Grass Wood

Grass Wood, near Grassington in North Yorkshire is an area of ash woodland with an under-storey of hazel and bird-cherry. Yesterday morning I had chance for a brief foray into the wood and on the south-east facing part of a sycamore trunk I noticed a patch of lichens. Closer examination of the lichen revealed a couple of resting micro-moths that I recognised as belonging to the Phyllonorycter genus. These could well be examples of "Nut Leaf Blister Moth" (Phyllonorycter coryli). There are actually two of them on the lower photograph here, demonstrating their camouflage!

Spring Sunshine

Beautiful Spring sunshine again today. I decided to wait in the garden in the hope of seeing my first Orange Tip and Holly Blue of the year. The first butterfly to catch my eye was a Speckled Wood which seemed to be admiring its own reflection on a dead laurel leaf. A couple of Large Whites flew through and a Comma stayed for a couple of minutes. No Orange Tips yet but a Holly Blue showed interest in one of my topiaried trees. I'm not good at Ladybird identification so if anyone can recognise these three............

I am thinking they could be Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis), Pine Ladybird (Exochomus 4-pustulatus) and Orange Ladybird (Halyzia 16-guttata).

There's no hiding place!

There has been an emergence from one of the cases of Narycia duplicella collected from the Laund Oak in mid-March.

Not a moth, but a splendid parasitoid male Diadegma sp.

I am hoping that Mark Shaw or Klaus Horstmann will be able to determine the exact species.

The remaining case seems to contain a live duplicella larva.

Emorsgate Seeds

There is something therapeutic about sowing wildflower seeds whilst partaking of the appropriate refreshment!

I have been impressed with the mail-order service provided by Emorsgate Seeds.

Now I can just sit back and enjoy the results.

A Lichen-feeder on the Laund Oak

I went to visit The Laund Oak, near Bolton Abbey, this morning, a tree which is more than 800 years old!
I was lucky to find the sun shining and a Chiffchaff sang nearby as I watched a Common Buzzard fly over the adjacent hillside.
The south facing bole of the tree is covered in a myriad of lichens, closer inspection of which revealed a couple of grazing case-bearing moth larvae.
Narycia duplicella is, no doubt, under-recorded in Yorkshire and this site may be one of the most westerly records so far.
A case is shown in the lower left-hand corner of the bottom picture here, the middle picture illustrating podetia of one of the Cladonia genus of lichen.

With frogs for their watch-dogs

There are signs of Spring in the pond. I visited Timble Ings last week and frogs were very active in the shallows, even at mid-day.

Today, I pulled a few leaves out of one of my tiny garden ponds and was surprised to find three Palmate Newts (Triturus helveticus) had already returned to the water. I shall have to purchase some more Water Forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpiodes) which I have found to be their preferred vegetation for egg-laying in previous years.

The flowers in the photograph are those of Primrose (Primula vulgaris) but I almost included my first lawn Daisy (Bellis perennis) of the year which cheered me up this morning.

The Song Thrush has returned to the garden.

Why the title? I noticed in the stats section of the blog that lines from poems attract the most visitors!

Hibernating larvae of Olethreutes mygindiana

The beauty of Cowberry is that it is an evergreen and therefore easily distinguished from Bilberry at this time of year.

On Wednesday 2nd February 2011, I climbed up to my favourite Cowberry patch on Barden Moor to look for the hibernating larvae of Olethreutes mygindiana.

I soon found a couple of hibernacula consisting of spun-together leaves and each containing a solitary reddish brown 5-6mm long caterpillar.