Britain's Larger Moths...

This week I've moved back up to London, and an extremely messy room. I shan't put pictures, because it's somewhat horrifying the amount of stuff I've accumulated over 3 years, from uni and also all the things I left behind in the first place. Anyway, long story short, with all the tidying I've been doing, I found a few interesting bits and pieces amidst the carnage of old toys, university notes, books and god-knows-what-else.

The thing that caught my eye the most was a publication from the Butterfly Conservation on "The State of Britain's Larger Moths 2013". Okay, so it's a year out of date, but still fairly recent and very relevant in ecology.

 

Image from UKButterflies.co.uk

In the past couple of years, I've started to get much better at lepidoptera identification (moths, not so much, but I can do some of the basic ones), so this is a pretty interesting read. I haven't actually gotten through it all yet, but it's not too long; 30 pages. First off, its focus is larger, macro, moths, rather than micro-moths- there are more species of micro-moth in the UK, but they're much harder to identify, and a lot less striking than some of the big macros we get like Tiger, Silver Y and Burnet moths. 

Sadly, like a lot of reports I've read over the past year (mostly for my dissertation or ecology modules at university), numbers of many species are declining. 2/3 of 337 species of larger moths declined over the 40-year study recorded in this report, which is a pretty dire situation, given the usefulness of moths in the environment, playing a key role for plant pollination, and insectivores that rely on moths as a food source. It's quite evident that habitat loss and reductions in biodiversity of many areas are not doing moths any favours at all. Agricultural intensification and changing woodland management largely seem to have negative impacts on moths, with fragmentation of habitats causing declines in species numbers.

     

Dusky Thorn, Spinach, Lackey, Garden Tiger, Grass Rivulet and Autumnal Rustic species all have declined by over 90% in the past 40 years. Images from UKmoths.org.uk

It's not all doom and gloom though; the report also shows that the 1/3 of moths that aren't declining in numbers are actually increasing. Homogenization of the moth species pool of the UK isn't great, but at least it's good news for some species, and not all are becoming rarer. As well as these moths on the increase becoming more abundant, their territories are also expanding, with species such as the Dingy Footman having a more widespread range.

I need to give this paper a bit more of a read (I'm still only halfway through clearing the piles of stuff all over the place), but a quick skim through shows it's not all bad for Britain's moths. I'll be interested to see what they suggest in the last couple of pages as ways to conserve moths, as a lot of public friendly leaflets tend to focus on small-scale changes you can make in your own back garden, rather than a larger impact that, from a glance, seems to be the focus of this paper.

Dingy Footman, Image from Suffolkmoths.org.uk

You can read the full report here.

Jurassic Coast

 There's this little tiny beach near me called ZigZag beach, which not many people at all know about. It's actually kinda nice that it's such an unknown spot, because when it's tourist season and all you want to do is relax by the sea in peace without a crush of a thousand grockles around you, there is actually somewhere you can go.

Once you've managed to find your way down the extremely steep (and slippery, if it's rained, or is even dry, because it's covered in leaves) path to the beach, there's a flat area just before you go down to the beach itself. The beach isn't actually the main point of this post; there's something much cooler to be seen. Up an even tinier, steeper and slipperier path from the flat BBQ grassy area (I say BBQ; it's more an area that you can light a fire on if the last bit of the path to the beach is too difficult) you can find a real dinosaur's footprint!

It's inverted in the rock, so instead of being flat-down on the ground, it's actually upsidedown, where the rock's slowly turned over since it was formed! You'd never ever know it was there unless you had been told about it before, which I think makes it cooler- a secret treasure of Swanage. The middle toe is really long, so it's quite distinctive. I don't know that much about dinosaurs though, so I wouldn't be able to tell you which species had made it. It's about the size of a hand, maybe a bit bigger, so certainly not something tiny...

The slide back down is not something to be sniffed at... 

AES Insect Show 2014

One of the big insect events on my calendar has always been the Amateur Entomologists Society (AES) October show at Kempton Park racecourse. Because I've been at uni for the past 3 years, unfortunately I've not actually been able to go for ages- but this year, now I've graduated (argh!), I've not been up in Birmingham this weekend, and was able to go! Annoyingly, the weather was pretty horrendous, which made getting there and back a bit tricky, although the show itself is thankfully indoors. We managed to just about avoid the rain!

The AES show happens once every year, and basically it's an entomologist's heaven. Both floors of the building are packed out with stalls, selling a range of live and pinned insects (and spiders, plenty of tarantulas), books, art, shells and scientific equipment like nets, collecting jars and the like. It's pretty fantastic, and I've not come across anything else to quite the same scale or quite the same focused interest on insects.

The favourites to sell I think perhaps goes to the tarantulas (there are a lot of spider stands), but there are also tons of snails, millipedes, stick insects, praying mantids... and a couple of other rarer things, like katydids, grasshoppers, scorpions and hermit crabs. There were some pretty impressive boxes of snails, that kept trying to escape out the sides!

As a member of the Phasmid Study Group (PSG), I always make a bit of a beeline towards their stand at this show. Especially since I haven't been able to get to their meetings quite as regularly recently (again, due to being in Birmingham for university), it was quite nice to check out how the stand looked, and who was hanging around. Nice to see some of the old familiar faces.

 

One of the most popular things to sell at the AES meeting is pinned out insects- beetles and especially butterflies make up the bulk of these. There are some lovely blue morpho butterflies, atlas and other exotics, as well as native peacocks and the common brown species; wall, meadow and speckled wood. There was one stall that was selling pinned bullet and fire ants, which sold out of the larger soldiers very quickly after we got there and had a bit of a wander round.

I'm not such a fan of the dead specimens, but there are always loads of live ones to keep; there were quite a few very nice millipedes that really caught my eye, but alas, I haven't really got the space for any more than the one tank I already have (pink-legged millipedes). I rather fancy some nice orange ones one day though...

It was a pretty great day, and even managed to not spend a fortune on insects. And we didn't get soaked either! 

River Wey

This week I've been in Guildford, enjoying the last of the gorgeous summer weather we've been having! It honestly hasn't felt like October at all- I went for a long walk along the River Wey with the bf on the 3rd, and we barely needed our hoodies until 6-7pm at night, when the sun was starting to go down!

The River Wey Navigations are a 20 mile waterway that runs through Surrey, made navigable through widening of the river channel and installation of locks along its length at various points. There are also a few big weirs along the river as well, used for measuring current and such. The river splits at a few points, creating a navigable channel and a smaller one- we had our lunch between the two at about 3pm, a good 7 miles down the river from Guildford.

The towpath was really flat and easy to walk along, which is how we managed to walk about 15 miles in total... quite a feat, after setting out at lunchtime with just a vague "let's go for a bit of a walk and see how far we can get"! One of the most interesting things we came across was Newark Priory at Pyrford, a fantastic old ruin that we certainly didn't expect. Despite trying to work out a way to get closer than a view from the riverside, unfortunately it's on private land, so this is the best view you can get of it. The crows made the picture even better, flying around in big clouds every time they got into arguments over whose bit of rock belonged to who.

We came across quite a lot of other interesting wildlife too on our walk- damselflies and dragonflies are prevalent at the moment, with the blues amongst these the most striking. There were kestrels hovering over the marshy fields near Pyrford; we were lucky enough to see one dive down to catch some prey, but unfortunately it came up empty handed, something it was quick to loudly bemoan from a nearby telegraph pole shortly after. The normal moorhens, mallards and mute swan were around too, although no coot today.

Eventually we did make it back to Guildford, although it took us a good 7 hours or so... a bit of a longer walk than we expected when we first set out! Really nice though, and an awesome end to a lovely summer.

Someone else didn't make it back home so safely...

Widget

 This is Widget. He's the Durlston Country Park resident dog, belonging to head ranger Katie. I've not got much to say this post, but these pictures were too sweet not to use!

Widget generally comes out on wednesday work parties with the volunteers at the country park, if it's safe to do so. Obviously, if we're working along the road or cutting down things that are likely to fall, he's not around. Ragwort pulling I think perhaps is one of Widget's favourite work party activities, as there are lots of people always walking round a big field, and plenty of opportunities to run around, chase deer if there are any (once he absolutely belted it after a roe deer that was in one of the lower fields, and it took a good five minutes for him to come back, unsuccessful of course). 

He loves fetching sticks and generally messing about, although he's fairly old now, so doesn't have quite the same energy levels as a younger dog! He'll still put up a fight if you try and take away his stick though. His favourite thing is eating leftover icecream from visitors to the castle, and he can get quite fat during the summer months...

A Bee Tree

 Honeybees are very important in my family, as both my Mum and brother are beekeepers. So, when I went to the Natural History Museum a few months ago (I can't believe it was such a long time ago!) and we were wandering around the garden, their honeybee tree really stood out to me.

Investigating the bee tree

There was a live colony inside, which you could see when you opened up the back (there was glass seperating too, of course). Then the foragers flew out the other side of the tree, away from the path and visitors to the museum. I thought it was really cool how they had put a hive actually into a tree, and even cooler that they didn't seem to be using frames; the bees were just naturally making their own wax boards in whatever shape they liked, and they were absolutely stuffed with honey.

They also had some standard bee boxes further away from the visitors' path, which were also very active given it was a warm day. The Natural History Museum is really great in that their garden is really informative and has a few planted up areas, but also is a wonderful wildlife space, with lots of trees and less carefully managed areas that provide hiding and nesting places. All the planting is native species, and there are plenty of flowering plants and trees that the bees can use to collect nectar from.

Marbled white butterflies

Marbled white butterflies are one of my favourite things to see during the summer season. Of course, it now being October, there aren't any about any more- but I'm very behind on writing posts! 

Widespread in the south of England, their major distribution reaches up to about the midlands. Here in Dorset, they're one of the most common butterflies I see, especially up at Durlston, where there's loads of unimproved grassland, their favourite habitat. Walking through the fields on a Ragwort picking mission, you can stir up tens of them during the peak warm season, which is quite a sight to see!

Unfortunately I don't have very many good pictures at all, as butterflies are tricky to take pictures of. They just don't like staying still! This one was a bit crumpled from being caught in a spider's web, so it was having a rest on a stalk before attempting flight.

 

A look at UKbutterflies.co.uk rewards some more specific species information, with subspecies and the like. I'm not that good at identifying between male and female, so the one in the photos above will remain a mystery unless someone knows! I'd give a stab at saying it was a male though, as it's got a more greeny underside than reddish, which a female would have.