A day in Lincolnshire, Insects Galore.

Lincolnshire, a county I usually avoid when it comes to wildlife, especially of the invertebrate kind, acres of arable aren't the best for a few decent insects.  However I discovered a jewel that several of you may already be aware of namely the Lincolnshire Lime Woods.  I've not been there before even though they are only an hour away from me here in Notts.  They're beautiful,  varied tree species, unlike my regular haunt of Sherwood, good ground flora and the purpose of our trip a reintroduced colony of Marsh Fritillary, Photographs show that we found the fritillaries, absolute stunners and looking reasonably happy as I encountered at least 3 mating pairs. Also noted were several Dingy skipper and Common Blue.  Also noted a nice full grown Glow worm larva on the path. Not often you see these before dark.  

Glow worm larva (Lampyris noctiluca) Chambers Farm Wood Lincs' 26th May 2015. 

Marsh Fritillary, Chambers Farm Wood Lincolnshire 26th May 2015 

Ragged Robin - Chambers Farm Wood 26th May 2015

Dingy Skipper in Small Skipper like pose - For some reason this one didn't want to spread its wings. 

Marsh Fritillary Lincolnshire 26th May 2015 

Mating pair of Marsh Fritillary, Lincs' 26th May

A trip to the coast followed a little dull by now but a walk from Sutton On Sea to Huttoft bank although a little too many people for me did yield the beautiful and large weevil Cleonus pigra, and the equally beautiful Marram grass weevil Philopedon plagiatum    The former beast likes thistles and is reasonably common along the Lincolnshire and North Norfolk coastline, whilst as the name suggests the latter pictured weevil is associated with Marram grass .  

Cleonus pigra, taking in the sea air Sandilands Lincs' 26 May 2015  (Size 13mm)

Philopedon plagiatum - lincolnshire (size approx 5mm)

Chips and Peas in "sunny" Mablethorpe and early evening at Theddlethorpe NNR where the sun did shhine.  Another beautiful spot with good numbers of Common blue, Wall and Small Heath. Strange how you can get excited by a Wall butterfly,   Haven't seen one for several years in Notts. However highlight was not a butterfly but fantastic views of a hunting Hobby.  Photograph of it perched on a bush shown,  taken with my trusty macro lens. 

Small Heath - Theddlethorpe 26th May 2015 

Can you see it - Hobby in the Hawthorn bush. 

Who said Lincolnshires boring - I did,  but I'll have to retract what I said after a thoroughly enjoyable and surprising day. 

Grizzled Skipper and Brown Argus Nottinghamshire

Brown Argus Cotham Notts 16/05/2015

The Grizzled Skipper is an uncommon butterfly in Nottinghamshire, now confined to one or two stretches of disused railway line in and around Bingham and up towards Newark.  These specimens though a little past their best were photographed at Cotham near Newark. Several species of butterfly on the wing yesterday (16/05/2015) with good numbers of Brown Argus and my first Painted Lady of the year which was heading with some gusto into a rather stiff northwesterly. As to the Brown Argus, when I was a boy in the 1970's these were nowhere to be seen in my area of Nottinghamshire.  This is now no longer the case and they are on some occasions a little commoner than its close relative the Common Blue.    

Grizzled Skipper Cotham Notts, 16th May 2015

Grizzled Skipper, Cotham Notts, 16th May 2015 

Grizzled Skipper, 16th May2015 Cotham Nottinghamshire 

Brown Argus, Cotham Notts 16/05.2015 

  

Scentless Plant Bug Corizus hyoscyami

Corizus hyoscyami - Carlton 10th May 2015 

This attractive looking plant bug was unknown in Nottinghamshire until 2011 when I discovered them at Radcliffe on Trent, since then they have been found at Southwell and Attenborough Nature Reserve.   Its now present in my Carlton garden where two examples are happy moving amongst my red campion.   I'm not as yet sure as to the foodplant of this species, internet searches proved fruitless and I believe that at present it is not known.  Hopefully its red campion,  I'll then have them for a few more years. Its original U.K. distribution was the south coast of the UK, however it now appears to be spreading and is found in many inland counties.  Global warming?

Green Winged Orchids

A few snaps of Green Winged Orchids, Anacamptis morio, at Muston meadows national nature reserve.  They are in good nick at the moment and should be for the next week or two as several are yet to open.  Really worth taking a look, but watch where you step.  Also include a photograph of a very obliging Orange Tip that settled in the garden on my Red Campion. I have plenty of these in flower at present, all the result of a few seeds I collected several years ago, I don't have the heart to pull them up they are so nice.  

My Least Favourite Terrestrial Arthropod

Beetles, can't get enough of them, Bees and Wasps the same, Ants, not fot me even centipedes and woodlice hold a certain fascination, but ticks, they unsettle me like nothing else.  Plenty to be found on Budby Heath today.  Had an April sweep over the heath and along woodland edges to see what was out and about early,  Well Ixodes ricinus. the sheep tick seemed to turn up quite regularly in the net.  Good job I had long trousers on.  Not a lot else to find other than  the Oil beetle Meloe proscarabeus,  a single female minotaur beetle perambulating across the sand (usually these chaps don't come out until dark and several of my favourites the Tiger beetle Cicindela campestris.  Only beetle of note in the sweep net was the tiny red and black weevil Coeliodinus rubicundus (no picture provided as its a little too small to photograph clearly) 

Ixodes ricinus - Budby Heath 

Tiger Beetle - taking in the rays Budby Heath 26th April 2015

Sweet violets and the curious case of the lemming-like badger.

Woodlands in spring,  I probably don't need to say a lot more about them to those who read this blog, they're just the place to be, strong sunlight on the woodland floor and early spring flowers.  My local patch has quite an extensive covering of Viola odorata, the sweet violet at this time of year.  I know that they exist in purple and I know that they exist in white,  but it's the first time that I've noticed that they exist in intermediate colour forms as well, between the white and the purple.  Got me thinking of Mendelian genetics and co-dominance where both alleles contribute to the phenotype of their offspring, a trait shown by Red Campion, White Campion and the intermediate pink coloured variety. I'm just presuming that this is the case for the violet, I tried a bit of an internet search to discover flower colour inheritance but to no avail.  Photographs are shown to illustrate the varieties seen.

It's also the time of year for young badgers, and it was rather sad to see a rather small freshly dead fellow at the base of a steep clay cliff.  I can only speculate that this poor chap out on one of his first forays strayed a little to close to the edge and took a tumble. Not being a brock expert I don't even know when the young start to leave their sett so I might be spouting absolute tosh. This animal was about the size of a size 10 walking boot.

Viola odorata - normal purple form. 

V. odorata - white form 

V. odorata - intermediate form. 

Young dead badger, April 2015. 

Heavy Metal

I'm sure many of you have read about the effect mine spoil has on vegetation and the difficulty that some plants have in colonising spoil heaps. I've always enjoyed walking on spoil heaps as the plants that do manage to colonise are often rather scarce or not found in the surrounding countryside.  My local heap is the site of the old Gedling Colliery although Nottinghamshire is dotted with many similar sites and all of them if they haven't been capped by clay still show traces of mine spoil. The majority of Gedling has been capped but those areas still uncapped are pretty good floristically.  One of the major waste products discarded from coal mining are nodules of iron pyrites commonly known as fools gold, chemically Iron Sulphide. Iron pyrites occurs commonly in the carboniferous measures of Nottinghamshire and can be found on the spoil heaps if you keep a keen eye out.  I picked one such nodule up several years ago and brought it back to my garden and plonked it onto my rockery. This rockery is covered by Helxine soleirolii, "baby's tears" that creeps over and around the stones. As can be seen after a wet and damp winter it struggles where the Iron pyrites sits, in summer it manages to grow around and below the pyrites lump.  The reason for the dieback is the reaction between pyrites air and water,  the resultant products form both Iron oxides and Sulphuric acid. It's the sulphuric acid run off that's causing plant death.   I think the picture illustrates it rather well.

 Helxine damage caused by Iron pyrites derived sulphuric acid (10p for scale)