Tag Archives: Ichneumon

Fine Crop of Insects Pollinating Hogweed at Gunnersbury Triangle

Macrophya (Symphyta) mating on Hogweed
Macrophya (Symphyta) mating on Hogweed: one of two mating pairs, and many individuals around in the warm sunshine this afternoon. Mating lasts for less than a minute, so the photographer has to be lucky and quick
Small bee pollinating Hogweed
Small bee pollinating Hogweed (flying between flowers)
Tiny speckled beetle pollinating Hogweed
Tiny speckled beetle pollinating Hogweed
Rose Chafer on Hogweed
Rose Chafer on Hogweed
Oedemera nobilis on Hogweed
Oedemera nobilis on Hogweed
Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle on Hogweed
Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle on Hogweed
Marvellously slender long-tailed Ichneumon
Marvellously slender long-tailed Ichneumon, on Hogweed of course (just look at that ovipositor!)

OK, and to end, one insect NOT on Hogweed, the Small China-Mark Moth, on a Reed. It and many others of its species were fluttering about the pond, where they mate and lay eggs in waterside vegetation. I was really pleased to get the camera so close to this attractive little insect.

Small China-Mark Moth
Small China-Mark Moth

Summer’s End Wildlife at Gunnersbury Triangle

Buff-tip moth caterpillar Phalera bucephala, top
Buff-tip moth caterpillar Phalera bucephala, top (22 September)
Buff-tip caterpillar, side view: fully 70 mm long
Buff-tip caterpillar, side view: fully 70 mm long
White Ermine caterpillar Spilosoma lubricipeda
White Ermine caterpillar Spilosoma lubricipeda found in the anthill meadow
Handsome Ichneumon, similar to but not I. stramentarius
Handsome Ichneumon, similar to but not I. stramentarius, which lacks the yellow crescent marking on the thorax.
 Plump Frog
Plump Common Frog
A big Funnel fungus Clitocybe
A big Funnel fungus, perhaps Frosty Funnel, Clitocybe phyllophila
Oak Gall, seemingly Marble Gall, though cracked
Oak Gall, seemingly Marble Gall, though cracked
Mining bee Lasioglossum on Ragwort
Mining bee Lasioglossum on Ragwort
Robber fly Dysmachus trigonus (Asilidae)
Robber fly Machimus atricapillus (Asilidae)
Yellow Iris fruit (nibbled seed pod)
Common Darter
Common Darter
Mangrove Swamp, wet
The “Mangrove Swamp”, wet and pretty. No air-breathing roots, though.

Ichneumon Attacks Cinnabar Caterpillar; Small & Essex Skippers

Ichneumon Wasp and Cinnabar larva, just after the 'sting'
Ichneumon Wasp and Cinnabar larva, just after the ‘sting’

Well, what a piece of luck. I was just inspecting the ragwort where the Cinnabar caterpillars were clustered (by the rail of the Anthill Meadow), and had seen they had grown, and had dispersed from one stalk to three or four — when I saw an Ichneumon approach with the usual dancing flight. Grabbing the camera, I took three photographs, of which the above is the last, and I think the prettiest.

Ichneumon Wasp pointing ovipositor at Cinnabar larva
Ichneumon Wasp pointing ovipositor at Cinnabar larva

This is the second photo: the wasp has her abdomen curled beneath her body, towards her prey (ok, host, she’s a parasitoid).

Ichneumon attacking Cinnabar larva
Ichneumon attacking Cinnabar larva

And this is actually the first photo, the wasp very close to the caterpillar, her ovipositor sharply folded under her thorax: the caterpillar has just twitched sharply, presumably on being ‘stung’ with an egg now fatally implanted in its body. The cinnabar is aposematic, full of bitter and poisonous chemicals, which don’t protect it against this sort of attack, evidently.

Down by the pond there were plenty of Azure damselflies, one Common Bluetail, and some really tiny newly-metamorphosed froglings hopping about in the mud. A Small Skipper perched obligingly on a Yellow Iris leaf, not far from a plump Iris Sawfly larva.

Small Skipper on Yellow Iris leaf
Small Skipper on Yellow Iris leaf

Down at the Picnic Meadow, ignoring a picnic and dropped bicycle in the entirely dry brown grass, an Essex Skipper visited some Bramble flowers. It’s just like the Small Skipper, but without the orange on the antennae.  A Meadow Brown sat in the grass.

Essex Skipper on Bramble flower picnic meadow
Essex Skipper on Bramble flower picnic meadow

In the woods, a Holly Blue flew high, near a Holly tree. A Small White completed the butterfly tally for the walk.

Large Skipper and Ichneumon in Gunnersbury Triangle

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
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, probably
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
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.

 

More a Bug than a Butterfly Transect

I had a go at the ‘regular’ butterfly transect down at the reserve. It was warm and humid but overcast and it didn’t look promising. A large willow covered in Gypsy Moth caterpillars had been loosened by all the rain, and had fallen across the path. I lopped off the crown branches and carted them down to a dead hedge to fill in a gap someone had been climbing through.

The sun peeped out and the cloud cover reduced to maybe 60%, making it warm and pleasant. A single Small White appeared over the ramp and made it onto the transect. I wandered around the reserve, but there was nothing until I found a solitary Speckled Wood in the large meadow.

However, there was plenty to notice all around. The building site looks a lot better now the ‘Costa Concordia’ white horizontal balcony cladding on ‘Chiswick Point’ (well, it’s in Acton Green and on Bollo Lane, but I guess Bollo Block didn’t quite have the same cachet) has been completed: it will be nice when the noise of cranes and drilling stops.

Handsome iridescent green male Oedemera nobilis on Catsear
Handsome iridescent green male Oedemera nobilis on Catsear

Many ichneumon flies were out on the Hogweed, some mating; almost every Catsear flowerhead had one or two handsomely iridescent green Oedemera nobilis, the “thick-kneed flower beetle” – only the males have the swollen hind femurs, but both sexes have a gap between the slender wing-cases. The males were of noticeably varying sizes, presumably the large ones having the best chances of mating.

Tent of Comma? caterpillars on Stinging Nettle
Tent of Peacock butterfly caterpillars on Stinging Nettle

A fine bustling mass of hairy black early-instar caterpillars of the Peacock butterfly, wriggled on their silk tent atop a Stinging Nettle.

Laburnum leaf beetle larva doing an impressive amount of leaf damage
Laburnum leaf beetle larva doing an impressive amount of leaf damage

The Laburnum by the main path is being eaten full of holes, probably a good thing for a non-native shrub in the reserve, by spotted and striped larvae of the Laburnum Leaf Beetle. Never seen it before.

Mating Rose Sawflies
Mating Rose Sawflies

The wild rose in the car park hedge was host to a mating pair of Rose Sawfly, a serious pest for gardeners but an attractive insect with a bright yellow abdomen.

Large Red Damselflies in cop over a lot of healthy Starwort in the pond
Large Red Damselflies in cop over a lot of healthy Starwort in the pond

As if all these treats weren’t enough, there were Large Red Damselflies mating and egg-laying on the pond, Common Blue Damselflies, lots of Hoverflies, Click Beetles (seemingly Athous haemorrhoidalis), large brown frog tadpoles and small black toadpoles, singing Blackcaps, a Song Thrush, a Jay, and plenty more. Maybe it’s not just Bugs Day on Saturday, but Bugs Week.