Micro ladybirds

The ladybirds we are all used to seeing are often red with black spots, sometimes black with red spots and occasionally yellow with black spots, all shiny.  There is another group of smaller ladybirds which are mostly unspotted and not shiny, known as inconspicuous ladybirds or micro ladybirds.  They are more difficult to find and often go unnoticed.  In the past few days I have come across four of them and have been learning how to photograph them.  The most recent find was Scymnus nigrinus which is rare with only a handful of UK records, mostly from East Anglia.   I found about ten in a group of small Scots pine trees only a few miles from here. Scymnus nigrinus is very small and is black and so is not an easy subject to photograph.  I used a small floating frame in a technique which holds the ladybird between two very thin plastic films without harming it, described in a new book Micro ladybirds of Britain and Ireland by Maria Justamond and David W.Williams.   This has the advantage of allowing a good view of the underside as in many of the micro ladybirds the underneath features help with identification.  I found the most difficult thing was avoiding reflections from the flash on the plastic and dealing with the very shallow depth of field when looking from the top.  Here is how I got on.

So, not too bad considering the ladybird is only about 2mm long and the photos are taken through a plastic film.  This is the habitat.

In the same trees I found two Scymnus suturalis.  This is another conifer specialist and is even smaller than S. nigrinus.

There is a fashion for giving all ladybirds an English name in addition to their scientific binomial. Scymnus nigrinus, not surprisingly, is also known as the Black Ladybird although some of the others have multiple names which don't always make much sense.

A few days earlier I found two other micro ladybirds in my mother's garden in Northamptonshire. It was very hot and I hadn't taken the floating frame so I had only a few moments before each of them flew off.  The first was Rhyzobius chrysomeloides, a.k.a. Arboreal Ladybird, Epaulet Ladybird, Round-keeled Rhyzobius, etc.

And then Rhyzobious lophanthe (Bristly Ladybird).  This one was brought in from Australia to control scale insects but has since become naturalised.

Other micro ladybirds I have seen before are Rhyzobius forestieri, also Australian and also from Mum's garden,

Rhyzobius litura, from my garden,

and Coccidula rufa, the Red Marsh Ladybird, usually found in waterside vegetation and damp grassland.  It lives by a pond in the golf course about 300m away from here.

There are plenty more to look out for, but not so many up in this part of the country.

An update from WeaselCam

After all the excitement of weasels on the trail cameras here in 2024 I had high hopes for this year but it has turned out to be fairly quiet.  Weasel populations are very responsive to prey availability and go up and down with variations in vole numbers.  I haven't had a camera on the weasel wall this year but the weasel box has been monitored continuously.  The camera records mostly common shrews and bank voles but there have been a few weasel visits in the last three months.

A handsome male appeared twice in April and May and I made a slow-motion video to show the changes in his moulting pattern over 16 days.

Last week this one turned up for a good look around.  I think it is new to the box.

And in June a high-speed weasel that was so fast I can't tell which it is.  There are no cuts in this edit.

I also saw a male weasel in the walled garden at the weekend so they are around.  I'll keep the camera going and report back if there is more activity.

Lunar Hornet Moth

The Lunar Hornet Moth (Sesia bembeciformis) is a day flyer and flies only in July.  Its unusual life cycle begins when the adults emerge from pupae in willow trees in early July.  The female attracts a mate by wafting a pheromone and after mating she lays her eggs on willow bark.  The larvae chew their way into the wood and stay there growing for two years before emerging and the cycle is then complete.

The Lunar Hornet Moth looks, sounds and flies like a hornet or giant wasp.  It is one of a group of clearwing moths that use Batesian mimicry to deter predators, that is they disguise themselves as something more dangerous and unpalatable to a potential predator.

Since 2020 a synthetic pheromone has been commercially available and reports of adult moths have increased dramatically.  This is the third year in a row I have had a go with a lure and all these photos are of males attracted to a pheromone lure in the past week.  (The female moth looks very similar but is larger.)  Once the moths have been in the trap for a few minutes they calm down and are happy to sit on a willow trunk for a few minutes while they gather their thoughts before flying off.

The photos on or in the trap aren't much good so I had a go at flight shots which are tricky but a few came out OK.  This one was taken in natural light and the shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze the wing movement.  

These were taken with flash.

For comparison here are a couple of European Hornets (Vespa crabro), also from Gosforth Nature Reserve but a few years ago.  They are brown rather than black but otherwise the moth's mimicry is pretty impressive.

Still good friends on OtterCam

I first read Tarka the Otter about 60 years ago.  When I re-read it last year I had forgotten how much it is to do with otter hounds and hunting (the book was published in 1927 and otter hunting in England wasn't banned until 1978).  The other surprising thing (to me) was how often Tarka met up with and socialised with other otters as I have read elsewhere that otters are solitary creatures, outside courtship and mating.  That fits with what I have seen on the trail cameras over the past few years but recently things have been different.  The resident female split from her cubs just about two months ago and immediately embarked on courting the local dog otter. She was encouraging him very noisily for three nights (courtship is said to last 3-5 days)  but they were still going around together 19 days later.  After that the cameras were recording only solo otters, until now.  Just one video in this post but, 53 days after courtship began, here they are again together.  First the dog, closely followed by the female.  She returned alone five minutes later.  It is difficult to judge from the video but if all goes well cubs should be born very soon.

May moths

I don't think I am cut out to be a moth trapper.  Not diligent or organised enough.  I set the trap on the last day of May, so a month ago, and it has taken me until now to sort out (some of) the results.  It was all a bit overwhelming with over 100 moths of dozens of species.  All I could do was to photograph them, or at least the ones that didn't fly off, and I did recognise some as I went through them.  Since then there has been so much else going on that I have only just got round to looking through the photos.  As ever, I found the medium-sized greyish-brown ones quite tricky but this time I got a lot of help from the Obsidentify app which appears to be very accurate and is certainly very confident.

There were several real beauties in the box and some I hadn't seen before so here are a few of the best.

First a Poplar Kitten, new to me.

Also Swallow Prominent,

Pebble Prominent,

Iron Prominent,

Gold Spot,

White Ermine,

Green Silver-lines,

Elephant Hawk-moth, there were two of these,

Poplar Hawk-moth, four of these,

Blood-vein, another two,

and Peppered Moth.

There were also four Orange Ladybirds, the ladybird most commonly attracted to light,

and a couple of ichneumons, probably Ophion sp.

After all that I shall set the trap again tonight and try to be a bit more organised.  Results to follow, I hope.

Shy birds on OtterCam

OtterCam is in a quiet phase at the moment.  Single otters wander past every now and then, both the dog and the resident female as far as I can tell, but they don't do anything interesting.  I hope new cubs will be born in the first half of next month but, if so, we won't see them on camera for another three months or so.

The cameras are still in position, however, clocking up dozens of recordings a day, mostly of birds.  Young water rails, moorhens and mallards predominate, along with robins and wood pigeons.  There were also two notable recordings last week.

The water rail has a reputation of being a shy bird but it certainly isn't camera-shy.  It is usually heard rather than seen and makes a weird un-bird-like sound, often described as like a piglet squealing.  This one put on a show in front of two of the cameras.

Next another bird that is usually seen but not heard.  I previously posted videos of a common snipe and a badger, both with a Cetti's warbler singing in the background.  The video below shows the first time a Cetti's warbler has appeared on camera.  Cetti's warbler was previously a rare bird, having first bred in Kent in the 1970s and described in my (2016) field guide as a "scarce and local resident, mainly in southern England".  Since then it has been spreading north and for the past year or so there have been several in the reserve - I now hear one singing nearly every time I go in.  Unfortunately this one didn't sing to the cameras and the bird in the background is a reed warbler.

You can hear the Cetti's warbler's song here.

Summer ladybirds

There is always more to learn.  I manage to identify most adult ladybirds and have come to recognise urban cemeteries as good places to find them in the winter.  In summer there are larvae and pupae to find and it turns out that, for some at least, cemeteries are a good place to look as well.

Ladybird larvae moult as they grow and go through four instars (stages).  They get easier to identify as they get bigger.  Some of those I have seen recently are 18-spot Ladybird,

Cream-streaked Ladybird,

Eyed Ladybird (also in the header photo),

Cream-spot Ladybird,

and Harlequin Ladybird, seen here alongside a pupa,

Pupae can often be identified but some species are very similar.  This is an Eyed Ladybird.

this one is a Cream-spot Ladybird

and this is a Harlequin Ladybird.

When the new ladybirds emerge from the pupal cases they are very often very pale without the characteristic colours and markings which take hours or sometimes longer to develop.  This is a just-emerged Harlequin Ladybird which hasn't yet hardened and folded its wings.

This is a 10-spot Ladybird f. bimaculata to show how much it changes.

This is an Eyed Ladybird, just starting to colour up.

After a day or so the new ladybirds are also very bright and shiny.  This is a Harlequin Ladybird.

And an 18-spot Ladybird.

An unusually dark Cream-streaked Ladybird.

I also found a few Water Ladybirds in their summer colours at a local pond (in winter they are beige with black spots).  They move a lot faster in summer as well.

There will be more larvae, pupae and newly emerged ladybirds throughout the summer so I'll keep an eye out for anything interesting.