Swinging from the Chandeliers

I wasn’t wearing my Mac today, It wasn’t that sort of day.

I was out hunting Skippers but I also had my eye open for a Six Spot Burnet emerging from it’s cocoon. Something that I would like to photograph.

The easy way to find the cocoons is to look for mating pairs. I do not understand why but every cocoon that I have found has had a mating pair beside it. I am guessing that some sort of pheromone is released when the moth is emerging that triggers mating behaviour,

Well these two were really going for it with an element of enthusiasm. I had to photograph them. Who knows when I will have another chance.

I love the way that they dress up for these occasions too, The capes and stuff like little red and black super hero costumes. It’s a bit kinky I know but there ought to be more of this 🙂 🙂

Natural Behaviour

There is nothing odd about what I do.

I am wearing a Mac in case it rains and in fact it is a good job that I was wearing one because it pelted down.

Of course my landlord doesn’t know what I get up to, he thinks that I am out photographing Bunny Rabbits. In fact you are the only person who knows about this and I think we should keep it that way.

I hope that you like my photographs.

Well they seemed like a nice young couple 🙂

Did you know that they die after they have mated? Well, the female gets to lay her eggs and then she dies, the male just keels over with a smile on his face.

Fortunately mating  takes quite a long time, I watched these two for two and a half hours (I’m a naturalist, I was interested) They changed position a few times but they were still at it when I left.

Here is another couple, I call these Missionary Moths.

Strangely they have chosen to mate right beside a cocoon with an emerging moth.

What was even stranger was that every cocoon that I found with an emerging moth (five) had a mating pair right beside it. I have been reading everything that I could find about Six-spot Burnets but I can not find any explanation for this. I did find that quite a few other people have posted the same situation and there must be a reason for it.

It was the cocoons that I was really interested in. I am not really an insect pervert. You’re not are you? 🙂

Here is a full one.A thunder storm put an end to my games today and I didn’t really get the picture that I was after. It took them ages to get out of the cocoons.

Unlike the butterflies that I know, these moths spin a cocoon of silk and then they get inside it to pupate. They have a little organ near to their mouth for producing the silk. Once inside I think that they go through the same process as a caterpillar, moulting with a chrysalis inside but I am not 100% sure on this, I will read up on it.

The actual picture that I wanted would have come just after these, when they crawl out and start to spread their wings. I didn’t get it today but I think that it is worth following on with, don’t you?

An empty one.

I suppose that you would like some more “Bug Porn”, good job that we are not weird. Here are some beautiful animals instead.

Okay, I’ll do it but listen, don’t ever tell anyone where you got these images from. Can you imagine if the police ever seized my computer?

They would have to make a special ward for me.

Love is all you need.

The Burnet Companion

Yes well, I have spent most of today taking more pictures of the Six-spot Burnet and I will show you some in a bit.

In the company of all of those Burnet Moths I found this little beauty and it gets it’s name from the fact that it is usually found in the company of Burnet Moths.

They share the same larval food plant, Bird’s-foot Trefoil although this moth will lay eggs on Clover as well. They are both day flying moths and this one has beautiful green eyes.

Zygaena filipendulae (Trust me)

The Six-spot Burnet Moth.

My mum had a funny story she used to like to tell about the Six-spot Burnet Moth.

I  have always been in love with wildlife, even as a tiny kid. My Dalmation dog, Gyp, Snails in the garden, the annual visit to London Zoo. I had an encyclopedia of Animal Life with black and white drawings that I would spend hours tracing and then colouring in.

Well back in the nineteen hundreds (probably around ’61/62) it was the custom for the family to go out for a drive in their new automobile  and so we did and we stopped in a lay-by beside a grassy meadow for a picnic. Us  children went to play in the grass. It was full of these beautiful little moths. Have you  seen them fly? their wings create a little sort of red centre surrounded by a black mist. I was fascinated.

I couldn’t bear to leave them and when it came time to go I gathered as many as I could and filled up my pockets with them, then of course I let them go in the car.

My family were not great on wildlife and freaked out a bit at the time but my mum used to love telling that story about her cheeky little monkey. Happy days.

I filled my pockets up again today.

Fortunately for the animals I don’t really have to fill my pockets up any more because they have invented SD cards.

 

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…..