First sight of a Blackcap this spring, right out in the open, and singing beautifully! The male songster has the smart black cap; the female, a warm brown cap of the same shape.
A pair of Brimstone butterflies basked and showed off their marvellous dancing flight — jinking like a rugby footballer to keep safe from predators — in the warm sunshine on the entrance ramp meadow.
One or two Bee-flies hovered in their distinctive way (cheating by resting their front legs on a flower). They’re parasites of bumblebees, but so fascinating and beautiful that their lifestyle is quite forgiven.
Several “firsts of the year” today: a Blackcap sang in the reserve; the first Speckled Wood butterfly, closely followed by a pair of males fighting in a clearing; the first Comma on the Picnic Meadow; and these splendid Bee-Flies with their handsomely pictured wings, demonstrating that they may be short, round, and furry, but they can fly while coupled tail-to-tail, not as elegantly as a wheel of Dragonflies maybe, but unquestionably able to get airborne, one of the two flying (of course) backwards.
After building a habitat woodpile, we spent the day scything the meadow and raking up the clippings to deplete the mineral status little by little. It seems to be working nicely, as the range of insects and flowers is plainly increasing. Netty found some Vetch and Mouse-Ear; and there are attractive Red-Tailed Bumblebees to join the Buff-Tails and White-Tails that are emerging from their winter lairs.
The air was full of birdsong from Chiffchaffs, Blackbirds, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Goldfinches, Robins, Dunnocks and the newly-arrived Blackcap. A Sparrowhawk circled overhead. The cherries are all in flower. Spring has sprung.
Although it was a bit late in the season for them, we saw half-a-dozen fireflies in the woods by the strada bianca (unmetalled road) and among the olive trees, half an hour or so after sunset.
I made no attempt to photograph birds, but a Hoopoe flew over the pool, and Turtle Doves cooed nearby. A Cuckoo called from far across the valley; a Song Thrush sang; a Green Woodpecker gave its laughing cry. White Wagtails flew up to the roof, and Italian Sparrows hopped about. Goldfinches twittered in the trees. A Sardinian Warbler raced for the cover of the trees, its black crown conspicuous; a Melodious Warbler sang from the woods. In the night, an owl called, it could have been a Scops Owl. And of course, Cicadas buzzed and Bush Crickets chirped all day long.
When you see a parasitic wasp, she – it’s always a she, as the males lack the long ‘sting’, which is an ovipositor – is generally flying about searching for caterpillars or other insect larvae. She can detect them deep inside plant stems, drills down to them with her extraordinary sting, and lays one egg in the body of the luckless grub.
Clearwing moth larvae just eat plants, including currants, but the adults are spectacular. The clear patches on the wings are where the wing scales are programmed to fall off, leaving a bare membrane. Happily the wings and tail are gloriously coloured.
Proof that Bee-Flies cheat: those legs are resting on those flowers, however much those buzzing wings are hovering!
And to cap it all, a large, brilliant Green Lizard ran into the kitchen.
In the afternoon the temperature reached 31 degrees. We boldly went out onto the steep Chalk grassland hillside north of St Sulpice, where the Pyramidal and Chalk Fragrant Orchids flower in quantities in the springtime.
At least five Praying Mantises on the chalk grassland: they are widely distributed on flowery meadows (chalk or sandy clay doesn’t seem to matter) but appear never to be numerous, so this was a good haul.
Zygaena fausta, a boldly marked and presumably aposematic Burnet Moth without any English name that I know of (we could call it the Devil’s Burnet), on Knapweed.
The sound of summer: a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets in the heat. This grasshopper was unusually large and obliging.
The hillside was carpeted thinly and gracefully by these slender white flowers; behind it are Juniper bushes and loose Chalk scree, a scene repeated all across the hill, interspersed with bright flowers (Milkwort, Scabious, Knapweed, as well as Eryngo and various yellow composites) and the dried-out fruiting stalks of Orchids of different species.
A brilliantly-coloured bug on a grass stem. Perhaps it is an early instar of the Sloe Bug, or a similar species.
At 11 pm, our headlights revealed a Roe hind and fawn on the grassy track. The hind looked at the car and decided reluctantly to move off to the right, into the long grass of the meadow. The fawn ran away down the track before branching off to the left, its usual haunt with the cover at woodland edge where it hides up during the day.
This large, long-waisted and rather dark wasp is quite a shy visitor to the Fennel. She buzzes noisily into cracks in the wall, and just this once (hence the fuzzy photo) I caught her carrying a lump of mud to do her building, so I assume she’s a Mason Wasp, species not known to me (help welcomed). She is about 20 mm long and stocks her mud nests with luckless grubs to feed her own larvae. There is a similar wasp of the same size and shape with yellow legs: not clear if this is a colour variant or another species.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature