A Rare Treat

Clifden Nonpareil, Catocala fraxini.  Crowborough, 4 September 2018.

This is a Clifden Nonpareil, sometimes called Blue Underwing. It was once resident in the UK, but died out, and was then seen only as an occasional immigrant.  It is re-establishing itself, but still is only seen a few times a year away from the coast.  So I was lucky that this specimen appeared on my garden fence above the light of my moth trap.

I saw it from my kitchen window before dawn and thought I might have a Red Underwing.

Red Underwing, Catocala nupta.  West Wickham Common, 8 September 2016.

That would have been good because although these are not scarce, they rarely come to light, and I have only seen two, both at West Wickham Common.  But no!  It was bigger and better than that.

Clifden Nonpareil, Catocala fraxini.  Crowborough, 4 September 2018.

And it is big, one of our biggest moths.   The Old Lady is quite sizeable:

Old Lady, Mormo maura. Kelsey Park, 28 August 2015.

.. But it's not as big, and it lacks the flashy underwings.  For size, you might consider Hawk-moths; they are pretty big, like this Privet Hawk-moth that some trappers brought to Sevenoaks.

Privet Hawkmoth, Sphinx ligustri.  Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, 7 July 2013.

I saw one at Hayes the next year.  These were very impressive.  Incidentally, blue is a rare colour among moths.  I only know one other in Britain with some blue, and it's another Hawk-moth:

Eyed Hawk-moth, Smerinthus ocellata.  Crowborough, 3 July 2017.

All of these were a real pleasure to see and handle.  But the Clifden nonpareil is the rarest.

Clifden Nonpareil, Catocala fraxini.  Crowborough, 4 September 2018.

Wasps from 2015

Hornet, Vespa crabro.  West Wickham Common light trap, 11 September 2015

Now for some wasps found in my moth traps in 2015.  The first photo is a magnificent hornet, all honey tones and aggressive stance.  Look at those mandibles!  I think that's a moth wing scale sticking to one of them.  Luckily, it was not very lively first thing in the morning.

Common Wasp, Vespula vulgaris.  Hayes light trap, 11 August 2015.

If you compare it with this common wasp, you can see that this has the same basic body plan, but differs in coloration and patterning.  The common wasp is also much smaller, but can turn up in the trap in large groups.

Ichneumon wasp, Ophion luteus.  West Wickham Common light trap, 11 September 2015.

Ichneumon wasps look quite different.  They are parasitic, laying their eggs usually in the larvae of other insects.  There are 1200 species of ichneumons in the UK alone, of various sizes and colours.  This one is quite large.

Male ichneumon wasp.  Hayes light trap, 6 June 2015.

Here's a smaller ichneumon which I wasn't able to identify.  You can tell it's a male because it does not have a long ovipositor.

Chalcid wasp.  Hayes light trap, 21 July 2015.

That's the sort of thing I mean.  This very small wasp is a female.  This group of wasps lay their eggs on the larvae of gall wasps, and the ovipositor has to get through the quite thick shell of the gall.  There are so many parasitic wasps ... and wasps turn up all the time in light traps.  One moth trapper used to collect all the tiny wasps that came along for a friend who was a wasp man.

Wasp.  Hayes light trap, 21 July 2015.

Finally, a wasp I was not able to identify at all, but it's a smart-looking creature, don't you think?

Sparrow's Den

Flooded rugby pitches at Sparrow's Den, at the bottom of Corkscrew Hill, West Wickham.  24 February 2014.

Towards the end of the recent wet spell, this field filled up with water.  It's still there a month later, though the rain stopped a couple of weeks ago.

These rugby pitches were flooded a few years ago, apparently because an underground watercourse became clogged or blocked.  So perhaps the same thing has happened again; or maybe it's just a very high water table.

Some houses and gardens were also affected, and for a week or more a relay of fire engines were pumping water down the road.

Relay of fire engines emptying from behind Courtfield Rise to a stream in Summer Grove.  23 February 2014.

 There were three fire engines in the relay.  The firemen seemed to have done their work and were now busy supervising the pumping.  The outlet was in a small stream a little further down.

Water being pumped into a stream in Summer Grove.  23 February 2014.

A few days later, they found a closer outlet that just needed a single fire engine; then, later still, there was just a mobile pump with hoses leading to a drain close by.  But the field is still flooded.  By now the grass will be dying and it will be some job to get it back into shape when - or if - it is drained again.

Sparrow's Den, West Wickham.  17 February 2013.

This is what Sparrow's Den was like a year ago.  And below, a view from the hillside opposite earlier in March.  Incidentally, the wood on the hillside beyond it and the so-far-unflooded field below is Spring Park, which I have shown here before and will do again.

The flooded Sparrow's Den rugby pitches seen from the steps of St John's Church, West Wickham.  6 March 2014.

(Added later:  The earlier flooding was in 2001, apparently beginning on Wednesday 4th April.  According to a report on the web, the current flooding is caused by tree roots in a culvert silting up and causing a blockage.)

Sloes and Damsons

Sloe berries, Prunus spinosa, beside a path in West Wickham.
10 August 2011.

These sloes are the fruit of the Blackthorn, a spiny shrub whose fresh Spring flowers I showed right back in March, here: Blackthorn in Hayes.

In this photo the shrub is growing right up against a green mesh fence, and it is regularly trimmed back to protect passers-by. This has not deterred it from fruiting prolifically.

Sloes are often used as flavouring for gin, and though it is less well known, the same is true of damsons, a closely related fruit like a small plum (the sloe is like an even smaller plum). A friend has an old Damson tree in her garden, and some years ago I tried this out, taking a bottle of gin, washing and piercing the damsons, and leaving them to soak.

I don't drink much alcohol, and some of them were left soaking for years. The resulting drink did taste good.

The tree shown below is much younger and healthier than Su's old survivor, but they both produce the same crop. Notice the spider's orb web at bottom left - they are everywhere!

Damson fruits, Prunus domestica, at High Elms Country Park, 20 September 2011.

Mesh Fence Minutiae

Mesh fence on the Hayes to West Wickham railway path. March 2011.

This is the same mesh fence I wrote about here.

I walk along this path quite often and I wonder about this fence. Why is every other row fading to silver? The rows are apparently identical otherwise.

Well, first, the wires are not fading. Looking more closely shows that the strands are painted, and the paint is coming off in places. Then you can see that the fence is constructed of vertical strands which are woven together and fixed at the top and bottom by simple crimped loops.

The alternate rows you can see in the first photo are from alternate vertical strands. So the paint seems to have come off differentially on every alternate vertical strand.

How has this come about? It's not that the fence is being rubbed by passers-by, because the parts set back have lost at least as much paint as those at the front. Is it that during assembly, alternate vertical strands came from different rolls of wire, which were either rubbed differently or were made differently?

Detail of mesh fence showing paint coming off the strands

Perhaps the paint starts to flake off as the strands expand and contract when heated by the sun and then cooled in the shade. I don't see the same effect on lengths of the fence that are always out of the sun. This would still require alternate strands to react differently to the same effect.

This still seems odd to me.

There is another thing about this fence. I didn't see the process of erection, and it looks continuous. It's too long to have arrived in one piece, so how was this seamlessness achieved? Suppose it came in rolls. The strands at the ends of each length must have been woven together by the installers, and if so, then there would be some of the connecting loops which look hand done. And indeed, there they are.

I feel quite pleased with myself, having worked out a hypothesis and found confirming evidence; even though this must be already quite obvious to some, and completely trivial to others. At least I am not totally clueless about the fence.

Detail of the top of the mesh fence, showing one hand-crimped junction and three machine-crimped junctions

Mesh Fence as Environment

Railway path between West Wickham and Hayes

Between Tiepigs Lane in Hayes and Hawes Lane in West Wickham there is a footpath which runs alongside the railway cutting. Wire mesh fencing encloses the path on the railway side, and part of the other side too. This provides a great support for climbing plants like ivy and bryony, and even such a narrow fence allows all sorts of other plants to grow up around it and through the meshes. These in their turn will be shelter and food for insects and birds.

But last spring, the old fencing along the railway was torn out and replaced by new, taller fenceposts and shiny green mesh. This amounted to the destruction of a whole environment; it was depressing to see the ivy being torn out, rolled up and thrown away. It's not as though the old fencing was in too bad a condition. It was old and saggy, but still in one piece with no signs that anyone had broken through or climbed over it.

Taking down the fence also involved cutting down many shrubs and scrubby small trees that were in the way of the work.

Railway path between West Wickham and Hayes: new mesh fence in place

The new green fencing looked sterile in comparison with the old overgrown stuff. I was surprised to see that although the new mesh came in rolls, you can't see the joins; the workmen must have done a very good job of linking the sections together.

During the year some new growth has begun to take hold, particularly fast growing plants like brambles and elder. It didn't take long for something, probably foxes, to dig passageways beneath it. The glossy green colour is fading back to silvery white. So the environment will regenerate, but the removal of a whole length at one time, at least half a mile, looked extreme.

The greater height has not stopped people from throwing rubbish over onto the railway land, but today I saw some men clearing that up at one end. If they clean up the whole length, it will be a great improvement.

(Added later:) No, they didn't. They just cleared up at one end