A few short safaris around the garden

The Safari is laid up after another hand operation at the mo so we've not been able to get out into the wider world and we've only just about been able to manhandle the small macro lens. For much of the time we've been incapacitated the weather has been pants, more like the middle of March than the end of June...and yes our heating came on early morning on 2nd and 3rd of July - that shouldn't happen, it's supposed to be summer!!! But for a few short days the sun shone and the wind didn't blow too hard.

A couple of days before going into hospital we were up early and spotted two Coal Tits on the feeders, an adult and a juvenile, where had they come from they don't nest nearby, and were the first of the year here and only our fourth record at our new Base Camp. They left to the south and we weren't expecting to see them again but a couple of hours later the juvenile returned on its own.

After all the bad weather the warm sunny days brought out a multitude of insects in the garden. Solitary bees have been very few and far between this year, indeed our 'bee hotel' has no occupants at all, so it was good to see a tiny Furrow Bee, one of the Lasioglossum morio group of very similar species that need more than 'normal' macro photos to identify them to species level. This one is in a Common Catsear flower.

Another one resting on the nearby fruit bushes had alraedy been busy collecting pollen. It's having a drink of something too, nectar?

Also on the fruit bushes was a black and orange blob which on closet insection turned out to be a ladybird, of unknown species as it hadn't yet aquired any spots, which had just emerged from its nymphal skin - we've never seen that before

Also nearby were several froghoppers were secreted in the base of the leaves, probably Common Froghoppers.

When we say nearby we do mean very close by as the vegetated part of garden is only about 40 feet long and twenty wide. At the back of the garden there are some overhanging twigs and small branches from our rear neighbours garden which we are very thankful for as they provide landing sites for 'our' House Sparrows; and Coal Tits - see above! Our neighbours to the left have 'inherited' that awful plastic grass and have no living stuff at all, our neighbours to the right have a well vegetated garden but we are separted by the thickness of two garages. An unknown neighbour feeds the local Grey Squirrels all manner of good things which they bring to our lawn and flower boarders to cache for later.

As much as we don't like Grey Squirrels and would much rather there was a local population of Red Squirrels, which is never going to happen, we do prefer them to next door's (left) plethora of flamin cats, they've got a sh*t load of them...and most of them do their sh*t in our garden digging up our cornfield annual meadow in the process - we hate them and so does the Mutt.

Moths have been in very short supply this year, we've only had the trap out twice and caught precicely nowt. Now that we're incapacitated it's not likely to come out for some time so we've tried wine ropes for a change - this plan has gone awry as an mothds they atrract will be on the wing long after we've gone to bed seeing as how it's mid-summer, we'll keep them refreshed and as the days shorten see if anything is attracted to them. Mothing is no restricted to finding dayflying species or chancing upon roosting ones. Our dayfliers include the tiny but lovely Mint Moth, shame they aren't the same size as a Red Admiral butterfly.

Our other dayflier is a much more specialised species and is listed as Nationally Scarce, the Currant Clearwing.Despie the bad weather most of the year we found our first one on exactly the same day as last year - allowing for the 29th of February - how mad is that. We usually see just one or two basking on the Blackcurrant bush's leaves.

But this time found one sucking nectar from the adjacent Blackberrry flowers. We weren't sure if they were one of those species who's adults have no mouthparts and can't feed - obviously not!

We even found a pair mating - it's amazing what you can see if you lurk around the shrubbery for long enough!

Still taking random pics of whatever settled long enough to focus on w got a Broad Centurion, one of the Soldierflies. There mere many more of these in and around our little mini-meadow than in the shrubbery.

There are very few large hoverflies about and  we were pleased to get a shot of Myathropa florea, the ammusingly nicknamed 'Batman' Hoverfly.

Bumble bees do our head in, we never seem to be able to get a good pic, is it because they never stay still and their eyes are so black and lacking contrast with the rest of their head you often don't get a highlight in them...and then theres the identification nightmare of some very similar species. This one is Buff Tailed Bumble Bee.

While concentrating on this bee something much smaller under a leaf beneath the flowers caught our eye

It looks like an aphid crossed with some other type of true bug. We only got this one shot and can't tell if those thick black things are part of its forelegs or antennae. It's obviously actively moving, it moved quite quickly, normally aphids sit fairly still...any ideas anyone? 

Just a bit too high up in our Apple tree we found an old favourite Pimpla rufipes on the hunt for moth caterpillars to parasitise.

Meanwhile back lower down we saw another ladybird emerging from its nyphal skin

The Bramble flowers were pulling in most of the insects including this Common Yellow Faced Bee, you can just about see a bit of the yellow face in the top pic. They are miniscule compared to the nearby bumble bees, only 5mm long at most.

The Bramble and Blackcurrant  bushes' broad leaves make idea look out perches for a variety of flies including the very numerous Greenbottle, Lucilia sericata

And another similar species we don't know the name of which is a stunning bronze colour. We don't recall seeing this one last summer.

Could they be male and female? If so why have we never seen the bronze ones before??? The do have a greeny sheen in some lights but in dull conditions they are definitely bronze.

As alluded to earlier most of the hoverflies were seeing are the smaller species and even then not that many of them. We think this one is Syritta pipiens...about 8mm long.

Out on the hunt for hoverflies was a species of predatory wasp Ectemnius cavifrons with it's distinctively weird antennae

Another predatory wasp we came across turned out to be the Nationally Scarce Gorytes laticinctus.

Look at those eyes! What and how do they see compared to our eyes, we're sure we wouldn't recognise the seen in front of us if we could see through their eyes.

It's munching an unfortunate victim

Thi species has apparently been expanding its range northwards this century and we've added a dot to the most up-to-date map, the second most northerly so far and the most northerly on the western side of the country, the most northery being on the other side of the pennines somewhere around the York area. We're sure they're overlooked and there are many more to be found well to the north of us - eyes peeled folks!

What a fantastic couple of days on safari no more than 50 feet from the back door. Look after the little things and they'll look after the bigger things. And we all need to start looking after the little things, there's an Insect Apocalypse underway and if they go down they'll take us with them. Something many of us can do is as easy as not mowing some of your lawn. Take part in #NoMowMay, follow it with #letitbloom injune and then our new hashtag #HelptheBeesflyinJuly. We keep a mown edge around our wildflower area so you can tell it's managed and supposed to be like that. With the aid of a paper bag we go out in the local parks and countyside areas and collect wildflower seed to sow once we've cut the meadow at the end of the summer making sure we let  the hay dry and any seeds fall to the ground before raking it up and composting it. The more different species you have the better as some will flower in some years and not others, a wider diversity will mean it won't look the same two summers running and that's part of the excitement - what's going to come up this summer?

Yellow Rattle, being a hemi-parasite, is good for reducing the vigour of the grasses and we would recommend getting some in your meadow.

Those few days were the end of summer, it's now back to unseasonally cold, sometimes wet and very very windy the latter being very damaging to the garden. Please can we have some warm calm days back please...the sooner the better.

Where to next? Our hand is recovering from the operation nicely so we might be able to get a bit further afield next week - physiotherapy appointments permitting.

In the meantime let us know who you've discovered hiding in plain sight in your outback

Some you know some you don't - always something new to learn

The Safari has had a busy week. We've been entertaining the Brownies on the beach and doing a bit of exploring around and about for ourselves too.

We always find it amazing that the beach can change so much in such a short space of time. On Tuesday evening the Brownies found loads of shells

but only one live Green Shore Crab - and that came out of the sand close to where they were standing probably in response to their pattering feet. It wasn't for want of trying either as we had well over a dozen nets being wielded in the rockpools and runnels. They did pull out a huge number of Brown Shrimps including many large ones and a solitary Common Prawn. We found them half a Compass Jellyfish floating in a pool, much more likely battered on the rocks by the previous day's storm than bitten by a hungry Leatherback Turtle. While gently caressing it to turn it over to show its 'compass points' we managed to get stung and had a very itchy thin red wheal on our hand all the following day. The also found something far more dangerous than a jellyfish - lostfishing tackle with a couple of hooks still attached.

In contrast a similar number of Guides found a rather different suite of creatures. They found a smaller Compass Jellyfish lying on the sand and close by were the first of many Sea Gooseberries, something we didn't see at all the previous evening. Like the Brownies they found prodigious numbers of Brown Shrimps but all but one were very small, where had all the big ones gone? They didn't find a single Common Prawn either but did manage four species of fish with neither group seeing any of the very common Sand Gobies in the runnels which would normally be expected. Four species of fish caught in one rockpooling session is good but not including Sand Goby is remarkable.

Despite the rough weather there were no Common Starfish or Brittle Stars to be found nor any of the giant Octopus Jellyfish which had been a feature on the beach only last week. That's why wildlife is so brill - you just can't predict what's going to be about.

Once the winds had subsided the rest of the week turned out nice and there was a selection of invertebrates to be found in the work's garden. A week or so ago when the sun was out we'd spotted a species of spider hunting wasp but were unable to get a photo. and now a bit of sunshine had us out looking again. We didn't see any but did find a rather tall specimen of the rare Deptford Pink and only an hour after telling someone they hadn't come up yet...dohhh prove us a liar!

To be fair we were looking where they've appeared in the past in mown grass and consequently much smaller although this large specimen was only a few feet away so perhaps we should have noticed it.
Around and about flying through the long grass were hundreds of the lovely Broad Centurion soldierflies

So far this year we've not seen many hoverflies anywhere we've been out on safari but the work's garden seems singularly devoid of them so seeing this big dobber was a bit of a treat. We think it's one of the Helophilus species.

 Also present as a single individual was this quite unusually shaped fly. We're sure we've seen it before but can't put a name to it yet - can you help?

Still on the look out for any spider hunting wasps we saw some tiny Cinnabar moth caterpillars. Unusually they weren't on their foodplant but at the tip of a Yorkshire Fog grass stem. What on earth were they doing up there? Basking to get more heat?

Lower down, still deep in the grass were their friends, these were on the right plant - Ragwort - and had made serious inroads into it. Maybe the others had done an early bunk to find a bigger Ragwort plant to start chomping on.

A big movement very low in the grass nearby caught our eye, we'd disturbed something fairly large and brown and out fluttered our first Silver Y moth of the year. You can make out the silver Y on it's fast moving wings as it scrambled to get clear of the grasses to make an escape.

By the picnic area there are a couple of old logs we used to use as seats but which are now in the later stages of rotting away. The furthest gone will be nothing more than a pile of dust soon but interestingly we noticed a few red blobs 'growing' at the most rotten end.

 We gave them a gentle prod with a finger to find out if they might have been candle wax or not, they weren't, deffo well attached to the wood. Could they be young Scarlet Elf Cap fungi? It's a very odd place for that species though, out in the open and very exposed to the most severe elements such as gale force winds, salt spray, direct sunlight. Or could it be a slime mould of some sort? We're going to be keeping an eye on it but if anyone has any ideas let us know.
We did eventually see one of the wasps and after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing managed to get a few snaps of it. We're pretty sure it's Amblyteles armatorius which would mean that despite it being on a spider's web and us thinking those fast waving antennae were searching out the web's owner tucked beneath the prickles of the Creeping Thistle leaves it wasn't hunting for spiders at all. Reading the books it appears that this species parasitises Noctuid moths. That's why wildlife is so brill - you just know you'll learn something new before too long. It might have been this one hiding in the seedpods of the Red Campion

Here's a Red Campion pod still full of seeds - when the wind blows it acts like a shaker and the seeds are scattered.

And so what does the non-spider hunting wasp look like - well fortunately we got a few pics that are juts about in focus.

It's certainly a beauty - unless you're a moth caterpillar that is in which case it's your worst nightmare!
Where to next? It''s the weekend and the weather is fine so there might be a safari once family duties are done to tell you about.
In the meantime let us know who's on the prowl in your outback.