Autumn Fruit

Whilst out looking for mines, galls and anything else that takes my fancy, I've pointed the phone camera at some fruit. Here's a selection, a marker of the season. I particularly like the pair of Pear bollocks.

** Stop Press ** I'd rashly assumed these crinkly-stemmed phallic shrooms were Shaggy Parasol. They ain't - this is Macrolepiota procera which fits the open grassy area much better.

As everyone knows, fruit is a fine accompaniment to some decent cheese.

Life in the Hawthorn

Whether your main ento-interest is coleoptera, diptera, hymenoptera or lepidoptera (and probably other orders too) then around now is the time to be beating the living daylights of blossoming hawthorn. On the embankment I can see hawthorn bushes that are getting larger and fuller every year, and there is no way I can get to them regardless of social distancing / lockdown (unless I just nonchalantly flounce into or through one of the neighbours gardens with my beating gear and bravado).

I do have hawthorn in the garden .....

The twig on the left is a self-set hawthorn seedling that I lifted and potted. It is clearly some years away from being a blossoming insect attractant! The twig on the right is a sallow cutting that I borrowed from the neighbour's overhanging tree. Which this year he cut right back just as the catkins were coming out. Knob.

So whilst on my walk on Sunday (more on that another day) I was pleased to note that there was at least some hawthorn accessible along the ride to swipe at - although as I only had my light-weight butterfly net I was keen to not ruin it again so it was all a bit sedate. I found a few bits, despite it still being early in the hawthorn blossom season. Mainly I found a lot of lepidopteran larvae. I would normally have brought a few home to rear through but decided this would be a bit daft this year when I can't just nip out whenever I want/need to to collect more larval foodplant. So I snapped a few on my finger tip.

Two forms of Mottled Umber - quite a few of these noted

Dun-bar - just a couple

Winter Moth - 100s

Epirrita sp. - probably November Moth

Think this is Dotted Border / Scarce Umber - would have been good to rear

The Annual Race

There is an annual, undeclared and undocumented contest in our household. It goes like this: I notice the shoots and early life-signs of a wildflower, which I am hopelessly unable to identify. I hope to nurture it to a flowering stage to give me a chance. But, if Nichola spots it before that point there is every liklihood that it will be declared a weed and be unceremoniously pulled. However this year it's all a bit odd. Late in the autumn, we literally cut every shrub and bush down to bare shoots - a very hard prune indeed. And this was with a purpose, as we fully expected by now to be in the midst of giving the garden a full structural reworking, possibly including a soak-away, probably including a new lawn, definitely including new fence panels and patio and absolutely including a load of new planting. And then the winter and early spring was so wet that our garden was heavily waterlogged (hence the need for a soak-away). And now it's just started to dry up enough we've been locked down for who knows how long.

So there are lots of bare patches of disturbed soil and the weeds wildflowers have got a massive head start on Nichola. Not that it helps my chances, but there are some I know or can guess at already*.

Wood Avens

Cleavers

Procumbent Yellow-sorrel

Cuckooflower

This self-set seedling in a pot looks very Hawthorn-like.

Red Dead-nettle - having been blasted by pressure-washed patio debris in the week

* I claim all credit for any correctly identified plant-life, and deny all knowledge of any that are incorrectly identified.