Like attracts Like

Hi, I have had a very frustrating morning chasing a single butterfly around a large field and not catching it. Now I need a sit down before I take Fizz out.

I thought that I could show you some pictures of a Scorpion Fly. These are old pictures, I didn’t take any photos this morning because I couldn’t get close to my target and I didn’t take pictures of anything else because I was obsessed and now I will have to go back tomorrow.

People sometimes leave nice comments saying that my pictures are beautiful and I appreciate that but I do know that it is not the picture it is the animal that is so strikingly beautiful, seeing it up close can take you aback.

Here is a prime example of what I am talking about.

This is a Scorpion Fly, Panorpa spp. (spp means “species” and when you see that it means we don’t know which species it is) there are three species of Scorpion Fly in the UK and to separate them you have to examine their genitals under a microscope, which shouldn’t be that difficult because that big Scorpion like sting is actually his genitalia but I didn’t have a microscope on me.

Perhaps he is not a classical beauty and you might be thinking, “Who could possibly love something that looks like that, apart from Colin of course?”

The answer is, someone who looks like this.

This is a female Scorpion Fly and she doesn’t have the big wotsit stingy thing but she is the more formidable of the pair.

Neither fly has a sting or offers any harm to humans, they eat mostly dead insects that they either find or steal from Spider’s webs.

However the female will sometimes kill the male after mating.

Most websites will tell you this, “to avoid being killed the male will offer the female a gift, in the run up to mating, of a large glob of spittle.”

Personally I think that is half the problem, spit is not a popular gift idea and that is more likely the reason why she tries to kill him.

So there we have it another adorable Diptera species the Scorpion Fly.

Male

Female

 

Tins

There is an unused field behind the farm that is poorly drained and quite marshy. I thought that it would be a good place to survey for reptiles.

So I have got the permission from the field’s owner and I have borrowed some corrugated iron from my landlord and off we go.

First I had a good look around the field trying to decide the best place to put my tins. I don’t really know what I am doing, I just think that it’s worth a try. I didn’t find any reptiles today but it was a miserable overcast morning and it would be very difficult to find anything in the long grass.

I found lots of food.

I also found a spectacular Marsh Thistle, it is not every day you find one of those.

I hauled my first sheet of iron up from the farm. (surprisingly awkward to carry)

Then I walked all around the field again trying to guess where a good spot would be.

Then I decided to just slap it down anywhere. I chose a fairly damp spot close to the stream that would get the morning sun.

Will it work? I don’t know. My landlord tells me that he used to see Adders here but that he hasn’t seen any for a long time and lots of what he calls Blind Worms, he described them to me as little snakes and I think he is talking about what I know as a Slow worm.

So now I have more tin to go and get.

And that is the start of my Reptile Survey Project.

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…..