Week 45: Of Beetles, Digested & Rare

A beautiful Oak at the Brickworks

Monday dawned crisp and bright, following the first real frost of the season. Mid-morning, over at the Brickworks, there were still areas untouched by the warmth of the sun, covered in frost and ice.

SE of Baker's Wood, looking north

Frosty Nettles

Shards of ice over the grass

I squelched my way around the site, coming across a few more species of fungi (including Parrot Waxcap (Hygrocybe psittacina) and Golden Waxcap (Hygrocybe chlorophana)). Green Woodpeckers (Picus viridis) were conspicuous and, as on my last visit, a group of Jays were having a hum-dinger of a fight near the entrance track. On my way round, I could hear a small gathering of Fieldfare “chacking” to one another, which I eventually spotted. Bullfinches called softly and it was lovely when a bright, red male, brilliant in the autumn sunshine, flew over my head.

Golden Waxcap (Hygrocybe chlorophana), cap diameter approx 25mm

Having had owl pellets in my freezer for months, it will probably come as no surprise that this week I had Green Woodpecker poo drying on the radiator. It wasn’t planned, honestly. I spotted a very distinctive dropping whilst walking over Dellfield and, after a little research, discovered it was Green Woodpecker poo and that if I found a dry specimen, I’d be able to see that it was packed full of the remains of ants. Well, not one to be put off by the fact that everything was sopping wet from a day’s rain on Sunday, I returned prepared: I bagged up some prime ‘pecker poo and brought it home to dry out.

Wet ‘pecker poo in situ: 35mm long, 6mm diameter

I am mildly reassured that Chris Packham is a fan of Green Woodpecker poo and wrote, “[p]erhaps my favourite bird poo (and I'm sure many other people's too) is produced by the green woodpecker. Again cylindrical, it can be found on short grassy areas where the birds have been foraging. It is about 6-8mm in diameter and somewhere between 25-35mm in length. Its outer skin is white and the interior, visible at either end, is tan brown and roughly textured, so it can look a bit like a crumpled length of a cigarette.

The real joy of woodpecker poo, however, is picking up a dry length and squashing it in the palm of your hand as this reveals the contents as the bodies of countless ants which the bird had eaten, lots of tiny legs and heads and abdomens. Superb.”

Obviously, once the poo had dried out, I was expecting it to crumble into a mass of minute ant bodies and limbs. In fact, it appeared that this particular ‘pecker had been feasting on a smorgasbord of tiny beetles! If I had more time and patience, it is probably possible to identify a few of them from their remains. There are definitely a variety of Weevil carcasses and I did spy the elytra (outer casing) of a 14-spot Ladybird, which was surprising, given how distasteful they are meant to be to birds. Anyway, feel free to let me know in the comments if you can ID any more of them - I’d be interested to hear.

Dried Green Woodpecker poo, split in two. Diameter 6mm

Closer views of crumbled Green Woodpecker poo (scale in mm)

Whilst we’re on the subject of Beetles, the Trust had some very encouraging news last week from Martin Parr (Conservation Manager at Maple Lodge). Earlier this year, Martin had done some informal survey work at the Trust’s Brickworks and Gadespring Cress Beds sites. At the latter, he'd photographed some Bloody-nosed Beetle larvae but didn’t think too much of it until he read Trevor James’ beetle report in the Hertfordshire Naturalist 2014, which contained the following entry:-

"Timarcha tenebricosa Bloody-nosed Beetle. This conspicuous beetle was found on the towpath at Boxmoor, 12th August 2011 D.Hodges. A welcome record of a species that is strangely rare in our county, although its food plant, Cleavers Galium aparine, could not be more common."

Martin got in touch with Trevor and it transpires that the Box Moor Trust’s Gadespring Cress Beds site has the only known colony of this beetle in Hertfordshire! It’s a fantastic record and, thanks to Martin, the site can now be managed in such a way as to enable this rare Hertfordshire Beetle to continue to thrive. If, like me, you're wondering why it's called Bloody-nosed, the answer is that its defence mechanism is to secrete a blood-red liquid from its mouth which irritates the mouth of mammal predators. So, there we go!

Thank you Martin for sharing your time and expertise with the Trust (and me!) and thanks too for providing the information and photographs.

Bloody-nosed Beetle larva (Timarcha tenebricosa)

Bloody-nosed Beetle larva (Timarcha tenebricosa)

I'll finish with a couple of shots of the Dellfield Oak.

Taken at 14:40 on Monday, just before Dellfield went into complete shadow, as the sun disappeared behind the ridge of Westbrook Hay

Week 29: Watch Out, Frogs About!

It is now peak season for Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) and Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) migrant butterflies and they could turn up anywhere. I spent a morning at the Brickworks searching. If nothing else, I hoped I might come across a partial second brood of Dingy Skippers or my first Hawk-moth species but I struck out on all counts, and, instead, as I walked the shaded path back towards the Buddleja, I narrowly avoided the utter horror of standing on a substantial soft-bodied creature. A glistening, vital Common Frog (Rana temporaria). Unfortunately, it didn’t unleash its long, sticky tongue to catch any insects whilst I was watching but it did hang around for some photographs.

At both Dellfield and the Brickworks, there are good numbers of Common Blue butterflies (female, below, left) and each site had at least one fresh Small Copper butterfly (below, right). Other flutterers included Meadow Browns, Speckled Woods, Gatekeepers, Small Skippers, one or two Small Tortoiseshells; Southern Hawker and Emperor dragonflies; and a couple of very worn five-spot Burnet moth species.
 
Every pair of socks I own and quite possibly my walking shoes as well is in danger of hot-housing the development of miniature wild flower and grasses meadows. No matter how carefully I tread, or the number of times I stop to empty my shoes, I always come home from Box Moor outings with shoes and socks full of seeds from the meadows and moors. I don’t think that’s quite the intended outcome but short of wearing wellies all summer (and cooking my feet) it's unavoidable.

Out on Bovingdon Reach this week, during another inadvertent seed collecting mission, a juvenile Green Woodpecker was digging for ants. A small group of House Martins were catching insects over the meadow and back at Dellfield, a juvenile Great spotted Woodpecker stayed still long enough for me to grab a distant shot. It's great to see both woodpecker species have bred successfully this year. Earlier in the week, I’d caught a female Green Woodpecker perched on a fence post at the pond on Preston Hill. The very short video clip below is a little shaky as the camera was resting on the fence railings (no tripod to hand).

Finally, this week's Oak photograph…

Week 16: Not so Dandy

As the yoof would say, I proper overdid it last week. Bouncing bunnies, rare butterflies and merry mothing adventures were a Lepidoptera too far. I’ve had to scale back a little this week. Evidently, the curative powers of nature take a while to kick in. So, this post is all about Dellfield, or at least, the bits of it I could identify and photograph yesterday. In fact, in a glass half full kind of a way, scaling back has the advantage of forcing you to look more carefully and patiently at what you can access, and put that which is off limits to one side.

Ever since capturing the Oak, with the mass of yellow dandelions in the foreground, I have been waiting for the right weather and the seed heads to develop, in order to repeat the shot. Unfortunately, Monday night’s heavy rain drenched and destroyed many of the fluffy, white orbs I’d hoped to include. C’est la vie. You can only photograph what’s there. It’ll be orchid season soon anyway… So, we have, the not so dandy Dandelions...

If you’d like to see how a dandelion goes from flower to seed head, take a look at this great, time lapsed video clip.

Pretty pink/purple Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium) is coming into flower now and is dotted all around Dellfield. On the common nettles, Small Tortoiseshell larvae (caterpillars) are emerging from their communal webs, built after hatching (left). They will continue to construct these webs as and when they move on, before, finally, individually finding a suitable site for pupation. By the middle of the summer, metamorphosis complete, the new butterflies will start to free themselves from their chrysalides.


My search for life (of a non-alien form) kept me glued to the stinging nettles (where else?!) (ouch). They are all around the fringes of Dellfield and are, as ever, teeming with invertebrates, including a couple of easily missed, day flying, Small Yellow Underwing moths (Panemeria tenebrata). According to Butterfly Conservation, they fly “actively in sunshine visiting flowers such as dandelion and buttercup.” Neither of the specimens I found had read the literature and were on Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) instead (below).

As I walked the west side of Dellfield, a male Blackcap kept me company with his scratchy song which was occasionally overlaid with the fluty melody of a Blackbird. Up in the trees, a pair of Kestrels were busy doing spring time things and overhead the resident pair of Buzzards were calling and soaring. In the midst of this, I came across a 14-spot Ladybird (Propylea 14-punctata). This is a native, british species and is about half the size of the more familiar 7-spot Ladybird (Coccinella 7-punctata). My photograph (right) won’t win any prizes but I was chuffed to capture the opening of the protective wing casings before lift off.

There are at least 2 pairs of Green Woodpeckers around Hay Wood. One pair was up in Barnfield yesterday. The male (nice red “moustache”) was stabbing the moist earth with his tough bill, trying to get at a food source. He will mainly feed on ants but he could have been after other insects. I just managed to photograph him before the pair of them flew to trees in Ryders. That superb yellow-green rump glowed in the brilliant sunshine. I'll keep my eyes peeled for baby 'peckers over the coming weeks.

Finally, a cautionary tale. Should you ever find yourself in a field of Spring flowers, about to crouch down to inspect a bee on a dandelion, make sure you check its wingman hasn’t landed on the back of your leg (almost just behind your knee, say). Wingman bee stung me, even through thick denim jeans, but it served its purpose. At the first “prickle”, I stood up quickly and the bee flew off, apparently not squished by my squatting on it. I was very relieved not to have caused inadvertent death and the bee sting is only mildly itchy now. All’s well that ends well.

Finally, finally, before I forget, Ben is hoping to run the moth traps again this evening at Box Moor. You’ll be able to catch up with the results on his blog, later this week.