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?
The ‘Bloodsucker’
Tag: Hoverfly
Batman Hoverfly on Hogweed
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.
The Mousy Scent of Hemlock
Newmillerdam car park, 19℃ 68℉, humid and overcast: Luxuriant should-high hogweed, nettle, creeping thistle, curled dock and growing to 8ft, hemlock with cleavers scrambling amongst the stems. Several species of hoverfly are attracted to the umbels of hogweed or resting on leaves.
Working under an umbrella, the patter of rain on the fabric reminds me of when I occasionally camped out in my one-man tent but any fresh smell of summer rain is cancelled out from the strong smell of mice from the hemlock.
Hoverflies in the Herbage
Hemlock water-dropwort grows amongst curled dock and nettle alongside the car park at Newmillerdam. A holly blue butterfly rests on the hemlock while hoverflies visit the flowers of creeping buttercup, occasionally chasing each other around. A micro moth resting on a buttercup looks, at first glance, like a tiny fragment of plant debris.
Draw from the Shoulder
‘Always draw with movement from the elbow or shoulder, never from the wrist’ was the advice that I read in a book on illustrating graphic novels recently. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. I’ve always had shaky hands so drawing from the wrist rather than the fingers is usually about as free as I get. For this geranium I made a point of moving my whole arm, so it helped that we were sitting in a cafe table and I could steady my arm by resting it on the table.
I didn’t find it so easy when I was kneeling, clutching my little A6 Hahnemuhle Watercolour Book, beside one of the beds in the walled garden at Sewerby Hall, drawing a red admiral on what I think was Hylotelephium telephium, a relative of the sedums. I find it impossible to sit in a crosslegged yoga pose, so kneeling is the best I can do.
Hoverflies were also attracted to the flowers and basked in the sun on the surrounding box edging.
Apostle Spoon
Reading up on comic strips and graphic novels makes me more aware of the stylisation that we’re familiar with in everyday life. Looking closely at this apostle teaspoon, part of the mismatched cutlery and crockery at Hilary’s in Cawthorne, I could see that someone had designed him with the sort of stylish simplification that you’d put into designing a character in a manga or comic strip story. He could appear as the ‘wise old man’ mentor for some hero, like Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan Canobi in Star Wars.
‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper!’ would be a suitable aphorism for the Apostle-spoon character if he was admonishing me for my inability to adopt the lotus position, but it was actually Master Po’s line to David Carridine’s trainee monk in the 1970s television series, Kung Fu.
My mum had some teaspoons with Egyptian characters on them and I hope that I managed to keep one when we cleared her house. Now I’m thinking could they have come back with my dad from Egypt after the war. I don’t ever remember asking my mum about the story behind them.
A Corner of the Meadow
3.50 p.m., 91℉, 34℃ in direct sun, which is filtered through a veil of cloud with lower cumulus coming in from the south-east: A small hoverfly is fascinated by the lime green top of my pen and explores it as I draw.
A blackbird is softly scolding and a female sparrow eyes me warily from the hedge.
Most unusual sighting is two Typhoons flying over, turning about on manoeuvre.
Helophilus Hoverfly
In most hoverflies you can tell which is the male by looking at the eyes: in males there’s no gap between them, presumably an adaptation because the males spend so much time hovering, keeping an eye out for females or rival males. Helophilus hoverflies are different: the male does have a gap between the eyes, so you have to look at the tip of the abdomen. In the female this is pointed while in the male its rounded off with a genital capsule.
So this is a male Helophilus pendulus, a species name that translates as ‘pendent sun-lover’, appropriate as in summer male hoverflies typically hover, more or less on the spot, as if suspended by an invisible thread.
Pellucid Fly
This pellucid fly, also known as the pellucid hoverfly, obligingly sat on an umbel of hogweed as we photographed it. It’s one of Britain’s largest flies so although I hadn’t brought my DSLR and macro lens, it still made a good subject for my iPhone.
It’s larval stage lives in the nests of bees and wasps, scavenging its way through waste products but also turning carnivore eating the larvae of its hosts.
This is our first visit to the High Peak since before lockdown and we’re on our regular circular walk between Hope and Castleton.
We see are a couple of fresh-looking red admirals, half a dozen meadow browns and a blue dragonfly with a greenish thorax hawking back a forth over a little backwater pool on the bend of this stream, Peakshole Water, downstream from Castleton.
But it wasn’t just us watching insects, unknown to me as a photographed this valerian further downstream at Hope, the insects were watching us. When I downloaded the photograph I spotted this wasp, which must have been hovering within a couple of feet of me, with a ‘what are you doing?’ expression on its face. So rather like the lamb I attempted to photograph stealthily earlier on.
We’re walking rather than sitting and sketching, but I do get a chance to try out my new pen, a Lamy nexx an EF nib, as we wait for lunch at the Castle Inn.
Hoverflies
The walled garden, Nostell Priory, 10.45 a.m., 65°F, 16°C: As I draw a cranesbill in the corner of the wild flower meadow, hoverflies investigate my pen. The long thinner species is attracted to the red plunger in my transparent Lamy fountain pen while the more convincing wasp mimic, the one with the broader boat-shaped abdomen, is attracted to the circular end of the pen and later to the round face of my key-fob compass.
A third species, a small dark hoverfly feeding on the cranesbill flowers, differs from the others in the way it holds its wings when at rest. It keeps them folded parallel along its back rather than angled at 45° like the other hoverflies.
A metre of so from me amongst the tumbled grass stems there’s a wasps’ nest. The wasps tend to leave the nest in a determined, direct flight but half of those returning hesitate and perform two or three short clockwise loops, about six inches across, as if they’re checking out the immediate surroundings before touching down. Or perhaps they’re giving way to any outgoing traffic.
A meadow brown butterfly rests amongst the grass stems.
Toadlet
In the lakeside wood, a tiny amphibian hops across the path. I always assume that if it hops it’s a frog, if it trundles it’s a toad but when I pick it up to take it out of harm’s way, I can see that it’s a toad, with dry warty skin. It’s smaller than my little finger nail but it’s already has the gnarled and weathered look of a prehistoric creature.
Wood Pigeon’s Egg
A blackbird was pecking at this egg which looks like a wood pigeon’s. It was lying beneath a tree by the middle lake at Nostell. I suspect that a jackdaw or magpie might have taken it from a nest. The crow tribe are the usual suspects when it comes to egg crime.