Staghorn Sumac

The most conspicuous butterflies at the moment: fresh-looking red admirals.

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.

wasp nest

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.

conker
squirrel

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.

Tough Work

‘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.

Rose Sawfly

rose sawfly
Body length, about 1 cm.

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.

Common Blue

common blue

A common blue on birdsfoot trefoil at the grassy edge of the track on the far side of RSPB St Aidans this morning.

Grasshopper

grasshopper

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.

grasshopper

Perhaps a stripe-winged grasshopper or common green?

We don’t often spot grasshoppers in the garden. This might be our first record.

Batman Hoverfly on Hogweed

hoverfly sketches

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.

hoverfly

Streaked Plant Bug

This striking-looking streaked plant bug, Miris striatus, hitched a ride on my shorts as we walked through the wooded fringe of Brodsworth Hall gardens on Sunday.

It’s a bug, not a beetle, so it has piercing mouthparts, which it uses to suck aphids, moth larvae and leaf beetles but it can also feed on young leaves and unripe fruits. In Britain it’s often found on hawthorn or oak.

Hauxley

lagoon Hauxley

Another sketchbook page from our short break in Northumberland and it’s another view from a table in a cafe overlooking a lagoon in a restored landscape, this time at the Lookout Café at the Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre at the northern end of Druridge Bay.

Red admiral and speckled wood butterflies rested on willow and bramble in the afternoon sun in a sheltered corner at the foot of the wooded slope below the Wildlife Discovery Centre.

Link

Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre

Little Brown Moth

moth

This little brown moth must have flown in one summer night and expired, or been the victim of a spider, in a corner of the studio.

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Categorized as Insects Tagged