Odonata

As well as butterflies and moths, I really like dragonflies and damselflies, though I find them much harder to photograph. I saw lots of types in 2014, and got hardly any photos at all. One of my goals in 2015 is to photograph more species, particularly the beautiful damoiselle - which I saw several times but couldn't catch.

I'll share the ones I do have.

On the left a cute little common blue damselfly. Loads and loads of these around. Very small and very pretty.

On the right is a female common darter. Females are green/gold/bronze and the males are red (red-green when young, then deep red when mature). Common, as the name suggests!











This is a golden-ringed dragonfly. Very pretty!

A migrant hawker on the right. I saw this one at Hestercombe gardens sitting on a grape vine.

Fungi Foray

A couple of weekends ago I signed up to go on a fungi foraging trip with the foraging expert from River Cottage. I love fungi anyway - one of my obsessions is taking photographs of the stuff. Plus mushrooms are tasty and foraging for free food interests me.

So we all met up at Kingcombe in Dorset and headed out into the countryside.Our guide, John Wright, would stop to show us interesting fungi and tell us all about it - how to identify things and whether or not it was edible.

This is him on the right telling us about, I think, honey fungus. I have a friend who is a gardener who'll tell me how evil honey fungus is so I was already familiar with that particular one! It kills trees, so not good. And I think it's quite hard to get rid of.

It was quite cold out - no rain but lots of mud so we all had our wellies on. We wandered all over the place looking for fungi and putting specimens in our baskets. Then we came to a really boggy area and was warned that we might get stuck so to be careful. I headed off and took a few photographs of various fungi - bracket fungi and a couple of others that I can't actually remember the name of. I decided not to follow my friend as the way she was heading looked really boggy, so I set off on my own.

Big mistake. It wasn't long before I was stuck fast and sinking. There was bog inside one of my wellies and I could not get out. Luckily, another member of the group spotted me and called for help. The photo on the left is one my friend took (she was too busy laughing and taking the photo to help!) of John Wright and several others hauling me out of the bog.

Once rescued, I spent the rest of the day wandering around with a squelchy, boggy welly! Oh, and shortly after this, I then fell in a badger set and had to be pulled out of that, too.

But, once we got back to the centre, there was yummy tea and lots of cake and goodies waiting for us. So I sat and filled my face and changed out of my wellies.

An informative and fun day.

Small part of the day's haul

Clouded Yellow

And I thought the painted lady would be my last of the year! Nope, the clouded yellows are still around and finally, I have a photo! Not a very good one, but I wasn't expecting to see anything. I spotted this one out of the corner of my eye while I was walking Beau at Ham Hill. Only had my mobile phone on me, so I let Beau off the lead and ran after this one. Luckily, she was quite happy to land for me. I also saw another clouded yellow this morning just walking the dog over the park - a male too, which I've not seen before.

Bonus pics this time will be of moth caterpillars. I love these things too. 

So, on the left is a buff-tip moth caterpillar. Kinda similar to large white caterpillars. I saw this one at Wych Lodge and I'm pretty pleased with the way the photo turned out with a nice clean background.

On the right is, I think, a fox moth caterpillar. I say think, because other photos I've seen of them have shown them being much hairier, unless this is a really young one! I'm not sure what else it would be.

This is unmistakable. The most amazing caterpillar. Very big! Elephant hawk moth caterpillar. The actual moths are stunning. I saw this one at Thurlbear Wood.

Just came across this one while on my usual daily walk with Beau. This is a pale tussock moth caterpillar. Very odd looking - like a toothbrush! Also known as hop dogs because they're found on hops.

Painted Lady

I finally saw my painted lady! I think this is the last (new to me) species of butterfly I'll see this year. It's coming to the end of the season and all I see lately is speckled woods, commas, small coppers, and small and large whites. I'd still like to get a better photo of a small heath, small white and large white. You'd think the whites would be easy as they're so common, but they never seem to land for very long for me!

Anyway, so I happened to stumble across two painted ladies while out walking Beau. Again, no camera, but as I was waiting for a phone call, I had my mobile phone on me. So while the quality isn't great, I do have record shots.

 

 

 

 

Painted Lady

plume moth

And as this blog isn't very long, here are two bonus moth pictures. The plume moth came up out of my flower beds as I was watering the garden, and the angle shades moth I spotted (somehow!) roosting while I was out walking with Beau on Ham Hill. I love the angle shades moth.

angle shades moth

Butterflies Part 2

So... I have since seen four new (to me) butterflies since my last blog post and actually managed to get photos of them all!

brown argus

First  up, the brown argus. Spotted this one at Ham Hill in Somerset, it just came and landed on the ground right in front of me. I knew straight away it was a brown argus, even though they can be quite similar to female common blues. Managed to get some good shots before my dog Beau charged over and it flew away.

small copper

A small copper - just what I wanted to see! I hadn't expected to see this - I just came across it feeding on this plant and it stayed for a very long time, allowing me to take lots of photos. I hadn't realised how small they are. Super pretty.

small heath

This is a small heath on the right - just took this photo today actually, and as the weather's quite poor, I didn't even have my camera on me as I wasn't expecting to see butterflies. Luckily, I had my mobile phone. So the picture quality isn't great, but at least I do have a picture.

This is a holly blue. Bit of a scraggy one! Small blue butterflies with black around the edges of their wings. Photo taken at Thurlbear wood, Somerset.






On the right is a comma! Seen them before, so not new to me, but first time I've managed to get a photo.You can see the little white 'comma' mark on the underwing which gives them the name.

Bonus moth pics!

heart and dart

Heart and dart moth on the left. Big-ish. Has heart and dart markings on the wings, hence the name. You can just see the darts in this pic.

The photo below is of a garden carpet moth that came into our kitchen.

garden carpet