Tag Archives: Fiery Clearwing

Dordogne – Parasitic Wasp, Fiery Clearwing (16 July 2014)

Parasitic Wasp on Fennel
Parasitic Wasp taking nectar from Fennel

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.

Fiery Clearwing moth
Another fantastic insect: Fiery Clearwing moth

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.

Bee-Fly half-hovering on Lavender
Bee-Fly half-hovering on Lavender

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.

Praying Mantis on a steep chalk hillside
Praying Mantis on a steep chalk hillside

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.

Attractive blue figwort on chalk
Attractive blue figwort (?) on chalk
Zygaena fausta on knapweed
Zygaena fausta on Knapweed

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.

An obliging grasshopper
An obliging grasshopper

The sound of summer: a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets in the heat. This grasshopper was unusually large and obliging.

Handsome blue Scabious
Handsome deep blue Scabious
The chalk was thinly carpeted by this white starflower
The chalk was thinly carpeted by this white starflower

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.

Brilliantly coloured bug
Brilliantly coloured bug

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.

A pair of slim, brightly striped orange-yellow and black Hoverflies mating ... on a car door
A pair of slim, brightly striped orange-yellow and black Hoverflies with chocolate-brown eyes, mating … on a car door
Mason Wasp carrying mud on house wall
Mason Wasp carrying mud on house wall

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.

Mason Wasp A (yellow legs) on Fennel
Mason Wasp A (yellow legs) on Fennel