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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Aug 03, 19 5:27 pm Post subject:

they do seem to be doing well here.
more of some, usual of most, less of few

york has had quite a bit of input in terms of education and habitat creation SSSI's nature reserves ,old meadow etc , which helps with a basic population of stuff, it is a well educated and pretty green place ( we had dave as a green lord mayor ) and industrial agro OP/neonic use is a few miles away or more, perfect for insects.

add in garden and homestead plants this area is ace for em.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15575

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 19 7:09 am Post subject:

I certainly noticed it as a particularly leafy sort of city with lots of open green areas.

Sadly round here we have a lot of people that have come out from towns and seem to like 'tidy' which means grass cut to within an inch or its life. I am glad to report that some thyme, a small member of the geranium family, and squinanceywort have got a foothold on the worst affected area, although I noticed that they have managed to cut the harebells which were at the top of a bank again. All that seems to be surviving there is grass and it is being invaded by ivy.

I think I saw a painted lady in the garden yesterday, and we had a couple of blues, probably holly. If the buddleia coincides with the painted ladies, we may well have the spectacular site of the whole lot lifting off if disturbed. Only happened once, and only for a few days. Overall, I think our butterfly numbers are holding up pretty well, but have mainly been in the wood itself, so only seen them on the way in and out.

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8600
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 19 12:33 pm Post subject:
Elephant Hawkmoth I presume?

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 19 6:41 pm Post subject:
iirc the hefalump ones are green with spots if my id as a kid was right . i had a green with spots for a while , they eat rosebay willow herb and are really huge , i'm pretty sure what emerged was hefalump. that one looks greyish in colour. there are quite a few spp. i was rather taken by the lime hawkmoth 'pillar i rescued a couple of years ago, charming if a little confused about the A19.

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Sun Aug 04, 19 10:15 pm Post subject:
Hefalump Hawk Moth caterpillars come in two varieties. Green (as dpack describes) ang grey/black/brown as gz shows. Henry

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15575

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 19 7:00 am Post subject:
That's some caterpillar Gz. Thanks for the ID Buzzy. I didn't know they came in two colour schemes.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 19 10:44 am Post subject:
thanks for that buzzy, i did not know about the grey version.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 19 6:38 pm Post subject:

is the two colour thing similar to the peppermoth being pale in a clean place and grime coloured in coal burning towns?

ie are the grey ones an adaptation to the industrial revolution?

if that was the case a green one living next to soot blackened gritstone in the 1960's seems odd.

i looked but did not find a geographic study of which lives where without delving into "scholar" as a search engine.

todays news from the hedge is that the charmingly named flower bugs are in there and they still drink body fluids through a straw, if you notice them they brush or blow off easily, leave em be for a short while they latch on. itchy bites.

and just for fun , shhhh dont tell tt yet, but i am trying to work out which false widow spp has had babies in the crevices of the outside of the shed, i thought i saw one a while back and the spiderlings i have seen a few of since had that look to them as well

another crop of sparrows to add to the survivors of earlier clutches, even with cats and a few other predators ( diverse environment )they seem to be doing well for numbers. how many fit ones go into winter does seem to make a huge difference the next year.

anecdote but not data, from a low count a decade ago they seem to be making a small but steady recovery , at least within this group territory .

thinking of spiders i have not seen several of the labyrinth ones so i guess they expired before the little ones have hatched, which might be a kindness for them.
as i like to try to get the know the beasties i did have a shared moment eye to eyes with one of them, cold, it did not like me but perhaps thought i was too big to capture, fierce and cold.
ace wee thing

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 19 6:52 pm Post subject:

It seems that nobody yet understands (or has not yet published) the reasons for some caterpillars being green and some being brown. It isn't, apparently, a simple genetic link, nor a dietary thing. When we found a batch at work, both colours were present. Incidentally, their large size and habit of inflating their eyespots frightened our handyman, who was present at their discovery. "It reared up at me!" he said, pale and trembling. This from a grown man, about six foot tall and broad in proportion

Henry

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Aug 05, 19 8:00 pm Post subject:

startling is a good defence if you are high calorie and unarmed

a few butterflies have made me jump with a sudden swap from empty foliage to staring angry eyes of some odd beast.

i am a bit cautious about " strangers " as well as known nasties though.
the beetle that " maced " me in the face so i could not see in one eye and blurry in the other for a couple of days was a bit nasty.
pretty wee thing, inch and a bit long, 3/8ths wide across the tum, charcoal with a hint of ochre, violet edging to the carapace.
the only uk ones vaguely matching the description did not seem to have a reputation for squirting but that got me from about 8 inches with a very unpleasant well aimed chem attack

it was in a place that was baffling moss and shroom twitchers ( among quite a long list of baffled folk ) and there were a load of insects none of us had ever seen before but afaik they are not catalogued or studied in any way.
tis national trust land now so i recon it would be ripe for academic study at a detailed level if a uni department wanted to study temperate rain forest and too many micro climates to list .
tis a bit dangeroos but only a 15 min ambulance response time and an hours walk to a selection of nice pubs which is probably
better than somewhere in the boonies of british columbia or mountain peru .

there are a lot of things in there if you look.

PS the landscape is actually really dangeroos even in daylight so perhaps it would not be for some but folk ab into batcaves in borneo , learn the skills with a pub and an ambulance available, record a very special place and probably get to name something might be an attractive resource for a few folk.

the risk assessment would be awesome

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15575

Posted: Tue Aug 06, 19 7:27 am Post subject:

I am sure that there are lots of places in the UK that could do with further study. Often, I think that small fungi, plants and similar are classified as 'rare' because they are overlooked rather than there not being many of them. One so called expert told us that we wouldn't have dormice in our wood because it was unsuitable, so we showed him the summer nest we had found, and now we have seen real live dormice, so shows how much some 'experts' know.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15575

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 19 7:46 am Post subject:
We saw two hares in the woods yesterday, which we were pleased about as we haven't seen any for a while. Not sure if they were the same ones, as we had an adult and a large leveret, and these were full sized, but could be the full grown leveret or a pair.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Aug 14, 19 10:25 pm Post subject:
folk are harvesting at the mo so moving into the woods makes sense.

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15575

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 19 6:59 am Post subject:
We get them in the woods all year. They are supposed to be field animals, but we get them in the winter (seen their prints in snow) and we had one live with us and raise its leverets under one of our sheds.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 19 5:48 pm Post subject:
the last snap in the rather nice grauniad gallery is a bit special and not one i would want to hand hold. they used a trailcam, set it up well and got lucky the other snaps are a mixed bag but that last one is ace

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