To Land’s End… and beyond!

It’s been so busy here with orders and commissions, and as a result I know I’ve been neglectful of my blogging friends – taking an age to reply to comments and not keeping up with my blog reading.  I wish I could say this slovenly state of affairs will improve but in fact they’ll be taking a nosedive as of tomorrow – because I’m going away for three weeks and will have absolutely no internet access in that time. I can’t deny it, I’m thrilled skinny!

First off R and I will be going to Cornwall, camping near St Just on the Land’s End Peninsula. There are many rare wild flowers and insects to be found in the area as well as some great walking and beaches as good as you’ll find anywhere.

After a couple of days exploring this lovely place we’ll be catching the Scillonian III from Penzance to The Isles of Scilly (pronounced “silly”) where we’ll be camping on the beautiful Island of St Agnes, by far and away my favourite of these enchanted islands. A haunt of rare migratory birds (though we’ll be too early for most of those) and carpeted with wildflowers, St Agnes also has the best snorkelling and rockpooling I’ve ever done in the UK – here’s hoping that the sea will be calm and the water clear! And not least because that ferry journey is never anything less than rough… although it’s worth it for the sightings of dolphins, basking sharks and the heart stopping flight of hunting gannets. You can fly across to the islands, but watching dolphins play on the bow wave of the ship and rare birds gliding alongside it is a lot more fun.

So I’m dragging out the field guides, polishing up the binoculars and getting all nerdy at the thought of all that wildlife. I need to take a notebook too, because there will be a lot to remember. And a lot of shells to collect for jewellery making purposes. Oh, and there will be a lot of cream teas to eat, but that’s another story.

Then it’s back home on the ferry and the sleeper train – arriving in London at 7.00 am – and a day in which to unpack, do laundry and make a fancy dress astronaut costume, repack and then catch another train and another ferry to Bestival on the Isle Of Wight! I have to admit I’m a little bit daunted by that bit, but I’ve never failed to have fun at Bestival so it has got to be worth it.

For the Cornish part of my travels I might be able to Twitter, but as we get further from the mainland on the ferry journey to Scilly the phone signal will start to fade out and I probably won’t have any reception at all once we reach the islands. So it will be a genuine break for me – in a place where technology cannot follow. I can hardly wait.

PS:- It’s possible that if you leave comments after Friday morning they will not show up for a very long time, as I will not have a chance to moderate them. I do love geting comments though, so if you leave some for me anyway it will be a lovely thing for me to come home to.

22 Spot Ladybirds

About a month ago I was bemoaning the mildewy state of our courgette plants when I noticed a brilliant yellow speck moving about in the foliage. Upon taking a closer look I was happy to find this pair of 22 spot ladybirds taking advantage of the sunny weather by mating vigorously (and for ages!) on the chewed and greying leaves.

It was impossible to get a better photo without disturbing them, but as these  ladybirds are tiny – only 3 to 5 mm long, I was pleased to get any picture at all. All ladybirds are welcome in our garden – they are wonderful pest control – but I only found out how pleased I should have been on behalf of our courgettes yesterday when I read this post about ladybirds in Hagbourne Wildlife, which told me that the 22 spot eats mildew! I had no idea that there were any non-carnivorous ladybirds so I did a little bit of research.

Native to Europe, their latin name is Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata, often abbreviated to Psyllobora 22-punctata, and they can reliably be identified from their small size and uniformity of markings. Each wing case has 11 evenly spaced black spots. The pronotum (the section between the head and the abdomen) also has 5 black spots, which don’t seem to have been counted when this insect was given it’s name. You’ll find them on low growing mildewed (mouldy) plants, and a quick scout around wildlife forums also revealed fun informal accounts of them coming into utility rooms or living in house plant pots where the compost has become mouldy.

Alas my yellow spotted friends could do little for the courgettes – even if they bred a 22 spot army the mildew had already well and truly taken hold. I still like to think of their larvae munching bravely away – at least they won’t go hungry.

Scillonian Sky

Where is this tropical seascape with it’s turquoise water and brilliant sky? You may be surprised to learn that it is a mere 30 miles or so off the UK coast, and I took this photo while leaning over the rails of the Scillonian III, the ferry boat which plies it’s trade between Penzance and one of my favourite places in the whole world – the Isles of Scilly. I’ll be there early in September, so you can expect some pictures of my adventures there at some point – but as to the skies we’ll see… I’ll have to trust to the weather!

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

Summer on the wing

At the risk of being corny, I’m amazed at how time flies. Two weekends ago (it seems a lot longer somehow) I spent a perfect summer afternoon investigating a small bramble hedge in the middle of Hampshire. Who knows how long I spent there; I was utterly absorbed, but I do know that I could barely see past the butterflies. There were clouds of them! I was astonished at how intently they foraged, as many fiercely territorial species sat calmly together and drank deeply from the bramble flowers. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was the end of the breeding season; maybe it was just that they were getting drunk on good nectar, but I’ve never had so many butterflies sit so patiently for me.

First up was Polygonia c-album, or the Comma, a lovely amber coloured creature with attractively raggedy wings. Wondering how it got that name? Look at the bright marking on the underwing in the picture below – you should be able to tell!

At first I thought this Argynnis paphia, or Silver Washed Fritillary was a Comma too, but its larger size and calligraphic markings gave it away. Although this particular individual is very much past its best you can still see what an impressive and beautiful creature it is.

Let’s take a closer look at its wonderful green and orange furred body and spotted eyes

A little further along I found a Pyronia tithonus, or Gatekeeper – these sprightly butterflies were very active and though I saw many in the hedgerow this was the only one that would sit for me. I think it’s a female.

Time passed, and I realised that most butterflies had drunk their fill and moved on. I stalked the perimeter of the field and found nothing else that would sit still for me. Time to try the garden (we were staying at R’s parents house) which has many plants beloved of butterflies. Sure enough, there was an Aglais urticae, or Small Tortoiseshell on the lavender.

And the Gonepteryx rhamni, or Brimstone butterfly looked well on this striking blue flowered shrub. They particularly liked this plant, which seemed quite poetic given how the fizzy yellow of the butterfly looked against the improbably blue flower.

I had been anxiously hoping to find some Inachis io, or Peacock butterflies, having seen a colony of their caterpillars on nettles much earlier in the summer. They couldn’t all have been killed, surely? It seemed wrong that I hadn’t found an adult yet. Then, on a trespassing bramble I saw this…

What a showstopper! It was worth a bit of mild anxiety just to see this glorious insect – a male, fresh and glossy and presumably just emerged from its pupa.  I intend to write a little more about peacock butterflies, but I’ll leave that till another time.

Tragedy or mystery?

In June I wrote about this Mute Swan who was stoically sitting on its nest all alone despite obviously suffering badly in the blistering heat. I never saw another bird with it, and as Mute Swans take turns with looking after the nest and chicks it seemed obvious to me that this bird might be in trouble. Well sadly it appears that either its mate died shortly after the eggs were laid leaving it unable to cope and causing the eggs to fail, or it is a female who built her nest alone and laid infertile eggs, because early this month I cycled past to find this…

An abandoned nest with only two cracked eggs in it. The determined swan had sat tight on its nest for two whole months to my knowledge, which cancels out the hope that the majority of the eggs might have hatched and the family swum away – swans eggs take approximately 35 days to hatch. The bird was sitting way too long.

But then again… I certainly wasn’t able to keep watch on this nest every single day and I could be wrong -  there might have been another bird and I just never happened to see it – I could also have overestimated the time the swan was sitting. It’s not like I was taking notes. I did ask every single person I saw looking at the swan if they had ever noticed another swan or how long they thought the swan had been sitting and invariably got the replies “nope” and “ooooh, ages“, which isn’t exactly scientific.  I guess I will never know.

Whatever actually happened, the disappearance of the swan has been of benefit to its neighbours. Earlier in the year when it was building its nest, I’d watched it driving off moorhens and coots who had already started building  and were understandably loath to abandon their nests just because a bigger bird wanted them out. Of course the swan won, but the smaller birds who had been nesting in this location for years didn’t go far. While I was looking at the huge abandoned nest a peaceful family of moorhens picked over it, selecting choice twigs and branches for use in their own construction.

I don’t know if there are many Londoners local to the area reading here but I was wondering… is there anyone out there who knows what happened to the Coppermill Lane swan? So many people stopped to look at it every day, it became locally quite famous. Not sure where I mean? It was on the western end of Coppermill lane (E17) near Springfield Park. It’s a very long shot I know but is there anyone out there who can help solve the mystery?

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