Orange-tip larvae

20 Saturday Jun 2026

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Adult Orange-tip butterflies may now have died away for this year but not before completing their life’s purpose, mating and egg-laying to ensure the continuation of their species. (The egg shown below was photographed on Garlic mustard on 15 May.)

Orange-tips overwinter as pupae, not something I’ve ever seen but, if you look now at the plants their larvae munch on, you’ll probably spot caterpillars of various sizes.

Their favourite larval plants are Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) and Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) but they will also use other crucifers: Hedge mustard, Winter-cress, Turnip, Charlock, Large bitter-cress and Hairy rock-cress, according to Peter Eeles in Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies.

Looking at the excellent photos in Peter’s book, I think the larvae shown in my photos are all late instars; the larvae go through five different stages before they pupate. Eeles writes that the pose shown in the photo above is characteristic of a 5th instar larva.

I’ve made myself a note to look for a pupa near the many Garlic mustard plants on which I found these larvae, though I’m not very hopeful of finding any, as Eeles notes that the larvae often travel quite a distance to find a suitable plant; they don’t use the larval plants as these die back during the winter months.

NFY: Meadow brown

18 Thursday Jun 2026

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Most co-operatively, as I had specifically gone looking for it, my 22nd butterfly species for 2026 appeared flitting up and down among the long grasses and wildflowers of a local meadow on Sunday 7 June, a breezy day but warm enough in sheltered places. And then another appeared, and a third, and, more distantly, a fourth, though I only managed to get this one photo. As with many butterfly species, the males emerge before the females and then spend their time racing madly around looking for females to mate with and sprinkling their pheromones on to the vegetation. This is, of course, a Meadow brown (Maniola jurtina).

Not Bank swallows

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

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During last week’s wander around Cardiff Bay and on in to the city I paused for a wonderful 20 minutes to watch the Sand martins flitting constantly in and out of their nests in every available gap, hole and crevice in the walls of the Bay’s many old docks.

Their activity has reached a level of frantic that means I can safely assume they’re now feeding young.

In North America the Sand martin is known as the Bank swallow, something I didn’t know until quite recently when a man tried a little too forcefully to tell me (the term ‘mansplaining’ applies here, I think) that the birds I was watching and listening to were Bank swallows, rather than Sand martins, because that’s what his Merlin bird app told him.

(Note to Merlin users: if you live in the UK, make sure you change your settings to British bird names!)

Southern pill woodlouse

15 Monday Jun 2026

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Until I was filing away my recent photos of this creature, I’d forgotten that I actually saw one – my first, the one shown below – tootling along amongst the stones and sparse vegetation in King Barrow quarry on the Isle of Portland during my visit last September.

I spotted this second beast on a wall in a local street very recently. And, at around 12mm long (measured by taking a photo of my left index finger right next to it), this crustacean really was a beast, and, according to the Naturespot website, they can grow to 20mm so this one wasn’t even fully grown.

Meet the Southern pill woodlouse (Armadillidium depressum), a creature that curls itself into a ball when threatened and which can be distinguished from your common or garden Pill woodlouse (Armadillidium vulgare) by the way the sections of its armadillo-like outer skin curve up slightly at the ends.

Rosy garlic

14 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in flowers, plants

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The words ‘rosy’ and ‘garlic’ don’t seem to sit well together, the former associated with the sweet aromas that have inspired perfume makers for centuries, the latter with a pungent smell you either love or hate to cook with and/or eat. Here, though, the word ‘rosy’ relates to the colour of the plant’s flowers rather than its smell and, for me, this is a very attractive flower, particularly when the plants are found growing in good numbers as they were in an area of the Broadcroft Quarry Butterfly Reserve on the Isle of Portland.

As you may have worked out, this plant is a member of the Allium family that includes edible plants like garlic, the various species of onion, leeks and chives, as well as ornamental plants like Three-cornered leek, Field garlic and Star-of-Persia.

Rosy garlic (Allium roseum) is a Mediterranean species, not native to the UK, and is often seen in gardens, from which it has escaped and naturalised in areas of waste ground, mostly in southern Britain, particularly in coastal locations.

Glistening bronze and green

13 Saturday Jun 2026

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In Fauna Britannica, Stefan Buczacki explains that ‘“Chafer” is a Middle English word, perhaps meaning “to gnaw” and possibly related to the word “chaff” for the husks of grain’. The several species of chafer eat plants, in particular the roots of plants, so they can be serious pests, of crops and, in the case of the species shown here, the Garden chafer (Phyllopertha horticola), of the plants in your garden. Various species of bird have also learnt that chafer larvae are nutritious, so they can cause damage to lawns and turf when poking about trying to find them.

As I seldom see chafers and don’t have a garden, I was nothing but delighted when I spotted not one but two Garden chafers, their metallic green and bronze colours glistening in the sunshine, in a Cardiff park. As these were quite hairy, I believe that means they had very recently emerged from their pupae; the hairs rub off as they age. The two I found were both in a wild area, of scrub and trees and overgrown Bramble bushes, but chafers are good, if bumbling fliers, so they did have the potential to cause damage to local gardens. Sorry, gardeners!

Galls: Eriophyes similis

12 Friday Jun 2026

Posted by in insects, leaves, trees

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I think I’m safe in saying that not many, if any of my readers spend as much of their time staring at, turning over, or fossicking among leaves as I do. So, you may not have noticed that, at this time of year, many of the leaves on Blackthorn (or Sloe) trees (Prunus spinosa) develop lots of little lumps and bumps.

These are galls, caused by the tiny mites Eriophyes similis. My Field Studies Council guide to galls explains that ‘mites are small enough to pierce and feed on individual plant cells, and by so doing to cause surrounding cells to enlarge and multiply.’ The galls start out green and gradually turn a pinkish colour., as shown in my photos, and are often found around the edges of the leaves. This mite species appears to have had a recent change of name, as many older publications label them as Eriophyes spinosae.

Black-clouded longhorn beetle

12 Friday Jun 2026

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During a recent check of which critters might be lurking on the railings of a local park, I found this, a new beetle for me, a Black-clouded longhorn beetle. That reads like a decisive statement of identification but I’m sure you know now how these things work – when I got home and looked up my new find I found it has quite recently been determined that there are two extremely similar species and they can only be separated when, as the Naturespot website states, ‘the necessary genitalia examination has been carried out by someone with suitable expertise’. The two species are Leiopus nebulosus and Leiopus linnei; Naturespot advises finders to record these as Leiopus nebulosus agg., but, when I recorded my find, I discovered that the only option was Leiopus linnei/nebulosus.

As you can see, this little longhorn beetle (‘longhorn’ refers to the length of the antennae) has dark grey/black markings on a paler background, hence the name ‘black-clouded’. Longhorn beetles are wood eaters, and this one is most often recorded in the proximity of Alder, Lime and Oak trees. And, as I think the photo below shows, it can move quite quickly; this lovely little beetle was not a willing subject for my camera.

A fledgling Long-tailed tit

11 Thursday Jun 2026

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It’s that time of year when all the young fledgling birds are out and about, following their parents and siblings through the trees, begging for food, learning to forage, constantly calling to stay in contact with each other.

Though it’s often difficult to spot the individual birds now that the foliage on the trees is so lush, it always make me smile to hear them and, occasionally, one bird will pause briefly in the open so, if I’m quick, I’m able to grab a few photos. This juvenile Long-tailed tit recently provided me with just such an opportunity.