|
 20th May and the day has become
overcast and is threatening rain after a sunny start. Looking round the
garden at midday I discovered this pair of shield bugs coreus marginatus, in
the rhubarb patch.
|
|
  21st May and I owe both of today's pictures to
friends. The one to the left was an opportunity given by a friend who brought
a dead moth to choir practice. It had flown into her kitchen and chosen to
die there so she brought it to me in the hopes that I could identify it for
her. On looking it up in the books I am confident that it is a Waved Umber Menophra
abruptaria. The other picture I owe to a friend in the village who
earlier this week emailed me a photo they had taken of a beetle on the
outside wall they had been painting. This is a cockchafer, Melolontha
melolontha. Strangely enough I discovered a dead cockchafer by the
roadside before going to the school to take Friday Club.
|
|
May 22nd, in spite of it being National Moth Night, I saw
no moths, obviously someone had forgotten to advise them of the event!
  One thing that a friend of ours
has complained of regularly at this time of the year is of birds,
particularly we think pigeons flying into her windows. I always thought that
if I kept mine none too clean this would not happen, however recently we have
had the same thing happen, in fact the birds have hit the windows so hard
that in 2 instances they have left ghostly imprints upon the glass. Despite
it indicating my lack of housewifery I thought I would take a photo of them.
You can clearly see the wings on both as well as the body, on the windows
themselves you can see where the bird must have given itself a
headache.
|
|
  May 23rd, and a sunny morning
although it is clouding over a little now. No moths last night or throughout
yesterday when I had hoped to record some but a little one on our garage wall
this morning, it is Esperia sulphurella, a day-flying variety. Also in
the churchyard this morning I was able to take a couple of photos of what I
believe to be the azure damselfly, Coenagrion puella. The photos
if clicked on will open up.
|
|
 May
24th and a beautiful sunny morning. There was this Large Red Damselfly, Pyrrhosoma
nymphula by our pond so as it remained a nice sunny day and neither
of us had any commitments we went to Waltham Abbey where we walked round the DRAGONFLY RESERVE and saw enough insects
etc. to make a separate page. Click on the link if you want to see more.
|
|
 May
25th and although it is not so sunny there are still a lot of creatures
about. I rescued a little one from the pond this morning as it appeared to be
struggling. However within minutes it was back on one of the water lily
leaves so perhaps it was reasonably at home there. This is the photograph I
took of it immediately after I rescued it. It may be a red-tipped flower beetle,
malachius bipustulatus.
|
|
 May
29th and time to play catch up on some of the images from the past 3 days.
The first was of this forest bug, pentatoma rufipes, that I saw on the
way round to the hospital in Harlow from the car park on Wednesday when I
took a friend there.
|
|
 Then
on Thursday I was able to take a photo of a very tiny green spider that had
been managing to evade me for a couple of days, disappearing every time I had
it in focus. I have inserted the top view of it into the picture. In all he
can be no more than 1/2 cm long and seems to live on this clematis flower,
usually on a leaf where it is better camouflaged. There was also time to take
a photo of what I believe to be a Grey Pug Eupithecia subfuscata (ab.
obscurissima) as it eventually settled on the patio windows.
|
|
  Finally last night proved a
bonanza for moths, they were only 6 days late! First there was this Common
Swift Hepialus lupulinus, pictured to the left. Then the Small Waved
Umber Horisme vitalbata, to the right and finally this Mottled Pug Eupithecia
exiguata .
|
|
  May 29th and a visit to my
daughter in Ipswich produced several photo opportunities, one of which I
missed, that of the pyrausta aurata moth. However the ones that I managed to
take advantage of were, to the left, the Carnation Tortrix Cacoecimorpha
pronubana, to the right, the big wolf or nursery web spider Pisaura
Mirabilis, and beneath one of the mining bees we see so regularly on our
flowers at this time of year. 
|
|
  May
30th and the weather is mixed, whilst it is still warm it is once again
cloudy and threatens rain every so often. Obviously the moths don't mind this
weather as last night there was once again a Small Waved Umber, Horisme
vitalbata, by our kitchen window. This was displaying itself better than
the one earlier this week so here is another photo of it. Also this morning
produced a couple of pictures. To the right is that of a rather acrobatic bee
as it cleaned the pollen off its abdomen into the pollen sacs on its legs.
And below there is a photo of another Common Swift Hepialus lupulinus, to
show the variation in marking between these moths and a Zebra Spider Salticus
scenicus, I found on a leaf outside the church.
 
MOST OF THE PICTURES WILL OPEN UP IF CLICKED ON,
|
|
  The
last day of May and a Bank Holiday. In spite of the dire predictions about
rain we have been fortunate and the day dawned sunny with a blue sky. Whilst
it is clouding over now we may miss the worst of the rain and hopefully have
some moths this evening, although we had none last night. This morning's
photo was of this dragonfly a female Broad Bodied Chaser, Libellula
depressa. Then just as I was preparing this page a friend came round and
pointed out this buff ermine moth, spilosoma luteum, that had parked itself
by the front door.
|