Biology – Page 39 – David Bradley

Pale tussock, Calliteara pudibunda

Long before I adopted mothing as one of the slightly weirder of my various hobbies (one that combines biology and photography with a bit of citizen science though), I still occasionally snapped lepidoptera if they turned up somewhere I had my camera. Back in May 2004, I caught sight of a huge, hairy moth in our conservatory. Got a snap and then spent ages trying to find out what species it was. Turned out to be Pale Tussock (Calliteara pudibunda).

The second time I saw one was 15 years later, on the corner of the actinic trap in the middle of May. As you can probably guess, it being the same month was no coincidence, the adults of this species fly May-June.

They’re a fairly common species in England and Wales, sexually dimorphic (the females are bigger and not so distinctively marked, but both have the forward facing hairy legs). According to the UK Moths site, the larvae feed on a range of deciduous shrubs and trees as well hops.

As ever you can keep up with the latest additions to my list either on my Moth Records spreadsheet or in the Mothematics Gallery on Imaging Storm.

One swallow doth not a summer make

One swallow doth not a summer make, but there are dozens to be seen around these parts now; have been for a couple of weeks at least. They’re relatively easy to photograph when they’re perched on a telegraph wire staring you out, but not so much when they’re flying over water hunting and drinking.

Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) at RSPB Ouse Washes 18th May 2019.

The Brood Parasite

The Brood Parasite…sounds like a schlock horror video nasty from the 1980s only available under the counter from your video shop on a dodgy, copied VHS (no Betamax). Of course, it’s a biological term to describe certain species that allow another species to raise their young as their own. For the duped species, this is a real-life horror story.

On the 18th May, 2019, Mrs Sciencebase and I once more visited RSPB Ouse Washes, near Manea, Cambridgeshire, and witnessed one such brood parasite, the European Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), as it emerged from a reedbed where there were lots of Reed Warblers, Sedge Warblers, and Reed Buntings chattering and calling.

We can only assume this was a female, recently mated having arrived with the male cuckoos from Southern Africa in the last couple of weeks. As every schoolchild knows, the Cuckoo builds no nest, instead, it lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and then abandons them, leaving the hapless warblers to incubate the Cuckoo’s egg alongside their own. When the Cuckoo hatches it will commonly nudge out any warbler eggs in the nest and leave its tiny surrogate parents to run themselves ragged feeding it and raising it as their own.

Neither the surrogates, parasitised in the truest sense of that word nor the imprinted Cuckoo chick is aware that anything is wrong with this scenario…but we do…and it is horrific. I say the adult cuckoos are unaware…but if so, why do they look so guilty?

Puss Moth, Cerura vinula

Last night was a very different nightÂ of mothing. It had been up to 20 degrees Celsius during the day but got down as low as 7 degrees Celsius in the night, it was still and dry, with a waxing gibbous moon. The haul one gets to an actinic light moth trap can never be predicted, but numbers were the highest they had been since the warm patch in April 2019, it’s now mid-May 2019.

I was very pleased to see one of the larger British moths sitting on the outside of the trap this morning, the very furry Puss Moth, Cerura vinula. This specimen was an impressive 4.5 centimetres long from front leg to wingtip and has the most striking patterning.

As you can see from my photos it is very furry, has broad white wings. The forewings have very dark concentric lines that look like indentations, there are dark cross veins on the wings and bronze lines radiating down the thorax. This specimen also has a greenish hue to its heads and black spots. Gently coaxing it from the trap into an examination pot was quite an eerie feeling, the large size and furriness make you think you’re handling a small, alien-looking mammal, rather than an insect.

Also new for me, potted as it approached the trap last night was a Coxcomb Prominent, Ptilodon capucina, a species common from Ireland to Japan in the Palearctic ecological zone.

It was the busiest night for moths in the garden last night for a month or so, also ticked this morning and last night, 12 species, 20 specimens:

Puss Moth, Red Twin-spot Carpet, Hebrew Character, male Muslin (2x), Shuttle-shaped Dart (6x), Turnip Moth (2x), The Streamer, Double-striped Pug, Common Pug, Heart & Dart (2x), Light-brown Apple Moth.

Incidentally, I remember seeing photos of the Puss Moth caterpillar in books when I was a child, it was often the cover star of a wildlife book, for instance. You may recognise it too. Incidentally, don’t annoy this larva, it can spray formic acid at you…

Hobbies at RSPB Ouse Fen

The Eurasian Hobby is back over RSPB Ouse Fen (May 2019), one of 6 or 7 seen hunting on the wing. The bird’s scientific name is Falco subbuteo means “falcon below the buzzard”. But, yes, that’s where the name of the football game – Subbuteo – comes from, the inventor wanted to call it “Hobby”, but the company said that couldn’t be trademarked, so he went all cod Latin.

As you can probably tell, they fit into a sequence of falcons found in the British Isles, from largest to smallest: Peregrine > Hobby > Kestrel > Merlin. Hobbies mainly eat dragonflies on the wing and you can see them clipping off the wings and discarding everything but the insects’ bodies as the bird flies over you. I have also seen them take swifts out of the air on a couple of occasions, both midsummer above our garden with the hobby flying out of the sun towards the screaming, circling swifts high above.

Taking photos of birds on the wing is difficult at the best of times, but photographic quality is also compromised at this time of year by atmospheric disturbance (you cannot filter out the heat haze, unfortunately).

Heart & Dart, Agrotis exclamationis

Just added another new moth species to the mothematical list, the Heart & Dart (Agrotis exclamationis). Here’s a focus-stacked shot looking down on the moth so you can see its “darts” and its “hearts”.

Here’s a face-on closeup, also focus stacked using digiCamControl to capture a sequence of six photos at different focus positions, front to back, and then aligning and stacking together with CombineZP. The stacking has not worked brilliantly in this shot, the antennae have artefacts, but at least you can see this species’ distinctive black band visible only when looking at the front of the thorax head-on.

Apparently, the Heart & Dart is one of the most common of the so-called owlets, the Noctuid moths, common in Europe and widespread in the UK, attracted to light and its larvae (known as cutworms in this genus of moths). The larvae eat all sorts of garden and wild plants, turnip, potatoes, maize, spinach, strawberries, lettuce, beetroot, as well as oak leaves and brambles.

The moth’s common name is perhaps obvious, but so too, in some sense, is the scientific binomial: Agrotis from the Greek for farmer, exclamationis meaning an exclamation! A farmer’s exclamation. Not a species to be encouraged in one’s new #AllotmentLife.

Of course, some cultures get their own back on the plant-eating moths, by eating the moths themselves. The related Bogong moth (Agrotis infusa) is an icon of Australian wildlife due to its historical role as a food source for Aboriginal people of Southeastern Australia, Its gathering led to inter-tribal feasting. The moths are roasted to remove wings and scales and often made into moth meat paste, which apparently has a nice, nutty taste.

Light Emerald, Campaea margaritaria

Another one of those insects almost everyone else thinks of as grey or brown…just look at that pure greeeen.

Light Emerald (Campaea margaritaria). This is a geometer moth, which means its larvae “measure the earth”, they’re inchworms, in other words. Although I think it’s time they went metric AND they’re not worms…they’re larvae (moth caterpillars).

Although this moth is pretty much flat, I took three photos of it at different focus depths and then aligned and stacked them together (using digiCamControl and CombineZP, mentioned as my current free tools of choice for focus stacking some time ago on the blog.)

If you look closely you can see why moths and butterflies (essentially the same thing) are called Lepidoptera. (Lepis means scale, pteron means wing in ancient Greek, so – scaly wings)

Barred horsetail and more – Part 4 #PondLife

UPDATE: Part 4b Night of 6 MAY 2019, spotted what I think is the first inhabitant of the new pond, a surface-swimming beetle of some kind, perhaps a “diving beetle”.

Having redesigned, realised that the internal shelving of the pond isn’t quite what it should’ve been for the best views…

Anyway, a few plants are in now as is the weird double-handed milk jug we cadged off the blokes at the dump 20 years ago. Plants: barred horsetail, Equisetum japonicum. A tall marginal pond plant, with banded vertical stems. Hydrocotyle var. A pennywort oxygenator. Grows in the muddy margins and shallows of the pond. Scirpus cernuus, more colloquially known as bristle reed is in there too now as is Phragmites variegata, Norfolk reed.

Also in the shallows, an intriguing plant called Juncus effusus, the corkscrew rush. Iris pseudacorus, the yellow water iris, and Primula rosea.

That’s it for now. Full to capacity loaded with a few filtering and oxygenating plants. Needs some more landscaping although that patch at the back is going to be set aside as a micro-meadow, the repotted yucca will probably be relocated, although I’ve also taken 3-4 cuttings from the parent plant the main stem of which was dead.

Oh, we also need to deal with the gravel and mud from the hole…but there’s stuff to do on the allotment before then! None of this is really about aesthetics anyway it’s about creating a nano-ecosystem in our garden for insecta, amphibia, aves, and possibly some mammalia.

Photos of local birds for local people

I say local…most of them are anything but local having winged their way back to Old Blighty from their winter homes in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Common Whitethroat on Hawthorn along a Fenland drove

Our local bird world is awhirl right now, with lots of the summer migrants. Of course, the farmland residents, Meadow Pipits, Skylarks, Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers, are all very active too, and the countless Linnets and Goldfinches.

Corn Bunting among the rape on a Cambridgeshire farm

Cuckoo and Turtle Dove have been heard near our home, Swallows and Housemartins abound, Common Whitethroats and Lesser Whitethroats are along and around the local lodes and droves and there are Reed Warblers among our reedbeds.

Sporadic Swifts have been sighted around the wider area and not too far from our patch a migrant Montagu’s Harrier has been on the wing.

If one Swallow does not a summer make, then what about two…or more?

Montagu’s Harrier Circus pygargus

Rather pleasantly surprised to have seen a male Montagu’s Harrier, Circus pygargus recently on a day away from my desk. The bird’s altitude and the atmospheric conditions (heat haze) precluded clearer photos. It circled above me, climbing as it did so.

This is a +ID, confirmed by 2-3 other birders on Facebook from the snaps.

According to the RSPB website: The Monty isÂ an extremely rare breeding bird in the British Isles. It is a Schedule 1 listed species and each pair has to be specially protected because its survival is precarious. A summer visitor (wintering in Africa), it seems that whereas like other Harriers, such as the Marsh Harrier it would favour marshes, over arable farmland is a more likely place to see them.