more meadow pleasures 5

the common blues have found each other,



and the red admiral is only included to show the beautiful contrast of colours

more meadow pleasures 4

second generation brimstones have suddenly appeared in large numbers, along with commas (much brighter/richer than earlier in the year).

late for pheasants

we set off a hen pheasant this morning, and much to our surprise we discovered that she had been sitting on a clutch of about a dozen eggs buried deep in the meadow vegetation. It seems very late for a pheasant to be laying eggs as the hunting/shooting season has just started. I hope she returns to her nest before too long. The dogs were very keen on trying them out.

crab spider

a crab spider (Misumena vatia) not very well disguised on some buddleia, waiting for some unsuspecting bee or butterfly to land. Apparently they can change colour at will, and are usually yellow and live on goldenrod. This one seems to have got it wrong.

caught in the act

caught in the act, red pawed so to speak, going through the bins. No excuse, no alibis, no reprieve.

more meadow pleasures 3 - Cornish fruit flies

and a brilliant small tortoiseshell (bottom), a wall brown (middle) nowhere near a wall but unusually still for this restless butterfly, and an odd shaped fly with a dog on its back (top).

10 August 2010

Thanks to my friends at Wild about Britain, this fly has been identified as chaetorellia jaceae, a fruit fly that lives on knapweed and related species and is used in other parts of the world as a form of biological control for these plant species where they have become invasive. As a group these flies have very elabotrate mating rituals, and often these sorts of colours to act as bayesian mimicry to put off their predators.

later on 10 August 2010

or is it Chaetostomella cylindrica ? This is the definitive fly for a dog's blog.