UK Nature Blog

Tawny mining bee - burrowing in your borders

My 2 year old daughter spotted lots of these small, fuzzy orange bees on the newly dug soil in the garden. I identified them (by text message, having been sent the iPhone picture above at work) as Tawny mining bees. These are solitary bees, only about a centimetre long, that burrow in soil and raise their young underground. They are only to be seen March to May, hibernating the rest of the year in their tunnels. Completely harmless, I find them rather charming and it's fascinating the way many of them will suddenly descend on a small patch of soil to set up home - which is what my daughter witnessed.

Large birch sawfly larva

Thanks to regular correspondent Bob for this great picture of a Large birch sawfly larva, that he found in Devon after felling a Silver birch tree. This isn't a caterpillar, though obviously it could easily be mistaken for one. It turns into a Large birch sawfly (picture of the adult on that page), a type of sawfly - which is a bit like a wasp but with a fatter waist.

Winter caterpillar

When tidying up the garden in the winter I regularly find these bright green caterpillars. I'm amazed that the hard frosts don't harm their squidgy bodies. This one looks like a sweet, curled up on the top of a Scabious flower head.

Nature notes - October 2012

It seems as if autumn swept in over just a few days and now the country is transformed. Here are a few things I've noticed recently.

• The feeders are smothered in Goldfinches and Greenfinches.
• Magpies and Jays are much in evidence. Jays in particular always seem to suddenly appear at this time of year, though you had hardly seen them at all for the other months. I've blogged about this before. Twice.
• The trees are showing their autumn colours - some of them are golden yellow already, but the full display is yet to be seen.
• It's raining. A lot.
• Fruit and veg crops didn't fare well with the topsy turvy weather over the year. I read that a famous English vineyard has had to ditch the entire year's grape harvest as it's just no good.
• The garden spiders have mostly had their fun and there aren't quite so many webs to walk into of a morning.

David Bellamy at Butterfly World

Here pictured with yours truly is living legend David Bellamy, at Butterfly World near St Albans. I had the pleasure of meeting him as he was working there for most of the weekend in his role as a patron. He spoke passionately about the environment and that wonderful project (which I do heartily recommend). He wasn't mad keen on my picking the caterpillars off my cabbages - but I planted them in order to eat them myself!

I won't go into the details of our rambling conversation, but I will mention this delightful exchange (remembered as best I can):

Me: I run a nature blog
David: I don't understand these blog things
A nearby assistant: David - you have one!

Perhaps most importantly, I understand from David and other staff there that the massive biome is scheduled to be built soon. I do hope they get it off the ground and it turns out to be as promising as it sounds.

Hornet mimic hoverfly

I spotted this insect flying past me and alighting briefly a few yards away. I thought it must be a hornet as it was very large (about 2cm long) and had that classic hornet coluration of yellow and rusty red, with amber wings. However closer inspection suggested it was actually a hoverfly of some sort, and a lengthy internet search showed it to be Volucella zonaria, which does indeed mimic hornets and is apparently the largest hoverfly to be found in the UK.

It seems they're not found especially widely, being confined mostly to the South and South-East of the UK.

Meet the Species

Bristol Natural History Consortium has been running a Meet the Species initiative, as part of Discovering Places, the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad Campaign to inspire the UK to discover their local environment. As part of this they've been publishing guest blog posts over the last week or so, as it draws to a close. There are two contributions from UKNatureBlog that were included today, on Zebra spiders and the Common Woodlouse (mostly drawn from content previously published here).

Woodland wildlife photography

The BBC has an absolutely brilliant gallery of woodland wonders, from the Woodland Trust's recent photo competition, as judged by Simon King. Definitely worth a look.

Giant wood wasp

Michael writes in with an excellent find. He tells the story best, so in his own words:

I discovered this perching on the insect screen of our back door in Suffolk at around noon. I'm a bit of an amateur insect freak, but never seen this before! A couple of hours online last night and reference to my small library, I decided that it is 'Urocerus gigas' - giant wood-wasp or horntail (female). We have some mixed woodland overlooking our back garden.

She was a little lethargic at first (thus allowed these photos) - appeared to be well-attached to the netting of the screen, but we managed to get her into a jam jar - still a bit indolent, but when I tipped her onto the lawn, she quickly took off (loud buzzing) and flew off, gaining height very fast - a very strong flier!

I'll be honest, I wasn't aware of these impressive sawflies (for they are not truly wasps) and I don't believe I've ever seen one. It's wonderful to come across such 'exotica' native in the UK. BTW, the frightening looking spike on the back-end of this Giant wood wasp is actually an ovipositor for laying eggs, not a sting. In fact it's completely harmless and unable to sting.

Thanks Michael!

The Cricket season

 

It seems to be the cricket season - I've seen four Bush crickets (at least I assume they are) in and around my house in the last two days. That's an old picture above of a Speckled bush cricket, which I've blogged about previously. Most of my current crickets are in the dim corners of my porch, where they seem to like to congregate for some reason.

Amentsoc.org has a wonderful page on grasshoppers, crickets etc. that just taught me a load of interesting new stuff. Very much recommended.