Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.
The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.
Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.
I like to leave overgrown corners for wildlife but it’s time to cut back the nettles, hogweed, blackberry and sorrel behind the pond before they take over.
Orange stipples of rust fungus, Puccinia urticata, have caused a swelling on a stem of stinging nettle. This fungus has an alternate generation which grows on sedges, which doesn’t result in swellings. This nettle was growing next to a pendulous sedge, Carex pendula, behind the pond.
When I started my Wild Yorkshire blog, harlequin ladybirds had yet to be recorded in Britain. The first records were in 2004 but now they’re our commonest ladybird.
Dozens of them spend the winter gathered snuggly in the narrow gap between our back bedroom window and its frame. There’s a great variety in their markings. A harlequin might have red spots on black or black spots on red. They can vary from having zero to as many as 21 spots.
I’m going for flea beetle, possibly Altica lythri, as the identity of the small beetle I found on a sorrel leaf.
The UK Beetles website describes it as a common beetle of parks, gardens, wasteground, dunes and salt marsh. The food plants of its larvae include willowherbs, loosestrife, enchanter’s nightshade and evening primrose.
The rat jawbone may be the remains of a fox kill but the foxes haven’t succeeded in eradicating every last brown rat in the area.
We had one of those sudden drenching showers this afternoon with hailstones falling amongst the heavy rain. As I walked across the back lawn later it was squelching underfoot. The run-off noticeably topped up the pond and it will have refilled the water butts attached to the fall pipes from our roof.
The local rat burrows were probably flooded too as we saw a large brown rat run across the patio, only to change its mind and run back again a minute later. It was the first we’ve seen for months, if not years.
Next door’s staghorn sumac might be falling to pieces as it sheds its reddening compound leaves but the birds appreciate it. A party of blue tits and great tits forage every niche on its bark and branches, while a small warbler, tagging along with them, checks out the lower branches. Starlings fly in to eat the small berries, botanically drupes.
In local parkland, this wasps’ nest at the foot of an oak has been raided, presumably by a badger. You can see the remaining wasps clustered on the remnants of the nest.
We’re used to seeing the grey squirrels burying acorns and collecting sweet chestnuts but this autumn they’re showing a lot of interest in conkers. Just after I’d photographed this nibbled shell, a squirrel bounded across the path with a large conker in its mouth and headed into the cover of a holly.
‘Did you manage to get any gardening done after drawing this and photographing the robin?’, a friend on Instagram asks me. Well yes, Jacqui, you’re going to be amazed at the transformation!
These Olympus Tough macro shots, taken while weeding the potato bed, include a holly blue butterfly.
Resting on the wheelie bin by the hedge what looks like the Large Rose Sawfly, Arge pagana. The females have ‘saws’ to cut into plants when laying eggs. There’s a self-seeded rose growing up in the beech hedge right next to the bins.
Drawn in Procreate, using my homemade ‘worn nib’ brush for the line work.
A common blue on birdsfoot trefoil at the grassy edge of the track on the far side of RSPB St Aidans this morning.
The end of the garden has become a bit of a grassroot jungle and as I pulled bindweed out from around the compost heap I disturbed this small grasshopper.
Perhaps a stripe-winged grasshopper or common green?
We don’t often spot grasshoppers in the garden. This might be our first record.
More insects from Dalby Forest, including the soldier beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, also known as ‘the bloodsucker’ because of its colour. It’s harmless, but we aren’t far from Whitby, where Dracula came ashore, so who knows?
Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, on hogweed in a clearing below Staindale Lake, Dalby Forest, North Yorks Moors. It is supposed to have a Batman logo-shaped marked on the rear of the thorax, but individuals can be variable.
The larvae of this hoverfly are ‘rat-tailed maggots’ living in wet hollows in woodland, although they’ll make use of buckets and plastic containers.
