Hebrew Character ( Orthosia gothica) and Common Quaker (Orthosia munda)

I am an amateur naturalist trying to identify everything that lives in my garden.

Photo 1 shows two more moths I caught (for the record, on 26th March) in my recently- constructed moth trap.

I didn't know the species of either at first but from my copy of Moths (Waring, Townsend and Lewington, British Wildlife Publishing) it's clear I've found (left) a Common Quaker (Orthosia cerasi) and (right) a Hebrew Character (Orthosia gothica).

I should easily identify them in future: the two, kidney-shaped wing spots of the Common Quaker and the black shapes on the wings of the Hebrew Character are very characteristic.

The Hebrew Character gets its name from the resemblance of its black wing markings to the letters (characters) of the Hebrew alphabet.

I was puzzled by the origin of the name 'Common Quaker' but then came across an article from the Times newspaper 2003, describing an interview with the naturalist Peter Marran. It seems that many of the common names for British moths were made up by members of the The Aurelian Society - one of world's first entomological societies, established in London in the 1690's. According to the article, Quaker's of the time wore (quotes) "subfusc attire" (i.e. dusky or drab clothes). This inspired the naming of not one but three British moths: The Powdered -, The Twin Spot- and (our moth here) The Common Quaker.

Adult of both the Hebrew Character and the Common Quaker feed on the nectar from sallow catkins whilst their caterpillars will eat a range of plants including Oak, Birch and Hawthorn.

An interesting feature of the Hebrew Character I learnt from reading Michael Majerus' book Moths (The New Naturalist Library) is that it displays high latitude melanism; In Northern Scotland, a form of the Hebrew Character - specifically Orthosia gothica f. gothicina - is found that lacks the black colour to the 'Hebrew letters' on its wings. Some other moths, notably the Scalloped Hazel and the Ingrailed Clay, also shows a distinct form at high latitudes. Why? Because, high latitudes impose some unique selective pressures on the moths that live there: firstly there may be issues of thermal regulation (having dark or pale wings will effect how easily a moth heats up or cools down); secondly the low angle of the sun creates softer lighting conditions that may mean birds can more easily pick out camouflage patterns that might work well elsewhere; thirdly, at high latitude in summer the sun does not set - a challenge for the camouflage of normally night flying moths. Low latitude moths that want to 'make the transition' to high latitudes are therefore faced with the need to adapt their colourings or suffer the consequences. A wonderful example of evolutionary change.

Bee Fly Bombylius major

I am an amateur naturalist trying to identify everything that lives in my garden.
Photos 1 and 2 (click to enlarge) show what must be the most dramatic 'nose' of any British fly.

A quick look through my copy of Michael Chinery's book Insects (Collins) and it appears that I've come upon a Bee Fly (Bombylius major). There are ten British species. B. major is the most commonly observed.

Bee Flies use their 'nose' (proboscis) to probe flowers for nectar. The length arises from their preference for hovering above, rather than actually landing on, flower heads. They do this presumably to avoid being ambushed by predators such as Crab Spiders that sometimes lurk behind flower petals.

Apparantly Bee Fly's are superb ariel acrobats. I didn't get a chance to observe this however since the one in the photo remained stubbornly perched on the branch of my garden apple tree. We'd had a few warm Spring days here in Oxforshire. On the day the photo was taken however it had turned cold and my Bee Fly was very sluggish (he/she was still on the same spot half an hour later).

I've not found a specialist UK site devoted to Bee Flies, but you can find a key to those of Canada here.

The best general description of Bee Fly natural history I've come across on the internet is that of Louise Kulzer. They have a complex life cycle. As above, adults feed on nectar. Their grubs are parasitic on solitary bees and wasps however. An adult Bee Fly lays it eggs near the burrow of a (true) bee and the grubs, once hatched, find their way into the nest and consume the food intended for the (true) bee larvae. Later, the Bee Fly grub undergoes a 'shape change' (hypermetamorphosis) into a carnivorous grub, and eats the (true) bee larvae.

That at least is a general description. Ideally I'd have liked to have found some more specific details about my species Bombylius major (What types of bee/wasp species it parasitises; How the Bee Flies tracks down a host-bee's nest etc.) but sadly there seem few descriptions on the web. I did find one other site that references a paper by one T.A. Chapman, specifically on the life history of B. major ...from 1878! (I haven't been able to find a copy)

My searches were not entirely in vain. I did come across the studies of Catherine Toft who has written about the ecology of Bee Flies in the Californian Desert, in particular observations on the foraging behaviour of two species. My amateur understandingof her work is as follows:

Back in the late 1960's, one T.W. Shoener argued that, other things being equal, females in nature should seek to maximise the time they spend feeding (on the assumption that taking in more energy through feeding translates into being able to produce more offspring). Males on the other hand should be 'time maximisers' i.e. beyond basic dietary needs, time spent feeding is in some sense 'wasted time' away from looking for, and breeding with, females. Dr Toft noted that two species of Bee Fly (Lorodotus pulchrissimus and L. miscellus) lent themselves very well to a study of this since the two species of fly live in an essentially identical environment, sharing the same desert habitat and even feeding on the same plant.

As it turned out, L.misecellus matched the Shoener prediction: females spent more of their days foraging than males. Males of L. pulchrissimus bucked the trend however. They spent exactly the same amount of time foraging as females. This is apparantly a feature they share with male moose! Although Dr.Toft offers some tentative explanations as to why this might be. The ultimate answer appears to await a deeper study however.

All of which suggests to me, that should you be an amateur naturalist reading this and searching for an amusing but scientifically useful 'project' to undertake in your neighbourhood this summer, you could do worse than to sit in a deckchair with a cold drink and a stop-watch, and time the foraging patterns of that little-known bug in your backgarden!

Candlesnuff fungus Xylaria hypoxylon

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything that lives in my garden.
Chomping its way through a fallen twig, photo 1 shows a collection of the 'candle wick-like' fruiting bodies of the Candlesnuff fugus Xylaria hypoxylon.

This fungus is very common here in the UK. Scan piles of logs or fallen branches and you're likely to spot it on almost any country walk.

In common with the holly leaf fungus I blogged recently, and the morel before that, X.hypoxylon is a member of the ascomycetae - a huge collection (phylum) of fungi that 'grow' their spores inside microscopic tubes called asci.

In the case of X. hypoxylon a couple of hunded asci are, in turn, packaged into a structure called a perithecium - basically a small 'pimple' with a hole in the top through which spores, once liberated from an ascus, escape. There's an excellent cross sectional microscope photograph of a perithecium of one on the mycolog site (it's a big webpage - the photo's about half way down).

To the eye, the perithecia of X.hypoxylon appear as tiny black pimples on the surface of the white 'candle wicks'. You can see some in photo 2. (Perithecia are common features of lichens also (see my post here).) Over time, the surface tends to become increasingly covered with these pimples (compare Photo 1 with Photo 3 taken about two weeks later) until finally the 'wick' ('compound ascoma') appears quite black. The resulting 'charred' look gives the name pyrenomycetes (from the Greek 'pyr' = fire) to the class of mushrooms of which X.hypoxylon is a member.

The definitive web site on the pyrenomycota is that of by J.D. Rodgers.

In fact the life cycle of X.hypoxylon is a little complex. The spores liberated by the pimply black perithecia are the result of sexual reproduction. X. hypoxylon is also able to reproduce asexually via so-called 'condiospores' however. These conidiospores give the fungus its white powdery appearance in photo 1.

Seen under the microscope, the sexual spores of different species of mushroom show characterisitic differences in size and shape (a helpful aid when trying to identify a mushroom - see my previous posting). I read on Michael Kuo's site however, that conidiospores from different fungi all look basically the same. Why nature has chosen to distinguish sexual and asexual spores in this fashion I can't imagine. Can anyone comment?

A black lichen Placynthium nigrum

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything living in my garden.

Spring is well and truly springing here in Oxfordshire. Soon animals and plants will be appearing in my garden faster than I can photograph them, let alone write about them. Whilst things are still moderately calm therefore, I'm seizing the moment to press on with my task of cataloguing my garden's lichens.

Quietly going about its business, photo 1 (click on photos to enlage) shows a black crustose lichen (for the uninitiated, see my explanation here) that decorates my garden wall in places. Photo 2 is a closeup (I've slightly digitally sharpened this image using software).

I'm no expert, and happy to be corrected, but from what I can tell from leafing through my copy of Lichens (Frank Doson), although there are numerous lichens with black fruiting bodies ('apothecia') on otherwise coloured 'backgrounds' ('thalli'), there are only a handful of mostly- or wholly-black crustose lichens to be found in Britain. A number are marine. Verrucaria maura, for example, is common on rocky shorelines where it is somtimes mistaken for oil pollution.

Of the mostly black, 'land-locked', lichens, I spent some time looking at the photos of Verrucaria nigrescens on the excellent 'UK Lichens' site. Looking closely however, this seems to have a more chocolate-brown thallus, albeit one peppered with many black 'perithecia' (see my definition here).

On balance therefore I'm tentatively identifying my lichen as Placynthium nigrum which my copy of Dobson describes as being "Very common, mainly on hard calcareous substrates throughout Britain. Often found on flat tombstones and cement".

A slight puzzle is that the photo in Dobson shows a more powdery ('coralloid') surface than is evident in my photo 2, although the book adds this lichen may be "sometimes smooth and cracked especially in polluted areas". Where I live is rural and I don't believe especially polluted. That said, some lichens are extraordinarily sensitive to even minute amounts of air pollution - whole books have been written on this topic. Anyhow this variability in texture gives me some added confidence in my identification.

Turning to my copy of Lichens (Oliver Gilbert, New Naturalist Library) a nice thing to discover was some growth-rate data for Placynthium nigrum. I learn that young patches expand their radius at 1.66mm/year and mature patches at 0.08mm/year. Lichenometry is the technique of dating old structures (churches, stone circles etc.) by studying their lichen populations - you can find an article here. Applying the data above to the approximately circular, 10mm-radius, patch in photo 2 ages my lichen at between 6- and 125-years old! Not the most exact figure I grant you, but fun to know.

As I commented in a recent posting, I am puzzled by the colours lichens adopt. Over the millenia animals have been driven to evolve their numerously-coloured fur coats, feathers and exoskeletons so as to optimally attract mates, hide from predators, advertise their venomous stings etc. Similarly my amateur's understanding is that plants are mostly green by virtue of the need to pack their leaves and stems with chlorophyll. Even various of the larger mushrooms have evolved specific colours, presumably to alert browsers to their poisonous nature or advertise their presence to 'pollinating' (botanists may wish to turn away at this point!) insects. Some even glow in the dark for this very purpose. But how it is that some lichens on my garden stonework gain advanatage by being coloured matt black, whilst others 'prefer' greyish/white and still others, bright yellow, I struggle to guess. Can anyone help?

Today's posting brings my garden lichen species-count to eight. I feels that I may be approaching completion with regard to this particular lifeform. Until, that is, I find another dozen species through more careful inspection of my garden's rocks and trees. Stood outside earlier today for example, when acquiring the photos above I was aware only of our black friend and of the grey-white patches which (though I haven't checked in detail) I'm assuming is our old friend Verrucaria. Sitting now at my computer screen however, staring at an enlarged version of the photo 1, I'm suddenly noticing the array of tiny orange blobs towards the centre of the image. Time to go back outside methinks!

A Snowdrop Galanthus

I am an amateur naturalist trying to learn a little about everything living in my garden.

Hot on the heels of one of my favourite garden birds, one of my favourite flowers: The Snowdrop (the photo was taken back in mid-February)

Snowdrops are members of the plant genus Galanthus (from the Greek 'gala'=milk, 'anthus' = flower). What I've learnt about them has been mostly through Mark Smyth's very nice Snowdropinfo website, the Royal Horticultural site, the BBC site, and from my trusty copy of The Englishman's Flora (Geoffrey Grigson).

Firstly, regarding the name, both the RHS site and Grigson state that 'Snowdrop' derives from the German word Schneetropfen, a type of ear ring popular in the 16th and 17th century. Now, whilst I'm entirely happy to accept this, neither author gives a reference without which it's not immediately obvious to me that likening this plant to a 16th century German earring is more likely than people having chosen the 'Snowdrop' after... er, well...drops of snow! (Anyone?)

Geoffrey Grigson lists other folk names including Eve's Tears and Candelmas Bells, the latter a reference to the Christian festival of February 2nd when Snowdrops are one of the few plants in flower.

The snowdrop, in purest white arraie,

First rears her hedde on Candlemas daie

(Early church calendar of English flowers, c. 1500 - see here)

According to the BBC's site, bringing Snowdrops into the house at Candelmas symbolises a death.

Snowdrops are widely spread across Europe and Asia. There are nineteen true species (there's a list on Wikipedia's Snowdrop page) and literally hundreds of artificial cultivars, with new ones created all the time by enthusiasts ("Galanthophiles"), and old varieties occasionally re-discovered in sleepy vicarage gardens or (see the National Trust site here) on overgrown Victorian rubbish dumps!

You can find a photo-gallery of cultivars on Mark Smyth's site. What characteristics elevate nineteen types of Snowdrop to true species level I'm not sure (anyone?). My copy of 'The Wildflower Key' (Francis Rose) lists only one for the UK - Galanthus nivalis.

The chemical Galantamine was first isolated from Snowdrops and today finds medical application in the treatment of Alzeimer's disease.

Finally a few words on Snowdrop pests and diseases, of which there are various: The RHS site describes the two fungi Botrytis galanthinae and Stagonospora curtisii as 'the bane of many snowdrop growers.' Snowdrops are also attacked by the larvae of the Swift Moth and the stem nematode worm (Ditylenchus dipsaci) (you can download a pdf file about the latter here). Prize for impressive pest has to go to the Narcissus fly (Merodon equestris) however. This black-and-yellow insect wards off predators by mimicking a Bumblebee. You can find some photo's at the insect images website. Painful as it will be to the ears of gardeners, and although I enjoy my garden's snowdrops far too much to want to see them all wiped out, as an amateur naturalist I have to say I wouldn't mind sacrificing just one or two bulbs for the chance to see one of these flies for myself!

Early Grey moth (Xylocampa areola) and Dark Chestnut (Conistra ligula)

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything that lives in my garden.

I promise that shortly I will end my minor obsession with moth postings dear readers and return to describing some of my garden's other life. For now however, two more moths caught in my new home-built moth trap.

Photo 1 shows an Early Grey (Xylocampa areola), its wings camouflaged to help it hide on trees and, photo 2, a rather tired and tattered looking moth that I think may be a Dark Chestnut (Conistra ligula) though is possibly a Chestnut (Conistra vaccinii) (My identifications come with a ‘health warning’ - I’m no moth expert and happy to be corrected). You can find better photo's on the excellent UK Moth site.

Caterpillars of the Early Grey feed on Honeysuckle, and those of the Dark Chestnut on Willow and other plants.

I learn from my copy of Moths (Michael Majerus) that the Dark Chestnut is an unusually early egg-layer amongst British moths, usually laying in March.

Sadly, beyond the facts above, I’ve been able to find very little to say about the life-styles and behaviours of either of my moths. Of course, this may be because I’ve not searched enough. If there is one thing that I have learnt from writing this blog however, it won't be because there is nothing remarkable to discover about them. As I've discovered time and again during my researches, there is an almost inexhaustible subtly and complexity in nature.

Take for example, the two butterflies, The Grayling (Eumenis semele) and the European Silver Washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia) -

In his semi-autobiographical Curious Naturalists, a wonderfully readable account of a life spent watching and recording behaviour in birds and insects, and one of my all-time favourite natural history books incidentally, the Nobel Prize winning biologist Niko Tinbergen described some of the 50,000(!) experiments he and his team performed to gain an understanding of the behaviour of the former butterfly.

During the breeding season, male Graylings are in the habit of chasing almost anything that flutters by in the hope it may be a female. Using equipment no more sophisticated than a fishing rod 'baited' with a series of cut-out paper shapes, Tinbergen was able to reveal such facts as i) Although male Graylings are sensitive to colour (they preferentially feed on blue and yellow flowers) surprisingly, when choosing to give chase, they don't care about the colour the object fluttering by ii) Nor are they the least concerned that the ‘flutterer’ should resemble a fellow butterfly – they will happily chase a fluttering paper rectangle iii) They do care about size however; If you’re a male Grayling seeking a mate then, within reason, the bigger she is the better!

This is only the start. Once a male finally meets a female, a rich and complex courtship ‘dance’ ensues with he performing acts such as wafting scent over his partner with his wings, and gently clasping her antennae between them.

Now, in her book, Courtship: A Zoological Study (publ. Heinemann), Dr. Margaret Bastock describes some similar studies (made by D. Magnus in the 1950's) into the breeding rituals of the Silver Fritillary. Again males will chase a variety of passing ‘fluttery things’, but this time males are choosy about colour -they like best to chase yellow things.

Two butterflies, two rich and complex behaviours with intriguing differences, both only ‘decoded’ by thousands of hours of patient observation. It makes me wonder what intricate shenanigans my two moths may be about in the dead of night. (Anyone?).

Even supposing more is known about my two moths however, with more than 850 larger moths in the UK alone, not to mention 250 hoverflies, more than 450 spiders, 3200 Ichneumenoid wasps…and let’s not even think about beetles (see here), it’s certain that only a tiny fraction of what goes on in the gardens, fields and forests on our doorsteps is known in any detail.

Personally I find it both an inspirational ‘call to arms’ to we amateur naturalists to get out our notebooks and our ‘paper butterfly' experiments, but also (if you’ll permit me a slightly gloomy ending to today’s posting) a little sad to think that in one’s lifetime there will never be enough time to observe even a small part of what there is.

A March Moth (Alsophila aescularia) and The Yellow Horned Moth (Achyla flavicornis)

I am an amateur naturalist trying to discover everything that lives in my garden.

In my last posting I described my newly home-built moth trap. I’ve been operating it for only a week, and although we’re still in chilly-March here in Oxfordshire in the U.K., I’ve already ‘discovered’ a further half dozen species to add to the seventy-five living things I’ve already reported on this blog. Normally I give each species its own posting. I’m beginning to think however, not least with summer’s ‘bounteous harvest’ approaching, that it’s likely I’ll find so many night- flying insects I’m going to need to relax this rule if I’m to stand any chance of cataloguing my garden life in a realistic time frame.

Why is it that some - although interestingly, by no means all- species of moth are attracted to artificial light? The late, great moth expert Professor Michael Majerus had a wonderfully concise answer in his book Moths (The New Naturalist Library):

“I do not know”!

A common hypothesis is that moths, some of which navigate by the distant moon and stars, are fooled into trying to navigate by the artificial light. Possibly this is the answer, but if true you might reasonably expect to see moths approaching lamps in a navigational fashion via orbital, in-spiralling flight paths. Watch a moth approach a light trap however, and I have to agree with Majerus, it’s not easy to convince yourself you’re witnessing 'navigation-in-action'. Moths often fly directly towards the light, flutter around it in seemingly haphazard ways, or seem content to settle some distance from it.

Hsaio has put forward (Jour. of Insect Physiology, Vol. 19:1971-76, 1973) an alternative theory that point light sources ‘interfere’ with the operation of moths’ compound eyes causing them to perceive regions of darkness (i.e. good places to hide) around a lamp where there are none. Again, Majerus isn’t convinced. Another of nature’s mysteries! Maybe a reader here has a comment?

To the moths themselves: Firstly, attracted to my light about a week ago, the moth in photo 1. I struggled to identify this one at first, but then caught sight of a photo of The Yellow Horned (Achyla flavicornis), in a slim photo-guide (G.Hyde, British Moths, Jarrold Colour Publications) I’ve had since I was a boy. The larvae (you can find a photo on Ian Kimber's excellent UK Moths site) feed on Silver and Downy Birch from mid-May to July before pupating to over-winter and emerge as the adults found from late-February to mid-April. I read that the Yellow Horned is a member of the Thyatiridae family of moths represented by only nine species in the U.K.

On the same evening, photo 2, a March Moth (Alsophila aescularia), the green larvae of which (again, photo's available on Ian Kimber's site) feed on many broad leaf trees including Oak, Willow and Birch. The adults fly from late February to April and over-winter as a pupae. The March Moth is notable for being one of a small number of moth species where the female is flightless. You can find a photo of a wingless female here.

Why it is that a small number of moths can ‘get away’ with having no wings, whilst all the rest expend precious energy growing them is...yep you guessed it...another of mother nature’s mysteries...at least, it is to me. Comments anyone?