Tag Archives: Marbled White

Hutchinson’s Bank, Grey July Day, Brilliant!

Toadflax Brocade moth caterpillar on Purple Toadflax
White-Tailed Bumblebee on Greater Knapweed
A Spotted Hoverfly on Weld
Crab Spider on Pyramidal Orchid
Soldier Beetles on Wild Carrot
Soldier Beetles Mating
Marbled White
Six-Spot Burnet Moth
Kidney Vetch
Female Small Skipper
Marjoram, a characteristic flower of Chalk Grassland
Parasitic Wasp
Chrysomelid Flower Beetle on ? Rough Hawkbit
Plume Moth
Pyramidal Orchids in Chalk Grassland
In the evening, I gave my ‘Urban Nature Reserve’ talk to a local group

Insects (and Flowers) of Chalk Grassland at Aston Rowant

6-Spot Burnet Moth side view with proboscis nectaring on Marjoram, antennae iridescent blue. Extremely flighty on a really hot day!
6-Spot Burnet Moth on Marjoram, Red on Iridescent Green (like the related Forester Moth, which flies here earlier in the year)
6-Spot Burnet Moth on Marjoram, same insect, looking Red on Black. The brilliant conspicuous coloration is evidently aposematic, more or less honestly warning that the insects are toxic, containing cyanogenic glucosides. A recent article finds, however, that the most toxic burnet moths are not more aposematic, i.e. there is no quantitative relationship. (But wouldn’t the less toxic moths evolve to look like the most toxic ones, as it’s safer…)
Moulting Grasshopper
Hoverfly on St John’s Wort
A magnificently large Parasitic Wasp on Hogweed
Soldier Beetle on Hogweed
Pyrausta nigrata: a beautiful chocolate-brown Micro Moth of downland with a wavy wing bar, among the wild Thyme (that’s how small it is)
Common Blue butterfly on Self-Heal
Marbled White on Scabious
Dark Green Fritillary (with quaking-grass above). Not only rare, but very flighty! I was happy to get this long shot through the grass.

There were also Small Whites, Meadow Browns, Gatekeepers, Small Skippers, and possibly Chalkhill Blues about.

A magnificently short, gnarly Beech getting a good toe-hold on the Chalk
Well this probably is a Chiltern Gentian, the flowers are large, and showier than the Autumn Gentian; pinker than the camera has made it look, too

Butterflies in Tuscany

Common Blue [L’icaro o argo azzurro] (Polyommatus icarus) on Lavender beside the swimming pool of the lovely agriturismo farm, Rocca di Cispiano, where we stayed in Chianti. Species names are shown in English [Italian] and (Latin).

Pool area: not an obvious place for butterflies, but the clever planting of a Lavender border made all the difference

Scarce Swallowtail [Il podalirio] (Iphiclides podalirius), a large butterfly with a distinctive sailing flight, taking nectar beside the pool
Silver-Washed Fritillary [La pafia o Tabacco di Spagna o Fritillaria] (Argynnis paphia), a handsome and distinctive species

Tuscan landscape (Chianti): hilltop farms, Vines (bright green rows), Olive trees (blue-gray trees in rows), low mixed maquis (macchia mediterranea) forest, Cypress trees on left skyline

Nine-Spotted Moth [La fegea] (Amata phegea) frequently visited the lavender border and other flowers. It was once also found in England; Chris Manley suggests that global warming might allow it to return (a possible silver lining to that cloud).
Brimstone [La cedronella] (Gonepteryx rhamni)
Hummingbird Hawkmoth [La sfinge del galio o sfinge colibrì] (Macroglossum stellatarum), darting from flower to flower each time just before I managed to focus the little camera …

Bee-fly (neither a bee nor a butterfly) half-hovering to take nectar, making a particularly loud buzz

Meadow Brown [La Giurtina o Maniola comune] (Maniola jurtina)
Red Admiral [L’atalanta] (Vanessa atalanta). It has  a chunk out of its right hindwing, showing it survived an attack.
The enormous, fearsome, but non-aggressive Mammoth Wasp, [La vespa mammuth] (Megascolia maculata), on Wild Artichoke. Presumably its sting would be serious but I can’t find any record of people being stung by this peaceful insect.

A Mammoth Wasp visiting a potted Hottentot Fig, with a wide view of the Tuscan landscape

Oak Yellow Underwing Moth (Catocala nymphagoga) on shower beside pool

The bushes by the pool attracted this Southern White Admiral [Il Silvano azzurro o Piccolo silvano] (Limenitis reducta)
Swallows  [La rondine] (Hirundo rustica) swooping over the pool at sunset. Many pairs nest in the farm buildings; there were two active nests inside our porch.

Perfect butterfly habitat a short walk from the agriturismo: meadow grass by Olive groves with Scabious (blue) and St John’s Wort (yellow). There’s a tiny Queen of Spain Fritillary in the picture!

Sloe Hairstreak [Satiro dell’acacia] (Satyrium acaciae)
Swallowtail [Il macaone] (Papilio machaon); this one at Brolio castle, but there were many near the agriturismo too
Queen of Spain Fritillary [La latonia]  (Issoria lathonia) on Scabious
Clouded Yellow [La crocea, La limoncella, Il postiglione] (Colias croceus) pair in nuptial flight
Marbled White [La galatea] (Melanargia galathea)
Probably Eastern Burnet Moth [La carniolica] (Zygaena cf carniolica) on Scabious.

Zygaena cf carniolica taking flight. The brilliant red underwings give a strong and honest warning signal of the insect’s inedibility.

Eastern Dappled White [L’ausonia] (Euchloe ausonia)

Olive Grove and Spanish Broom. Butterflies skittered about the flowery meadow below the trees.

Wall Brown [La megera] (Lasiommata megera)
A lizard, probably the Common Wall Lizard [Lucertola muraiola] (Podarcis muralis) given its dark chin, scurried along the wooden rail at the edge of the pool area.

A very battered Oak Yellow Underwing that has survived an attack by a bird

Great Banded Grayling [Circe, Satiro circe, Sileno] (Brintesia circe)
Dingy Skipper [Tagete] (Erynnis tages). There were Large Skippers about too, but their habit of perching on slender waving grasses made photography hopeless.
Painted Lady [La vanessa del cardo] (Vanessa cardui)
Spotted Fritillary [La didima] (Melitaea didyma)

Some rather fine wasps apparently attempting to mate

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.

Cicada exuviae, the shed skin of a wingless nymph

All photos © Ian Alexander 2018

Therfield Heath, Royston – surviving chalk grassland in East Anglia

On Therfield Heath SSSI (Royston Hill) with Yellow Rattle, with the plains of Cambridgeshire behind

Much of East Anglia is flat, and very low-lying, indeed parts of the Fens are basically at sea level. But there are some hills, and even a Chalk escarpment. It’s pretty low, but still affords a fine view northwards across the plains. The nearly complete “failure of a major escarpment” is the result of the Ice Ages – the ice sheet, maybe a mile thick, ground interminably over the hills and plains, reducing most of the chalk to rock flour with flints, creating the sticky Boulder Clay that carpets much of eastern England. But at Royston, a delightful range of low hills survives, and has somehow survived the plough and the developers.

Yellow Rattle

The grass of Therfield Heath (Royston Hill) is thinned by the parasitic Yellow Rattle (Orobanchaceae, the Broomrape family of parasitic plants): it helpfully weakens the grass, allowing in many other flowers, so it’s a bit of a Keystone Species, one on which the health of the ecosystem depends.

A colourful assemblage: Yellow Rattle – Red Clover – Birdsfoot Trefoil

The plants let in by the weakening of the grass include a colourful and increasingly rare assemblage, which includes Kidney Vetch, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Rockrose, Thyme, Wild Mignonette and many others.

Rockrose and Thyme, attractive plants of Chalk Grassland

The flowers in turn support butterflies including Marbled White, Meadow Brown, and Small Heath. Half-a-dozen Skylarks were singing all around; one got up pretty close to us for a brief song-flight, quickly followed by several of his neighbours. A Swift dashed overhead. All these once-familiar and widespread species are becoming rather special, a measure of the ecological disaster that has spread not just across England but across Europe and, really, the whole world.

Kidney Vetch

Meadow Brown on Thyme

Small Heath

Wild Mignonette

Therfield Heath landscape with Elder-Hawthorn bush

Greater Knapweed

Perforate St John’s Wort with interesting small pollinators

It’s interesting to see a pattern in the distribution of plants. I last saw Dropwort on Helsington Barrows, a limestone hill at the southern edge of the Lake District (not a place with much limestone, given the area’s ancient volcanic rocks and slates). Here it’s on a very different form of limestone, chalk, but if the soil is alkaline and supports open grassland, that’s fine with Dropwort.  It’s a plant with a beautiful foamy white cluster of flowers on a rather isolated stalk rising from the grassland. The attractive foaminess is reminiscent of Meadowsweet, Filipendula ulmaria, and indeed Dropwort is in the same genus: it’s Filipendula vulgaris, though it could hardly be called common these days.

Dropwort, Filipendula vulgaris

Dordogne Insects

Knapweed Fritillary

Scarce Swallowtail

Swallowtail (Papilio machaon)

Clouded Yellow on Knapweed

Sooty Copper

Handsome little picture-winged male fly displaying on Yarrow

Woodland Grayling

Speckled Wood

Grizzled Skipper

Small Copper

Marbled White

White Admiral

Latticed Heath

Burnet Companion

Clouded Buff

Silver-Washed Fritillary

Iridescent Magenta-Green Leaf Beetle on Rosemary

Italian Striped-Bugs

Dor Beetle