Beech Mast

Beech tree, Fagus sylvatica, with mast. High Elms Country Park, 20 September 2011.

This is a good mast year, an old term for a year in which woodland fruits and nuts are abundant. And the fruits of the beech tree, Fagus sylvatica, are often called mast. They open and fall to thr ground quite readily. We do not find them tasty, but squirrels are quite happy to eat them.

I showed some beech flowers back in May.

Nuts of the beech tree, Fagus sylvatica. High Elms Country Park, 20 September 2011.

Hips and Holly

Rose hips, Hayes Common, 22 September 2011.

Two more of the many types of berry which are so prolific this year. Rose hips are sweet, tasty and nutritious, but the seeds inside are surrounded by tiny sharp hairs, and if you try to eat one whole you will have some difficulty clearing the hairs from your tongue afterwards.

Hips are a good source of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), and when I was at school, the children were offered 3d. a pound for all they could bring in. They are eaten and drunk in many forms; the ones we brought in were destined to be pressed to produce rose hip syrup.

Holly berries, Ilex aquifolium. Hayes Common, 22 September 2011.

Holly berries are popular decorations at Christmas, but some will fall, and they are also popular with birds, so there are likely to be many fewer than this when the season comes.

There's a spider lurking at the top right!

Sycamore Seeds

Sycamore seeds, Acer pseudoplanatus.  High Elms Country Park, 20 September 2011.

The Sycamore is a species of maple, not native to the UK, but widespread and readily seeding. The seeds grow in pairs, but fall singly with the motion of an autogyro.

I posted a photo of Sycamore flowers back in May.

Acorns

Acorns developing on a Sessile Oak, Quercus petraea.  West Wickham Common, 10 September 2011.

It is a very good year for acorns as well as all sorts of other fruits and berries. What's more, the oak trees are unusually healthy and there aren't many of the Knopper galls that often take over the developing acorns.  But anyway, according to Wikipedia, Knoppers grow on Pedunculate Oaks (Quercus robur), and this is a Sessile Oak (Quercus petraea); the acorns do not have stems.  I didn't know about that, and I will check it out with the few Knoppers I have noticed.

Yellow Shell

Yellow Shell, Camptogramma bilineata.  Geometer.  Moth trap in Hayes, on 4 September 2011.

One of the interesting things about my moth trap is that I catch things I never normally see. This Yellow Shell is common, according to the books, and I suppose it's because it flies by night that I have never seen one before.

It is standing on an egg-box, one of those that are put in the trap to provide hollows and nooks for the moths to rest in, and it's just about to take off — like the Common Carpet I showed on 11 September. This looks a lot more dramatic than the usual resting position.

Wild Carrot Seeds

Wild Carrot, Daucus carota ssp carota, on Burnt Gorse, High Elms Country Park, 15 September 2011.

Another view of a Wild Carrot, this time with the seeds well developed. An earlier shot is here: Wild Carrot flower head.

Large Yellow Underwing

Large Yellow Underwing, Noctua pronuba.  Noctuid. Moth trap in Hayes, 16 September 2011.

The Noctuid moths in general are not very lively when I untrap them in the morning. Most of them just stay where they are put. Often, when they are tapped out of the egg boxes they have been resting on, they play dead, and I have a few shots of their undersides as a result.

This one was just awake enough to sit up on my finger.  You can see its proboscis coiled up at the front of its head.

Yew Berries

Yew berries, Taxus baccata, on Hayes Common, 17 September 2011.

Yew berries are poisonous, we are told as children, and that is partly true. The fleshy red part is sweet and good, though not to everyone's taste. It is the bitter seeds at the centre that can kill.

These berries are not constructed like an ordinary fruit. Each one is a modified cone, and the red fleshy part is technically an aril, an organ which can be as different as the edible parts of a pomegranate or the fibres in a cotton boll.

Some people are known to eat yew berries as a dare, spitting out the pips. In fact they are nutritious. Foxes eat them too, licking them up off the ground where they fall in large numbers. This does not seem to suit their digestive systems; the resulting scat looks distinctly uncomfortable.

Fox scat, Vulpes vulpes, containing yew berries, Taxus baccata.
20 September 2011.

The photo on the left was taken on a very thinly attended walk at High Elms Country Park on 20th September. I was the only one to turn up, but the ranger, Nick Hopkins, still showed me a few of the things he had prepared. Finding the fox scat was fortuitous.

You can see the red colouration, and the seeds, which have passed through untouched. Presumably it was their gelatinous surroundings that caused this result.

Yew branches grow thickly and block out the light. For the photo above, I had to use a flash. Below, however, is one I took more than a decade ago in Kelsey Park, when I saw the sunlight shining through the berries, making them look very festive.

Yew berries in Kelsey Park.

Summer Time

William Willett memorial in Petts Wood.  21 September 2011.

Today, 21st September, the National Trust warden of the Petts Wood and Hawkwood Estate showed a group of people around Petts Wood. This was organised by the Friends of Jubilee Country Park.

It was an overcast, drizzly and generally wet morning. But this did not stop a group of 18 people following the warden, Sam Pettman, as he showed us how the woods were being managed.

There were many features in common with other woods and ancent woodland in the area. Old pollarded oaks ranged along one ditch-and-bank border. Some areas had been scraped down to the underlying Blackheath gravel bed and returned to the original heath.

When this was a private estate, Rhododendrons had been planted as cover for game birds, and had choked and crowded much of the wood. But we saw hardly any of this, only one ornamental array; a great deal of work had been done to eradicate it, and there were many light and airy pathways as a result. The clearing shown above (with Sam Pettman speaking) had been thick with Rhododendrons at one time, and overshadowed by three large Sweet Chestnut trees, all now removed so that the memorial sundial could once again tell the time.

I do like this sundial, which shows British Summer Time (when the sun is shining, of course). The monument makes clear why; it says "THIS WOOD WAS PURCHASED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION AS A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM WILLETT THE UNTIRING ADVOCATE OF "SUMMER TIME" and lower down: ERECTED 1927. The sundial on the other side is inscribed "HORAS NON NUMERO NISI AESTIVAS". The helpful Google Translate tells us that this means "Summer camp is not only at the hourly," but I think it is actually telling us that it does not show the time unless it is Summer.

By the path as we headed back out was this showy fungus, Amanita muscaria, Fly Agaric. It is poisonous to people, but slugs love it.

Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, by the path through Petts Wood.  21 September 2011.

Black Bryony, Snowberry

Black Bryony, Tamus communis, in High Elms Country Park, 15 September 2011.

Some more autumn berries. These showy red ones belong to Black Bryony, a delicate climbing plant with heart-shaped leaves. The larger leaves belong to the plant it is climbing on, a Wayfaring-tree. Some of the Bryony leaves are already dead, and you can see them towards the bottom of the photo. A still living leaf can be seen right in the middle. At the top and bottom, you can also see the stem, winding around that of its host plant.

Spiders are everywhere at this time of year, and these plants and berries are covered with a fine mesh of web. There is a spider at the lower left. Small invertebrates often turn up in plant photos.

Below are the fruits of a Snowberry. This is a weed plant in High Elms Country Park, and I don't use that word carelessly; in this place, it causes problems. It was introduced by a previous owner to provide low cover for game birds, and it thrives and spreads so well that it tends to crowd out the other plants.

The sun had not reached the Snowberry when I took this, and it was still covered with dew. Spiders' webs again!

Snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus, on Orchid Bank, High Elms Country Park, 15 September 2011.

What Likes Ivy?

Red Admiral butterfly, Vanessa atalanta.  Gates Green Road, Coney Hall, 10 September 2011.

Many creatures like ivy. During most of the year, it shelters invertebrates, birds and bats. Then, it flowers late in the year and provides a feast of nectar for insects of many sorts.

So if you watch out for a bank of ivy to come into flower, you are very likely to see this butterfly, the Red Admiral, which seems to be particularly attracted. The Red Admiral is a real beauty, not just for its open-winged appearance which, indeed, is admired by many, but for these amazing underwings, which look like the marbled endpapers in an old book.

Red Admiral butterfly, Vanessa atalanta.  Detail.  Gates Green Road, Coney Hall, 10 September 2011.

Slug and Snail

A slug and a snail in my back garden in Hayes on 8 September 2011.

To get a good look at the slugs and snails that live in your garden, leave a piece of squashy fruit out on a wet night. These were attracted to a piece of mango, the bit that surrounds the large stone in the middle. After a couple of nights, the stone was cleaned off quite thoroughly.

I do not know their species, though I think the slug is a Garden Slug, Arion hortensis. But they have a delicate beauty, particularly the snail, with its varicoloured shell and those grey streaks that lead from its eye-stalks down along its body.

Prickly Lettuce

Prickly Lettuce, Lactuca seriola.  Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011.

This is one of a group of plants that grow commonly by the sides of paths and in little scrubby patches of land. Some might say they are weeds, but they are varied and interesting and support wildlife, so I would not say so.

This one, Prickly Lettuce, grows as a single stem. At first, it just has those alternating leaves, plain and green, and then quite quickly it sprouts a many-branched flower-head.

The flowers are composite, and like many other wildflowers, they look a little like dandelions.  Individually they are short-lived and do not stay open all day, so you might not find it easy to see them unless you keep watch.  You can see that although this plant is fully mature, there are no visible flowers.  This shot was taken early in the afternoon.

Below is a photo taken in mid-morning, a flower with a hoverfly taking advantage of it. That is a Marmalade Hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, one of the commonest and prettiest of the British hoverflies.

Under that is a shot of the seedhead, and you can see that this, too, is on the same general plan as a dandelion, though the individual parachutes and seeds are larger.

And finally, in case you are wondering why it should be called "prickly," there is a closeup of the underside of a leaf. Even though the prickles are not very strong, this is still not something you would welcome in a plate of salad.

The seed head and the whole plant were taken with my Ixus 100; the leaf and the flower with my EOS 60D and 100mm macro lens.

Marmalade hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, on a flower of Prickly Lettuce, Lactuca serriola,
at the edge of Hayes Station car park, 26 July 2011.

Prickly Lettuce, Lactuca serriola. Seed heads by Hayes Station car park.  12 August 2011.

Prickly Lettuce, Lactuca serriola.  Underside of a leaf.  Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011.

Spindle Berries

Spindle berries, Euonymus europaeus.  Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011.

Among the shrubs and plants that I never saw in my childhood is the Spindle. Like many British species, a few degrees of temperature makes all the difference to where it grows.

It's a small, thin-stemmed shrub, with inconspicuous flowers, and it doesn't really stand out in the hedgerows until the fruits appear. These are so vividly and waxily pink, sometimes shading towards red, that it's hard to believe the colours are natural.

When they ripen, the orange seeds squeeze out from the fruits without any prompting.

It is said that the name derives from traditional use of the wood to make spindles for spinning wool. With those delicate branches, this must have meant that a whole plant would have been taken to use the trunk to make just a handful of spindles.

Spindle fruits, Euonymus europaeus.  Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011.

Dogwood, Hawthorn

Berries of Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea, on Burnt Gorse at High Elms Country Park, 22 August 2011.

The countryside is full of berries now. These are on dogwood, a small shrub that is found in ancient woodlands and in hedges. Bushes related to this are often grown as garden plants for their brightly coloured stems.

The hawthorn, below, is a very common shrub or small tree. Its value in a hedgerow is that it grows fast and puts out many thorny branches. These berries, called haws, are everywhere. In fact where I grew up, near Newcastle, countryside berries were generally referred to as hips and haws - fruits of wild rose and hawthorn.

Berries of Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna. Scadbury Park, 11 September 2011.

Green Lacewing Larva

Green Lacewing larva on an oak leaf.  Hayes Common, 6 August 2011.

I was looking at an oak tree and I saw what looked like a little clump of fluff, the size of a fingernail, moving across a leaf. On closer examination it was a small insect, carrying some whitish stuff on its back. At the time I thought it looked like moulted skins.

Whan I got the photos home and looked at them in detail, I saw a very predatory-looking creature with big sharp mandibles. It's the larva of a green Lacewing, though I can't tell which species. They carry the skins of their victims on their backs. I suppose this is camouflage, and it does hide the insect, though it's still clear that something is in there.

I saw three of these in a short space of time, and I haven't spotted any since.  You see particular insects when the conditions are just right for them to come out; they must still be there on other days, just not so apparent.

Not Just Moths

Wasp on the light in my moth trap in my back garden in Hayes, 4 September 2011.

This is why moth trappers need to be careful. This light attracts more than moths, as its name suggests.  It is unwise to use a light trap anywhere near a wasp's nest, and even less so if you are near hornets.

There is no need to be scared of wasps. They don't attack indiscriminately. But they will react if you kneel on them or put your hand on them, and it's not hard to do such a thing while sorting out the contents of a moth trap.

Yellow Underwings

Large Yellow Underwings, Noctua pronuba.  Moth trap in Hayes on 4 September 2011.

These are the commonest moths in my garden catches so far. To create these images, I have edited the photos to orient them the same way, which is the way they are shown in my moth book. I have identified them and put the same species together.

Perhaps it looks obvious now that these belong together. When I first took them out of my trap, it was far from obvious; at least to me, a newcomer to moth identification. There is sufficient variation even in new moths to make many of them differ from the book, and then they change colour with age, become tattered, and lose some of their identifying features. The lighter one second from the right is probably a female.  But these all retain one feature; the beak-like appearance of their heads.

Lesser Yellow Underwings, Noctua comes.  Moth trap in Hayes on 4 September 2011.

Along with those five, I had these two; they are smaller, though that might not be obvious from this unscaled photo, shorter in relation to their width, and have different markings.  They are a different species, though I still hesitate with the one on the left, which looks rather beaky. But no, look at the dark wave near the end of the wing.  I'm still not confident about these identifications.  I need more photos of these.

The yellow hind wings for which these moths are named cannot be seen when they are at rest. They could be pinned down and spread out, but I will not do that. And I could make them fly away and watch what happens; but these moths are very lethargic in the morning and tend to stay in the foliage where I put them. Also, early rain was forecast on the day I trapped these, and so I photographed them just before dawn, and I would not have been able to see colour just by the dim illumination of the moth-attracting actinic strip light. Yes, these are excuses and I should try harder.

Lesser Broad-Bordered Yellow Underwings, Noctua interjecta. Moth trap in Hayes on 4 September 2011.

These are slightly smaller again,  and their name is longer.  The middle one is noticeably tattered and old.  There is also yet another similar species, the Broad-Bordered Yellow Underwing, but I didn't find any this time.  Anyway, the point of this post was to show the difficulty I am having in separating and identifying this group of Noctuids. I hope to improve with the help of photos like these.  The same sort of difficulty applies to Rustics and their relations, which I will show another time; one of those is even called the Uncertain!

Cactus Flower

Notocactus in flower, Hayes, 14 August 2011.

Behind my house is a small balcony, facing south, and in the summer I put out half a dozen cacti which survive there quite nicely.

Cacti thrive in sunny spots, and although they do best when watered regularly in summer, drying out will not kill them. In fact, in the autumn they go onto a south-facing windowsill and do not get any more water until next spring.

I have had most of them for about 20 years, at this and other houses, and they grow slowly but steadily. This one has put out three offshoots and it flowers most years.

It was never labelled, but I think it might be a Notocactus, or a related species, going by the form of the flower. But most Notocacti have brightly coloured flowers, and this one is a particularly pale yellow.

I don't know the name of the small succulent plant behind it. It grew from a leaf I picked up in Kew in the 1970s, or rather, from a leaf from a plant that grew from a leaf ... etc. These days you wouldn't be able to get near enough to Kew's glasshouse plants to collect a fallen leaf.

Yellow cactus flower, Hayes, 14 August 2011.

Common Carpet

Common Carpet moth, Epirrhoe alternata alternata,
at High Elms Country Park, 22 August 2011.

Some moths that do not naturally fly by day can still be seen then, because they are easily disturbed. This is one.

The carpet moths are all highly patterned, and when they are fresh they are often brightly coloured, too. For example, the Green Carpet I saw at Sevenoaks on 14th August.

Like all moths, they fade quickly. The Common Carpet shown on the right is slightly duller than when it was fresh. The specimen below is brighter.

To identify a moth, it is useful to have a photo like the one below, which shows the top view, in this case with wings fully spread. But pictures like the one on the right are much more dramatic and more satisfying to take.

However, a moth in that position is just about to take off, so you can't move around and have several tries at the best angle. I wanted to get under that near wing .. but it was gone in a flash. Being easy to disturb also means that it won't wait.

Common Carpet moth, Epirrhoe alternata alternata.  Burnt Gorse, High Elms Country Park, 30 July 2011.

Nina's Pond

A birdwatching hide and the back of the visitor centre on Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, 21 August 2011.

This was taken from across one of the lakes in Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve with my 100mm macro lens. A worn sign near the spot I took the shot from says this is Nina's Pond.  It's big for a pond, though I suppose rather small for a lake.

The man in the high-visibility jacket is checking a series of small mammal traps. Some public events were planned for this day. He and one other were checking and emptying 100 traps, and would then set 50 more for the benefit of the visitors who would arrive later on.  A considerable task!  Apparently all the native mice, voles and shrews can be found here.

Robin's Pincushion

Robin's Pincushion gall, caused by the wasp Diplolepis rosae, on a wild rose on Hutchinson's Bank, 9 August 2011.

I saw quite a few of these on Hutchinson's Bank. I posted a photo of a bright red one earlier, here: Robin's Pincushion Gall. That one was in Riddlesdown Quarry. They aren't rare, but they're the sort of thing you might not notice unless you look.

Rowan Berries

Berries of Rowan, also called Mountain Ash, Sorbus aucuparia.  Hayes Common, 28 August 2011.

Rowan berries are the first woodland fruits to appear, sometimes in mid-summer. They last for quite a while. This is actually quite a small bunch, and the trees are covered with them.

You can see that these leaves have been eaten from the inside by leaf miners, which are often the larvae of tiny micromoths.  Their channels start off tiny, where the egg was laid, and grow along with the miner up to the point where they pupate and then emerge.

The berries are being enjoyed by a wasp.

Clematis Flowers

Flowers of Old Man's Beard, also called Traveller's Joy, Clematis vitalba.   Lullingstone Country Park.  13 August 2011.

The wild Clematis has two common names. At first you can only see why it might be called Traveller's Joy. The hairy seeds come later.

Farthing Downs August Moths

Gill Peachey's moth trap on Farthing Downs. 31 August 2011.

In an act of great generosity, Gill Peachey offered to put her trap out at Farthing Downs again and show me what it caught, to help me to learn how to distinguish between them. I had had great difficulty with the moths caught in my own little trap in Hayes.

I enjoyed Farthing Downs, a large open space, mostly meadow. It was quite warm on the morning of 31 August and even though it was early, there was lots of insect activity.  There were flies and bumblebees and some butterflies, Meadow Browns and Small Heaths. There were also flocks of micromoths, easily disturbed by walking through the grass, and I dropped to the ground to attempt a photo. I'll show some of the micros later.

The trap is a professional-looking Robinson design. It does not need to be actually in the fields to attract moths. I could see straight away that there were some interesting catches. Gill untrapped them slowly, taking them from their resting places on and in the egg boxes, and let me photograph them. She recorded them and put a couple of dozen in clear plastic pots for me to work on.

Indoors, I managed to identify them all, with help and hints from Gill. I learned quite a lot and I am now confident of identifying some of them, at least, without further assistance.

Here are a few of the pretty Geometers from the trap.

Brimstone Moth, Opisthograptis luteolata.  A Geometer.
From Gill Peachey's moth trap at Farthing Downs, 31 August 2011.

This pretty Brimstone Moth is common. Its caterpillars live on Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Rowan. I now have a row of Hawthorns in my garden, so maybe I will see more of these.

Pretty Chalk Carpet, Melanthia procellata.  A Geometer.  Gill Peachey's moth trap at Farthing Downs, 31 August 2011.

The Pretty Chalk Carpet lives on chalky soils, so its name is not just a clue to its colour. Its caterpillars eat wild Clematis.

Green Carpet, Colostygia pectinataria.  A Geometer.  Gill Peachey's moth trap at Farthing Downs, 31 August 2011.

This Green Carpet is not quite fresh. It starts out bright green, and like many other moths, its colour fades over a few days. It can be found anywhere in Britain and its caterpillars eat Bedstraws.

Hayes Moths

Unidentified micromoth. Moth trap in Hayes, 25 August 2011.

So, I got my own moth trap. It's a small Skinner type with an actinic bulb, a small strip light that gives of a lot of ultraviolet, great for attracting insects and not very bright to our eyes to cause minimum disturbance to the neighbours.

But it seems very bright in the dark of night. Still, none of the neighbours have mentioned it to me, and I have had it out three times now.

I put it out for the first time on the night of 24th August. I didn't know what to expect, and I suspected I would only get a few like the one on the right, but actually there were a couple of dozen moths in there the next morning, hiding among the egg boxes.

Two of them were quite distinctive, and I was able to use my books to identify them, but I was really stuck on the rest. Luckily for me, Gill Peachey offered to look them over and identified quite a few, some definitely and some tentatively. It's not so easy to identify them from photos. I saw later that Gill likes to actually hold the live specimens over the books to compare with the diagrams and photos.

Some moth people ignore the micromoths, because so many of them are hard to identify.  A couple of the people from the Keston Common exercise back in July seemed confident, but some are impossible to separate without a microscopic examination. But others are easy, and this Chequered Fruit-Tree Tortrix is one of them. It's quite common, and its caterpillars eat the rolled leaves of deciduous trees.

Chequered Fruit-Tree Tortrix, Pandemis corylana.  A Micromoth.  Moth trap in Hayes, 25 August 2011.

I also had this furry creature, an Orange Swift. Its caterpillars live underground for two years eating the roots of herbaceous plants such as bugloss, dock, bracken and dandelion. This is a female.

Orange Swift, Hepialus sylvina.  Female.  A Cossid.  Moth trap in Hayes on 25 August 2011.

Among the larger moths were several of these, which Gill identified as Copper Underwings. The Underwing group have brightly coloured rear wings that don't show until they fly. But there are other ways to recognise them, and after some tuition I can now spot this one. It's common in woods, parks and gardens and its caterpillars eat many low-growing trees and shrubs.

Copper Underwing, Amphipyra pyramidea.  A Noctuid.  Moth trap in Hayes on 25 August 2011.

Teasel In Flower

Flower of Wild Teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, on Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve.  14 August 2011.

Teasels have sculptural shapes that make photographers' fingers twitch. There is an immature flower the top of this post from Jubilee Country Park in June. Here is one in flower.

Most flowers that are comprised of many florets mature in an orderly sequence, from outside to inside or bottom to top. Teasels do it differently, and this two-ringed appearance is typical.