At the start of the walk we were greeted by numerous flowers, filling two of our senses with bright colours and heady scents, then we heard before we saw more than one song thrush singing for all he was worth, a female blackcap off to her nest with take out in her beak as well as the always present chaffinches, male and female.

It was, however, the number and variety of insects that surprised me the most considering the weather of the last few days.  Although I only saw a couple of white butterflies, the umbellifers (mainly hogweed I think) were flowering away and teeming with life.  I saw bees, flies and hoverflies galore, including this really pretty hoverfly that I had never seen before.

Hoverfly

There were also a number of insects flitting about in the sunshine that caught my attention.  Some of these finally settled on leaves and had the biggest antennae I had ever seen.  They looked moth-like, and on googling for info discovered that they were longhorn moths (Nemophora degeerella) – certainly well-named.  According to the UK Moths site, the males (which have the long antenna) ‘dance’ in the sunshine in May and June and are quite numerous.  These were a first for me however.  This picture below shows how long the antennae are – about three times the length of the body.

Longhorn Moth

So, the moral of the story is, there is something of interest whatever the weather.

The damselfly lays it eggs in or close to water and these hatch after about a month. The nymphs then remain in the pond for one to two years before crawling up a convenient piece of vegetation and emerging from their larval case (exuvia). I think we have had at least 10 emerge from our pond in the last month. Here’s a picture I caught of a damselfy as it was emerging.

The damselfly then has to sit there as it pumps fluid to its wings and dries out before it can fly off. The time taken for this depends on the weather and one I was watching took about 3 hours in early May, but about half that time a couple of weeks later.

Damselflies are much smaller than dragonflies, and sit with their wings held in to their long slim body (thorax) unlike dragonflies which are much larger and wider and who hold their wider wings out.

Large Red Damselfly

This is a large red damselfy (which I think is the species that emerged from the pond in early May). Unfortunately they only tend to live for a few weeks so enjoy them whilst you can. Can you think of a better reason to put a pond in your garden than to see these fantastic creatures close-up?

For a great introduction to dragonflies and damselflies see the Leicestershire and Rutland Dragonfly Group website.

This year has been pretty bad for the butterflies, with only the occasional sunny day.  We have had quite a few red admirals and whites when the sun has come out, but have seen no painted ladies this year and very few tortoiseshells.  

Another new butterfly that I have noticed in the garden this year (in addition to the Holly Blue in the Spring) is a Brimstone (Gonepterix rhamni) one or maybe more of which have been coming to the garden intermittently for the last couple of weeks.  I normally associate these with Spring as they are one of the first butterflies that I see when the sun starts to come out in March and April (this year being a bit of an exception).  

They are easy to recognise; varying from yellowy green to a yellowy cream colour depending on whether they are male or female (males are darker coloured).  Their leaf shaped wings that they always fold back when feeding and resting have an orange spot, the veins improving their camouflage when resting beneath a leaf as nicely demonstrated in the picture that I managed to grab the other day.

The first of these was the emergence of a common darter (I think) from the pond. I disturbed one of them, but I think that this one needed a little more time to dry its wings so I grabbed a quick shot. This was the first I had seen this year.
The nymph stays in the pond for up to a couple of years, and then crawls out to emerge as the predatory adult. The common darter changes colour to more of a brick red as it suns itself.

I saw some earlier in the year, I dutifully recorded my sighting on the Nature’s Calendar website. I even took a picture of one of the little beetles a couple of months ago, but numbers seem to have dwindled since then. I did a quick google search, but cannot find any mention of a problem, only articles about the potential threat of the harlequin ladybird, but I haven’t seen any of those either.

For anyone interested in these helpful little beetles there is a website with lots more information which also runs a yearly survey of ladybird populations. There are apparently 46 different species believed to be resident in the UK, of which 26 are the focus of the survey. As I mentioned earlier, there is a great deal of concern about the presence of the harlequin ladybird in this country which is known to predate our own ladybirds. There is also a website which is running a survey to track the movement of this invader through the country.

I am becoming more and more concerned about the lack of insect life around here. We went for a walk to the Country Park yesterday, but, although there were quite a few bright blue damselflies, there were virtually no butterflies or bees, very few insects of any type were visible.

I know that there is concern that we no longer have a viable population of native bees, but is there a problem with all of our insects?