Category Archives: Natural History

Natural History

GT Fungi

Mottled Birch Bolete, Leccinum variicolor, in Gunnersbury Triangle.
The species is edible (if found in quantity!) but not nearly as good as the Orange Birch Bolete.
Psathyrella, a smallish toadstool with a fragile stem, a cousin of the Inkcaps (Coprinus)
Yes you spotted it, not a fungus. A Smooth Newt under a nearby refugium.
These seem to be young Agaricus, probably Wood Mushrooms, in the ivy and leaf-litter.
Well, EVERYBODY noticed this mushroom! Giant Funnel, Leucopaxillus giganteus
Amethyst Deceiver, Laccaria amethystina, very different (alas!) from the delicious Wood Blewit which also has “blue legs”.
Natural History

Earthstars!

Three Stars! Geastrum triplex x 3 in Gunnersbury Triangle
A different Geastrum in Alick Henrici’s hand, so we now have two species of the genus in the Triangle. It has only 2 layers, not the 3 (obviously) of G. triplex. It looks much like G. hygrometricum, the Barometer Earthstar, but there are at least 10 species so we’d best wait for Alick’s microscope examination of the spores.
Natural History

Indian Summer at Wraysbury Lakes

A field’s worth of Teasels!
Male Common Blue butterfly in late September!

Glorious Indian Summer weather – 26C – in late September was too good to miss, so I strolled around Wraysbury Lakes in shirtsleeves. I was rewarded with the sight of plenty of Common Blue butterflies (the females brown); Greater Spotted and Green Woodpeckers; Cormorants, Little Egrets, and a Hobby gracefully searching for late dragonflies (Migrant Hawker, Common Darter) in the fine warm weather.

Little Egrets at Wraysbury Lakes
Natural History

Insects on Thursley Common

Common Blue butterfly on Bell Heather
Don’t eat me!
Emperor moth caterpillar being eaten by ants

Thursley Common scene looking across bog with dead Pines, open lake with Canada geese, encroaching Birch scrub and Pine forest in the distance
Goldfinch atop Pine tree
Tailless Lizard on boardwalk
Honey-scented banks of Bell Heather, Gorse, Birch on Thursley Common
Bee-Wolf with Bee prey
Small Ammophila Sand-wasp, scurrying about in the heather searching for prey
Thursley Common: managing the heather by mowing irregular strips
Black-Tailed Skimmer

Keeled Skimmer
Black Darter, a tiny dragonfly
Common Darter
Thursley Common – the sandy paths full of sand-wasps and bee-wolves, the heather full of bees and grasshoppers

Also saw Common Blue Damselfly, Southern Hawker, Emperor Dragonfly.