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.

A Busy time of Year

Over the past ten days, the number of sightings has really exploded and it's hard to keep tabs on it all.

It started with a ride to Byker and back with sightings of a mistle thrush, cormorant and two pairs of shelduck.  More engaged with the insects, significant for me however was the first sighting I have had this year of a comma butterfly.

Comma

That was on 23rd April.

Over the succeeding days, sightings of bees accelerated still mainly led by red mason bee. I managed to get a video of one of the nomad bees which produced a better than usual image, suggesting it is either a flavous or early nomad bee. 

Flavous or early?

There has also been a couple of smaller bees turning up but proving elusive because of a prevailing wind.  I fancied one might be blue mason bee (which has turned up before) but various photos didn't show good angles and advice suggests that it is Gwynne's mining bee.  The only decent shot of the other one still wasn't great and iNaturalist's lead suggestion of hawthorn mining bee seems unconvincing.

Gwynne's Mining Bee

Unidentified Mining Bee

Around the same time there were no great problems identifying the first female orange tip to visit the garden.

Orange Tip (female)

Confusion however again reigned on a walk at MiltonRigg Wood in Cumbria last Sunday with V&A. It was quite an impressive venue with a good amount of bilberry.

I saw a few bumblebees with a red-tailed stripe and thought I might have found a red-tailed bumblebee queen at one point.  However the one very poor photo I got showed a white stripe on the thorax so I suppose could have been a bilberry bumblebee queen.  Similarly thee were a couple of fleeting visits from carder bees but so brief it was impossible to assess if either were a moss carder bee.

Meanwhile V's merlin app was reporting all sorts of birds, notably including pied flycatcher and redstart (very feasible) as well as ring ouzel (somewhat dubious).  The birds were high up in the well-established trees, and only A managed to see a couple.  All I saw was a pair of mallards on the wetland area...

More successful was double outing with AMG on Thursday.

First target was the green hairstreak at Dipton Woods Corbridge.  Last time I was there the hairstreaks had started to occur in a recently-felled area near the North Eastern end of the path and I had a suspicion things might have developed.

Sure enough, we found them in numbers there, often in groups of two or three.

Green Hairstreak

Overall I counted thirty and that was without re-foraging this new 'hotspot' on the way back to the car. We did also visit the area where they've been seen in previous years but this old 'hotspot' appeared somewhat overgrown and only accounted for two of the sightings. Incidentally someone managed to see as many as 74 somewhere in County Durham.

Other sightings were a peacock, and about six each of speckled wood and small white, in both cases the first definite sightings I have noted this Spring.

The next stop was The Spetchells at Prudhoe, where we fully expected to see vast numbers of buffish mining bees.  But first there was a pleasant surprise when a holly blue turned up next to the path along the Tyne.

Holly Blue

There's been a few sightings of holly blue this Spring (maybe a good year for them?) and one turned up in my garden this morning as I was preparing to write this entry. It flapped around in front of me as I headed for the summer house for about a minute.  Unfortunately, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other, I was powerless to react.

Anyway, the very dry Eastern end of the Spetchells was virtually devoid of buff-tailed mining bees.  Walking west we did manage to contact them but it was the case of a maybe a hundred rather than the thousands around at the end of last April.  Also in attendance were of course good numbers of Gooden's nomad bee, their main predator.

Buffish Mining Bee

Gooden's Nomad Bee

I must say I haven't been too impressed with my Nikkon camera in recent attempts to capture images of insects. It does fine with birds but is often out-performed by my wee Panasonic for close-ups of smaller items. I think I may need to check the settings to see what can be improved.

Approaching teatime we took a quick look for the sand martins but they haven't appeared yet.  What we did see on the way back was a couple of brown shapes that may have been dingy skippers but we couldn't be anything like certain.

So the next day I took a brief ride to Pathhead Nature Reserve and did find a couple of them messing around on the northern bank of the area.  Even with the Panasonic, it was difficult to keep up with them.  They were very small and active and closed their wings almost immediately on landing so they were heavily camouflaged in the brownfield mini-landscape.

Dingy Skipper

I decided to take a tour round the rest of the site, seeing nothing else but when I returned they were still there as before.

I sat down to eat a couple of snacks thinking that one of them would inevitably offer me a better shot - and never saw them again over the next twenty minutes. Odd!

Bees And Not-to-bes (cont.)

One or two more mysteries emerged when I decided to take an early trip to Dipton Woods, Corbridge to see if green hairstreaks were appearing in view of the bright weather.

Not like me to get overly interested in flowers but I lingered a bit over the wood sorrels near the start of the track and, even less likely, wanted to know what the fungus was I saw on a tree in the same area.

Wood Sorrel

Hoof Fungus

So apparently it was a hoof fungus, appropriately named.

Green hairstreaks were about though not in the large numbers I have sometimes seen there.  In total I saw eight.  I thought it might be because it was early in the year but a chap I bumped into a bloke reckoned the couple he saw had been on the wing a long time.  The ones I saw turned out to be a mixture.

Worn Green Hairstreak

Fresh Green Hairstreak

Incidentally, aforementioned bloke also told me he had seen a tree pipit.  I didn't.

It was also encouraging to see a further eight speckled wood, showing they are in my view doing better than last year.

Speckled Wood

Also spotted but very hard to photograph were what I took to be a number of bilberry mining bees.  I was fairly convinced of this but they were always hanging of the bottom of bilberry flowers and the state of my knees doesn't encourage crawling around in the dust to get the right camera angle.

However there was also the appearance (twice) of another mystery tricolour nomad bee that I did manage to capture, the underside being particularly interesting for the contrasting brownish colour.

Nomad

Nomad (underside)

Experts may tell us that these tricolour nomads are impossible to distinguish visually, but given the likely presence of bilberry mining bee, there must be a shouting chance that this is Panzer's nomad bee, which is thought to be its main predator.

Busy with the Bees...

I would never predicted that the first butterfly I caught on camera this year would be a green hairstreak, but that's exactly what happened.  A week ago on Tuesday I made a bit of an energetic bike ride to Dipton Woods near Corbridge, thinking it might be too early in a wet May and too late in the day for much chance of success.

On arrival the sun was still pretty warm in my favoured hot spot and I was delighted to find that a suspected brown moth in fact turned green on landing. One sighting only compared to last year's bonanza but nevertheless...  An added bonus was that, after much stalking in the same area, I managed to capture my first ever bilberry mining bee.

Green Hairstreak

Bilberry Mining Bee

This for me summoned the final arrival of Spring. 

The addition of a small bug hotel on the summerhouse has marked a major increase in the number of red mason bees in my garden.  On sunny days there can be a dozen or more.  Unfortunately the bug hotel is located immediately above a bucket that has been used to catch dripping water from the summerhouse roof and a few have contrived to fall into it.

The one on the right obviously wanted to know how long it'd been in there...

Red Mason Bee

Wet Red Mason Bee

In spite of the lack of attractors this year, male and female orange tip both visited my garden a few days later and a peacock was spotted sunning itself on the shed roof.

Orange Tip

Female Orange Tip

A pair of orange tips gave a mating display shortly afterwards but it was bees that have continued to provide the highlights.

I've noticed a few garden bumblebees, possibly the same queen roaming around and finally managed to prove it, though it rarely stayed completely still for very long.

Garden Bumblebee

More surprisingly an early bumblebee was found in recovery mode on the summerhouse.  I've seen them before in the field but not in the garden.

Early Bumblebee

On Wednesday a red-tailed bumblebee queen was on the prowl, but never settled at all over a full fifteen minutes surveying for nesting sites.

Also on Wednesday, by a complete chance, I caught sight of a patchwork leafcutter bee that promptly managed to ensnare itself in a spider's web.

Patchwork Leafcutter Bee

If you expand the image, you can just about see the stomach hairs on this female, used for storing pollen.

Nomad bees are still visiting in fair numbers and I finally had a bit of success with identification.  It looks very much like this one is Marsham's Nomad Bee, though the whole area of nomad identification is a bit of a quagmire.

Marsham's Nomad Bee

This may not be the end of the nomad quest.  I'm sure there's a smaller one turning up that may be different but so far has proved too nippy to get into the bug box....

Still, it's amazing what you can see in even a relatively small garden when it comes to bees!

Hairstreaks Record Broken

Because of the uncertainty about the nomad bee (see last post) I decided to capture another the day after to study it more closely.  Typically it became evident that I had trapped a different species of nomad altogether, so I had the job of making a separate identification.  I think this one might be Marsham's Nomad Bee though it was smaller than I expected and so I wasn't altogether certain.

Marsham's Nomad Bee?

The main event of this week was an outing to Dipton Woods on the e-bike to check for green hairstreaks on the first available day that promised consistent sunshine.  For a while I thought I'd misjudged badly as there was little sun to speak of when I finally got to the area around 11.30.  I was also considerably hampered by the fact that the rough and wet track I was trying to cycle up was blocked by a couple of fallen tree trunks.

Discouraged, I considered giving the whole thing up but checked a few bilberry bushes for remaining flowers and quite by chance came across a single green hairstreak on one of them in spite of the murky light.

Morale suitably bolstered, I evaded the fallen trees by walking the bike through some rough stuff and headed for the known 'hot spot' at the other end of the track, a south-facing slope that is sheltered from the wind by a wall.  I quickly spotted a couple more hairstreaks, then the sun finally did emerge for around 40 minutes stimulating a good deal more activity.  In the end I counted a total of 25 sightings, narrowly beating the 24 I saw on my first visit three three years ago.

Green Hairstreak

In the same area a large butterfly that looked unfamiliar flew straight past me without landing, a large flying bug landed in my hair and there was a small moth I couldn't identify.

Moth

On the way to Dipton Woods I saw my first swallows of the summer near Hedley and on the way back a red kite being pursued by crows between Bywell and Wylam, the furthest West I've seen one so far.

I'm getting a bit fed up with feeding the birds at the moment as all I seem to be achieving is enabling the jackdaws and magpies to have a blowout.  So it was good to have a couple of visits in between times from this lady woodpecker.

Woodpecker

Yesterday one particular bee spent a lot of time flying low over the lawn, as if looking for something.  I suspected a chocolate mining bee but narrowly failed to trap it in the bug box.  There have been one or two honey bees too, but not as many as last year.

Saturday 22nd May

Some incidental sightings have been a recent feature.

On Tuesday Malcolm and I had decided on a trip to Dipton Woods as the weather was just about suitable to look for green hairstreaks.  There was a bit of time to spare beforehand so I sat out in the garden where the forget-me-nots at least are having a bumper spring.  As well as a stray speckled wood butterfly, I kept noticing some bees that I didn't immediately recognise and so was repeatedly jumping up to photograph them.

On further research my initial reaction seems to be correct as I reckon they were red mason bees - not a rarity but the first time I have spotted them and a change from the tree bumblebee workers that have again nested by the front door.  There were some much smaller bees too but I couldn't get a shot of them.

Red Mason Bee

I wasn't particularly optimistic about the green hairstreaks but we did manage to see three albeit briefly, one immediately on arrival in the main target area and two just before we finished in more or less the same place.  This was even less than last year.  I had been quite optimistic about seeing a bilberry bumblebee but no sign.  All the bumblebees were of commoner varieties.  About half a dozen speckled wood, an orange tip and a couple of green-veined white also turned up at different times.

The day after I did a long exercise bike ride to Hexham.  Yellowhammers were about on the way to Greenside and again north of Bywell but I couldn't get them or a suspected lesser whitethroat to pose.

On a break by the river after Prudhoe I decided to snap a small tortoiseshell just to have a photo of something  but in doing so it struck me it didn't quite look normal.

Small Tortoiseshell

The difference is that the four innermost markings on the upper edge of the wing are almost totally white rather than yellow and even the central ones are very pale yellow.  A bit of research suggests that the colouration of the small tortoiseshell can vary if the larva has been affected by cold spring weather, which certainly fits the bill this year!

At the same place there was a nice view of a pied wagtail, which was sharing a pontoon on the river with a female grey wagtail.  I keep looking at pied wagtails to see if any are white wagtails but this one certainly isn't.

Pied Wagtail

Back at home I had been thinking I hadn't seen a tree sparrow for a while.  Then curiously one briefly visited the feeders two days ago.  Then it was here again this morning and actually inspected the nesting box the tits never use.  A tree sparrow nesting in the garden would be a bit of a story.

Friday 22nd May

After moaning about the birds' failure to eat up my leftover cumin seed in a previous post, it was a bit surprising to notice that it had totally disappeared when I put more food out the other day. How mysterious!  The only thing I can think of is that the tree sparrows were visiting recently.  Can there be an affinity between

Wood Forget Me Not

tree sparrows and cumin seed? Obviously I'll have to put out some more to see if I can find out.

Meanwhile the butterfly emphasis in the garden has shifted slightly.  A few small whites have been showing up and the orange tips tended to be female while green-veined whites continue unabated. There's also been some good sightings of red kites hovering low over the B6305.

In the colder weather I have again fallen back on photographing flowers and then find I can't identify them.  This one however is clearly Wood Forget Me Not - I hope.

The major trip out this week was to Dipton Woods in search of the green hairstreak.  I saw precisely three and one suspect, a complete contrast the the 35 I saw last year  It was probably a week or ten days too late, but my calculation was that dreary weather might have held things up.

It was actually strange to see that the development of the bilberry was quite different along the route.  In most shaded areas it hadn't even started flowering yet but when I reached the 'hot spot', it was clearly past its best

Green Hairstreak

and hanging around for 15 minutes produced only one suspect on the wing.

Then a stroke of luck - as I moved on one flew in front of me and landed on the top of a young conifer.

I eventually continued the walk through the wood, continually scanning the abundant bilberry in flower but there just didn't seem to be any hairstreaks around anywhere that was even partially shaded.

Eventually I came to an area that was on the edge of more open land, but that would have been sheltered from the sun by nearby trees for a good part of the day.  It was here that I found the other two, one of which was a bit tatty and another that quickly made itself invisible in all the greenery.

On the way back down something strange happened.  What appeared to be a minute speckled wood settled briefly in front of me - but it was so small I thought it might have been a moth.  Unfortunately, like the third green hairstreak, it eluded the camera.  I didn't find a moth that looked like it.

Tuesday 14th May

A fairly inactive spell ensued after my Cyprus holiday as I pursued various health issues and found how frequently health professionals contradict each others' advice.  The weather hasparrs also been quite chilly for the first ten days of May.

Specked Wood

Meanwhile sparrows have appeared far more frequently in the garden than last Spring and there have been fleeting appearances by a woodpecker, grey squirrel, greenfinch, orange tip and the first speckled wood and peacock of the season.

I got out for a lengthy group bike ride on the Waskerley Way on Sunday that was more fitness than nature orientated but did see lapwing and orange tip and again heard a few skylarks.

Yesterday I put my main plan for the month in force by ignoring the Naturewatch trip to the Derwent Reservoir and heading instead for Dipton Woods near Corbridge in pursuit of the Green Hairstreak. A navigational error took me first to the Dipton Mill Inn near Hexham and cost me a pint of beer to sort out as I sought local advice.

On finally reaching Dipton Wood, I began to think the odds were stacked against me as it's quite a large area.  However I eventually decided to stop just past the south western corner on the road to Slaley and walked back looking for a way into the wood.

A couple of "Private Land" signs hinting that intruders could be shot by rifle made me nostalgic for the no privacy law in Scotland before I happened on a public footpath heading east.  At first it didn't look promising as it led up by an area that had clearly been heavily deforested.  But as it got higher there were small bilberry plants nearby on either side, so I started to become more optimistic as bilberry is the food plant for green hairstreak caterpillars in Northern Britain.

Then at a clearing by a neglected stone wall there was a sunny area where the bilberry mixed with a heathery-type plant (note scientific description) and two green hairstreaks flattered along the path towards me and settled.  I felt really lucky to have hit such a hot spot by chance without knowing where I was going.

The hot spot

Green Hairstreak

I walked a fair way up the path and back down again.  Overall, I saw 35 green hairstreaks plus a couple each of speckled wood (photo earlier above) and green-veined white.  The hairstreaks seemd to be settling at least as much on the heather as the bilberry, but in areas where the sun was coming through fully and the bilberry was already well in flower or early fruit.  Several times couples engaged in circling behaviour and overall I had the impression it was effectively early season for them.

Two Green Hairstreaks

The other thing that was noticeable was that almost everywhere was overrun with ants and I encountered the biggest ant heap I have seen on the way back down!

Ant heap

Green hairstreak was a first sighting, so a very successful day.  Now I'll have to think what else to do this month...