Winter

Why do they call you Long John Silver?

It’s because of my pirate ancestry, innit?

So, it’s not the underpants then?

Everybody wears long johns in the winter, it’s cold!

That’s not what you told Andrew.

I may have embellished things a little bit.

Ah well, it will soon be spring.

I can’t do much today, I can’t get lovely photographs it is too dark. So let’s look at some insects instead. Dragons and Damsels Okay?

This is the female of one species, Common Blue Damselfly, lovely?

This is the male. He is a bit shy.

I am sure that if you just go over and say hello then she will be pleased to say hello back.

 I forgot, the odonata are a bit carnivorous.

I think she liked you.

Burp!

It is great that they are carnivorous 😀 The things they eat need eating.

Come into my world little Dragonflies.

This one is a Southern Hawker.

This next one is a Migrant Hawker.

This is a Hairy Dragonfly, sometimes known as a Spring Hawker it is the earliest of the big blue dragonflies to appear but it is not that early, it arrives in May.

The Hawkers above all belong to the same family (Aeshnidae) They are the largest and fastest of our Dragonflies. They hunt by patrolling the skies and swooping down on their prey like Hawks.

We also get a lot of Darters, Skimmers and Chasers, these belong to the family Libellulidae, the largest family of Dragonflies. These Dragonflies tend to be ambush predators rather than Hawks.

Common Darter.

Black-tailed Skimmer.

Broad-bodied Chaser

Well that’s enough Dragonflies. I know that you would rather have news from the farm and pictures of Fizz but it is just horrible outside. (I would stay in HK if I were you 🙂 )

I was talking to a friend in Vancouver recently about lime green flowers and I got inspired to add Wood Spurge to EW. Thank you David.

Euphorbia amygdaloides, The Wood Spurge

Euphorbia is a genus of plants commonly known as Spurge. There are about 2000 species in this genus including the familiar Christmas Poinsettias and the Rubber Tree. In South Africa some Euphorbia have developed characteristics very similar to Cacti and are often incorrectly referred to as such. All Euphorbia species contain a milky white, toxic sap in the stem and leaves which can severely irritate the skin on contact.

The Wood Spurge is a species native to Europe and to Southern England. It grows in woodland and shaded hedgerow. It is an evergreen perennial and the small plants are a common sight in winter.

        Wood Spurge spreads by underground rhizomes so you will often find plants growing close together in a group.

Spring growth.

The Wood Spurge has a complex and very unusual flower. The green buds that you see in these pictures are not really flower buds, they are a pair of modified leaves that contain an unusual flower head.

The “Bud” is called a cyathium (plural, cyathia) sometimes referred to as a “false flower” and it contains the inflorescence of the Spurge.

There is quite a lot going on inside each cyathium. There are four small “horse shoe” shaped glands, called “Involucral glands”, these glands are not part of the flowers themselves but part of the cyathium, they produce nectar.

The flowers themselves are the small two lobed yellow anthers in the centre of the horse shoes. There is nothing more to the flowers than a single stamen with two yellow anthers at the top. The anthers produce pollen.

The two large bud like objects beside the flowers are in fact further cyathia. So there are flower heads growing out of each flower head as well as flowers and nectar producing glands.

The cyathium also produces a female flower. It consists of nothing more than a three lobed stigma (pollen receiving organ) leading down to an ovary. The female flower is produced before the male flowers that I have shown you and drops down out of the way when the male flowers arrive to avoid self pollination. I don’t have photographs of the stigma at this time.

It sounds complex but it is not that difficult to understand. The horse shoes are producing nectar, the flowers are just the stamens in the middle and the buds are new flower heads with all the same stuff inside them.

It is a lime green flower and it is beautiful.

Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Malpighiales

Family: Euphorbiaceae

Genus: Euphorbia

Species: Euphorbia amygdaloides

       Wildflowers in winter.

The Broad-bodied Chaser

This is a male Broad-bodied Chaser, sadly I didn’t see a female today.

Torn wings too, well the flight time for this animal is late May to Early August so we have only just caught this one. It will be an old Dragonfly.

Key identification features: The male has a powder blue abdomen with yellow spots along the side (a bit faded in this specimen) The female has a yellow/brown abdomen but she still has the yellow spots.

Both sexes have these dark patches at the base of the wings, the female’s are lighter than this.

and it has dark brown eyes giving it the appearance of having a Blackberry for a head.

This one appears to be making out with a female Blackberry and that is how they get torn wings.

Libellula depressa.

Sympetrum striolatum, The Common Darter.

No, I haven’t just seen a Common Darter.

I have been at it again. Identifying animals on other peoples blogs and so…

This is how I know that it is a Common Darter.

Here is a beautiful Common Darter.

A fairly small to medium sized Dragonfly they are easy to confuse with Ruddy Darters.

This next picture is a Ruddy Darter. Notice that it has black legs.

The Common Darter has a pale yellow stripe on the outside of it’s black legs. Like this 🙂

Colour isn’t a very good indicator of species. The Ruddy Darter is, as you would expect, quite red but a male Common Darter is also red and this next Common Darter is ruddier than the Ruddy Darter above but it does have a yellow stripe on the outside of it’s leg and I know what it is.

The Common Darter is an ambush predator. Unlike the Hawkers that patrol the skies Darters find a nice perch and wait for something to fly past.

They are quite an easy animal to approach for a photograph. (as animals go) They look a bit brownish and dull as they cruise around you but if you can get up close they are absolutely beautiful.

 

Migrant Hawker, Aeshna mixta

I haven’t just seen a Migrant Hawker. Well, I have sort of..

I just identified a Migrant Hawker on somebodies blog and I thought that I better do a Migrant Hawker post in case he comes round to check me out. (hi Stephen) Fodrambler does not lie 🙂 🙂 🙂

The easiest identifying feature is the “Golf Tee” mark on the second segment of the abdomen. and that is diagnostic.

It has a brown costa (the leading edge of the wing) and almost non existent antehumeral stripes.

This next picture is not a Migrant Hawker this is a Southern Hawker. I am just using it to explain “antehumeral stripes” The Southern Hawker has very bold antehumerals (the two yellow stripes just behind it’s head.

Back to the migrant Hawker and here is a quick tour.

So that is my quick guide to identifying a Migrant Hawker.

Top.

Middle…

and this is the end of it.

Except for a couple of my very own drawings explaining Dragonfly anatomy for reference purposes only.

 

Irrational Fear (Odonata)

Odonata? Dragonflies and Damselflies.

They are nice.

If you don’t know them then a big flying insect like this might seem quite alarming but these animals don’t bite people and they don’t have a sting.

(and the one above is a female Common Blue Damselfly, here is the male)

The Odonata are among our most beautiful insects and the best thing to do if you see one is to take it’s photograph and treasure it.

(This one is a Common Darter Dragonfly)Dragonflies (and Damselflies for that matter) are finely tuned killing machines. They are predators, meat eaters and hunters but they don’t hunt us, mostly they hunt our enemies, midges and mosquitoes and all the little things that do bite and sting us.

(Black-tailed Skimmer Dragonfly)

Dragonflies are masters of the air. They are the fastest flying insects in the world. All four wings can move independently and they can stand still in the air by flying forwards with two of them and backwards with the other two, they can also fly backwards. A dragonfly can do anything that it wants to do in the air and they never get tangled in your hair.

Plus they eat Mosquitoes.

Now I am fairly tolerant of Mosquitoes. I know that it is only the females that drink our blood (the males drink nectar from flowers) and that they only take blood because they need the protein to make their eggs. But I am Nature Boy and I know these things and love life, I don’t expect everyone to hold my views.

In fact the Mosquito is far and away the most dangerous animal in the world. Mosquitoes kill more people than all of the Tigers and Crocodiles and Great White Sharks and all of the other animals that you might think of as dangerous put together.

I just can’t bring myself to eat them. Thank heavens for the Odonata.

(Southern Hawker Dragonfly)

So if you are lucky enough to find yourself sitting in a sunny beer garden with your family when an enormous, colourful and dangerous looking insect flies by, don’t be alarmed, it’s on our side.

(Hairy Dragonfly)

You have just seen something very beautiful.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..