spell of weather having reduced the number of appearances in the garden, I went back to a little birdwatching with F on Friday at Shotton Pools.

I wanted to see if the avocets had continued to frequent the shallow ponds and this was indeed the case, although numbers were not large. Also about were plenty of greylag geese, a few lapwing and a lot of heard-but-not-seen skylarks.

Avocet

Lapwing

I didn't notice at the time that the avocet has managed to fish something out of the water.

We were a bit mystified by the set-aside crop in a big farmer's field nearby, which turns out to be something called crimson clover.

Crimson Clover

A day after the latest captive in the summer house was a very small, moth-type item that wasn't keen to stay still.  So it was hard to be sure of identification but I'm pretty sure, having had one before that it is a drain fly.

Drain Fly

I think I may have solved the mystery of the fly I couldn't identify in my last post.  This time I managed to get better photos, enabling a remote suggestion of green longhorn moth.

Green Longhorn Moth

Green Longhorn Moth (wings open)

On close inspection the horns, which are indeed very long, can be seen like a length of fine fishing line.

So the moth I thought I saw was a fly and the fly I thought I saw was a moth...

The next thing was that a single large white butterfly (female) turned up from nowhere.

Large White

It's the first I've seen this year and a little surprising that it made its garden debut before a small white has managed to appear.

To complete the pattern of unpredictability, a large red damselfly passed by and another minute wasp (I think) but, more reliably, there was of course a nomad bee as well as a chocolate mining bee I didn't manage to photograph.

Large Red Damselfly

Nomad

I keep posting the nomads to iNaturalist but no-one wants to risk an identification.

Today in not great conditions, I saw my first common carder bee of the year. They'll be back.