Stag Beetle, Lucanus cervus, just landed, wings not fully folded
I was just walking around the triangle, talking to one of the Garden Design students about its natural history, when a mouse-sized animal scurried across the top of a post that we had hammered in to form a dead-hedge above the boundary stones. In my binoculars, it was at once clear what it was, a Stag Beetle. As I pulled out my camera, it spread its wings impressively, and flew a few feet across to the woven top of the dead-hedge, folding its wings but leaving the ends still sticking out of its wing-cases for a while.
Stag Beetle, side view
So, all that work on loggeries may have paid off. Or perhaps it didn’t: behind the dead-hedge was simply a pile of brash and logs, abandoned for several years. Anyway, we’re very pleased to see a handsome adult male out in the sunshine.
Azure Damselfly recent hatch
The triangle’s first batch of Azure Damselflies, surely within a day of hatching, perched on leaves of emergent water-plants, or flew around in cop, laying eggs already. One or two Large Red Damselflies sunned themselves also.
Large Red Damselfly
P.S. A week later, on 4 June, a Lesser Stag Beetle crawled across the lawn in my garden. I guess it emerged from the dead wood stacked in odd corners for that very purpose. It’s a lot smaller than the Stag.
Lesser Stag Beetle in gardenLesser Stag Beetle, playing dead
I picked it up to ensure I got a photo, and was rewarded with a fine display of thanatosis, shamming dead.
Huma and John on Vole Patrol with Mammal Nest Box in Perivale Wood
We revisited the nest tubes and nest boxes that we put up for small mammals in four of the Vole Patrol study woods a few months ago. It seems another world: bare leafless trees over chilly wet forest floor have been replaced by a thick green mantle over a mass of brambles that seem to have shot up faster than tropical bamboos and bananas (my father maintained that he could watch a banana leaf unfurling while he shaved in the hospital he was running in postwar Malaya, but I digress).
So it was a case of first case your hare, or rather, first find your small mammal box. Gunnersbury Triangle’s densest parts are pretty thick, and the nest tubes had been put up somewhat at random as the new team did its enthusiastic best on its first day of training all those months ago, followed by the brambles doing their enthusiastic best to hide all traces. We did well to locate 14 of 18 nest tubes: none of them seemed to have been used. We moved on to Perivale Wood, where stout wooden boxes like bird nestboxes had been tied to trees in a much more regular array, and we found them without too much difficulty.
Mammal nest box used by Wood Mice, with opened hazelnuts
Three of the Perivale boxes were inhabited by Blue Tits, the helpless youngsters lying inside while (we suddenly realized) the alarmed but brave parents chattered excitedly outside. We closed the lids and backed off as quickly as we could. The boxes have the openings on the back to encourage mammals and discourage birds, but it’s of only limited value against sharp-sighted Blue Tits. One of the boxes had certainly been used by mammals: two hazelnuts had been opened by small teeth, their ends neatly gnawed to circular holes. I’m not certain I understand how a nut can be withdrawn through such a little hole.
Off to Tentelow wood through the grinding traffic. A game of cricket was going on in the playing fields; it was hot in the sun, a lot cooler under the canopy. The nettles were waist high, the brambles thick. It seemed impossible we would find any of the nest tubes, but we did, eventually. A Scorpion Fly perched on a bramble leaf beside the path.
Sir Thomas Gresham’s symbol, a golden grasshopper (a pun on his name, Grass-Ham), at his building in Lombard Street (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Then we drove down to Long Wood, part of Sir Thomas Gresham‘s Osterley Park estate. He liked insects enough to use a golden grasshopper as his symbol, punning on his name, which might be Grass-Ham, village in the grass. It’s a beautiful wood, coppice with fine tall straight Oak standards, a proper stream running clean through a steep-sided valley, sullied only by the continuous roar of the M4 invisible above. Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps sang above the din.
Brown Silver-line Moth Petrophora chlorosata at Long Wood, Osterley
I disturbed a Brown Silver-line Moth, which flitted among the nettles and bracken. We saw Holly Blue, Speckled Wood, Large White, and Red Admiral butterflies: it looks a fine place for Purple Hairstreak too.
Acorn Weevil, Curculio glandium
When I got home, I found this funky weevil under my shirt. It looks very much like the Acorn Weevil, presumably from one of the many Oaks I walked under.
Fox and Hedgehog MasksMike making a Mason Bee house with some rather nice materials
Mouse Mask for a little oneManning the Scone and Lemonade Stall in the spring sunshineWho nibbled those hazelnuts? A contribution from the Vole PatrolBlack bumblebee on blackthorn blossom. A Brimstone flew overhead, and Commas flitted about
Well, it only takes one still, warm sunny day and suddenly it’s SPRING! Sure enough, the frogs had gone crazy down the mangrove swamp, there was a great heap of spawn in the shallow water, and some excited children (and mothers). A pair of Comma butterflies wheeled and scurried about the sky in a long, intense dogfight, their whirling wings making it clear these were rival males of an orange species, if nothing else!
Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) male
Mike expertly identified the Hairy-Footed Flower Bees around the Alkanets: they came out to warm up in the sun in some numbers. They have never been recorded before here, though we have surely had plenty of them, unrecognized.
Frogspawn in Mangrove SwampSpring! Broom in bloom
The brilliant yellow of the Broom, and the foamy white of the Blackthorn flowers, announced that spring had sprung in a Botanical way, too.
Blackthorn in BloomThe completed Hedgehog House prototype
The team spent the afternoon designing and making a prototype Hedgehog house out of Correx sheets left over from the Vole Patrol. We worked out a way to make a house from just two sheets, 54 x 120 cm each: basically one big tube folded 4 times to give 4 sides and an overlap flap, and two half as wide, one for the entrance tube, one for the two ends (joined along the ceiling with flaps on each end of the floor). We fixed it together with just 5 cable ties ingeniously stitched through bradawl holes. A challenge was to get the last stitch in, as the box was then fully closed! The trick was to take out the entrance tube and put a hand inside: the cable tie had to be poked out through a hole that of course we could only see from the outside! The result looks enormous and luxurious, so being Londoners of course we made a lot of jokes about Hammersmith Hedgehog Penthouses and luxury granite kitchens, etc etc. Anyway, we hope the hedgehogs will like them.
Pole-sawing a long Cherry branch. It’s leaning right the way across the seasonal pondFirst branch down (this is turning out to be more of a faff than we expected) (13 October)2nd branch down, path closed (20 October)Path temporarily closed due to dangerous treeCherry felled, Apple remaining (23 October)Split ends – the cherry stumpCause or Effect? Beetle borings in Birch trunk
The trunk had been largely covered in ivy, making it quite unobvious that it was about to fall. Once cleaned, the splits in the trunk were evident enough, and we started to remove branches. Only when felled, however, could it be seen that there were finger-thick beetle borings in the centre of the trunk, either side of the splits in the timber. What is not so easy to determine is whether the splits allowed beetles in, or whether the beetle borings weakened the trunk, making failure inevitable. For the record, the wood appears solid and durable all around the beetle holes: not rotten.
Steering Committee (Jan, Ian, Wendy) discussing usage scenarios for the new hut with LWT CEO, Gordon ScorerNegative Stakeholder: Flood! The view from the committee meeting. The water poured rapidly down the path, and cut an erosion channel beside the end of the hut. And yes, we had remembered to include flood among the scenarios.
Well, what an exciting day in nature. In London, too. The meadows are now as dry as we’ve ever seen them; and they’re full of butterflies. The Small Skippers have flown; in their place are plenty of Essex Skippers, on an increasing amount of Ragwort.
An obliging Gatekeeper, wings open
They are accompanied by clouds of Gatekeepers: we must have seen 100 of them, with 35 counted on one leg of the Butterfly Transect alone (going along to the beehive behind the Anthill Meadow). And good numbers of Meadow Browns (a dozen or so) and Small Whites; with twenty or thirty Holly Blues, they were high in the woods, visiting leaves, even on the ground.
Male Sparrowhawk
A male Sparrowhawk perched on a dead branch above the pond boardwalk.
Oak bush dying of drought
Signs of drought were everywhere: the pond is really low, but the brief rains of the last few days have brought levels back up a little. We spend a while giving 7 barrowloads of water to the planted birches on the embankment, and even rescued a few small oaks that were really suffering. The holm oaks, from the Mediterranean maquis, however looked perfectly comfortable: presumably with their waxy leaves and closed stomata, they are barely growing in the dry season.
Girl power: fixing a batten for trellis on green hut
We fixed up a trellis on battens bolted to the extremely hard steel of the green hut; it took forever to pierce the metal, but after that it was easy to do up the bolts and screw the trellis to the battens.
Yes! We saw a Purple Hairstreak!
And yes, the butterfly transect was crowned by a confirmed sighting of an insect we’d felt sure must be here: a Purple Hairstreak. One sat on a low-hanging Oak leaf for us to check with binoculars and shaky camera. The streaked wings with their tiny tails could not be mistaken. The conservation officer was … visibly pleased. We also saw what seems to have been a Beautiful Carpet Moth – again, the photo was distant but we all saw it with binoculars.
It was hot and humid, and we worked quite hard, but it was a beautiful and memorable day.
Here’s a bug that avoids being eaten by looking quite enough like an ant to fool a variety of predators. Its name, mirmicoides, means ant-like. Its naturally thick body is made to appear to have a typical ant “waist” with a judicious bit of white camouflage.
Ant-mimic predatory bug, Himacerus mirmicoides, dorsal view, on Ragwort
Certainly an interesting “bug” to find. (It’s a true bug, family Nabidae, the damsel bugs, in the Hemiptera.)
On Yarrow
The long and distinctly un-antlike rostrum is held under the head, so predators presumably don’t notice it much. The antennae are similarly much too long to be an ant’s.
We had a lovely day down the reserve in the warm sunshine with a gentle breeze. We dug out an unwanted post with extreme use of pickaxe, crowbar and shovel, and thus refreshed did the butterfly transect. It found a Red Admiral, some Speckled Woods, wonder of wonders a Small Skipper (the second Skipper species this week), a Meadow Brown (not common here), and a Green-Veined White. Not a bad haul. And a lot of Peacock caterpillars, if those count!
Small SkipperWasp Beetle (Strangalia maculata)Ladybird LarvaMigrant HawkerTwo-Spot LadybirdEat me if you dare – Aposematic caterpillars of Peacock ButterflyNeuropteran (Lacewing) larva – note the forceps-like mandiblesMacrophya sawfly dorsal view
Down at the reserve today, the first Skipper of the year, basking on a reed by the pond (with Azure and Large Red Damselflies too). It must be a Large Skipper from its size and pattern: uncommon in the reserve.
Large Skipper on reeds by pond
Up on the ramp, a Red Admiral; and this Ichneumon wasp, which looks very much like Gasteruption jaculator, a fine parasitoid with an ovipositor as long as her head, thorax and abdomen together. She was inside the hut trying to escape through the window; she is black all over, except for the front of her abdomen which is red, and the tip of her ovipositor, which is white. Her wings are nearly transparent with a hint of brown.
Ichneumon wasp Gasteruption jaculator
We spent the morning fixing path edgings – poles of elm, with handmade wooden pegs, sharpened to stakes. A foreign couple came along and asked if we were preparing for Vampires: perhaps they were from Transylvania, who knows.
Mating Green Shield Bugs
In the afternoon we repaired the gaps in the fence where vandals have started jumping over and running down the bank. We hammered in an enormous metpost with a tall square oak post – we had to bring the stepladder to reach the top to drive it in with the round post-hammer – and we had to shave off the edges so the hammer fitted over the post! Then we twisted wire supports and barbed wire to repair the gaps, and hammered extra-large staples into the posts to fix the wire. It was hot and hard work but we’ve fixed a definite problem. Happily the rest of the fence has become totally overgrown with brambles and bindweed, with leafy branches reaching down to it, so it seems unlikely anyone will climb over it there.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
