September 18th

at first a feeble

whisper from the tufts of grass

cicadas singing

I hadn’t heard them sing for years. It always reminds me of the Mediterranean, only a few miles away.

September 16th

strewn along the path

bloody nosed beetle corpses

dismantled by ants

This time of year we seem to see an abundance of bloody nosed beetles on the moors. It must be they get disturbed when the harvests happen, so they end up more visible when the crops they normally hide in get shorn. Invariably a lot of them get stomped on. I’ve not picked one up yet (a live one), but apparently they spit a red liquid on you when disturbed, hence the bloody nose.

A pic I took of a live one above.

September 1st

One by one they come

swift sorties tight to the hedge

insect gathering

So I’m at Electric Picnic, a great music festival, but I’m inspired by birds again. Swifts loading up for their massive migration to Africa by acrobatically flying against the hedges, elegant twists and turns in mid air to catch unknowing flies or spiders floating on gossamer.

July 28th

damsels and dragons

wings crackle then dart away

red and blue shimmers

The pond over in the moors had little electric blue damselflies flitting about on it. Also bigger chunkier red dragonflies (or possibly another species of damselfly – I’m no expert I’m afraid, much as I’d like to learn more about them, but they move so fast so I couldn’t get pics!). When their wings beat you can hear them crackle or clap before they dart off at seemingly impossible speed. They are pretty beefed up power wise for their size. This is their season, they’ll become more and more prevalent for the rest of the summer.

July 25th

fanned flat for ant bath

squadrons pour out and crawl clean

drones and new born queens

I saw a blackbird lying flat against the floor, nervously darting glances this way and that. I thought it had been hit by a car, its wings looked broken. I asked D for her opinion, she suggested it might be “anting”, that is, lying near an ants nest, letting them crawl over him to spray formic acid over his wings. It’s like a disinfectant for them, cleansing them of mites, bacteria and such.

Indeed it flew off shortly after, so indeed he was uninjured. She’s very clever knowing all this nature stuff!

It was hot and the ants were flying. This sudden exodus used to fascinate me as a small boy in my parents garden. The big queens and the more slender drones, flying off, mating. The drones would die and the queens would scrape off their wings and perhaps be lucky enough to found their own colony.

It was alien and fascinating to me. I wonder where I’d be in life if I did follow my dream to study entomology? Probably very poor!

July 9th

soldier beetles touch

the cow parsley canopy

meadowsweet dreaming

First time in a long time, many weeks in fact, we walked on the moors. There is a wildness about them, the rain, that nourishing rain has burst the fields and moors aflame with colour. The plants and animals are thriving.

D is good at recognising plants and animals. So I learn a lot from her.

Soldier Beetles on Cow Parsley (although it might be Hedge Parsley, she’s fairly sure it’s of the cow variety). Solider Beetles are notoriously frisky, always getting it on with each other, although these lot are fairly sedate.

Meadowsweet. With it’s unusual smell. Kind of like vanilla, but not like vanilla at all. It’s a smell of it’s own. It hogs the sides of the river and its tributaries.

A pretty pink poppy, growing in the rape seed field. The yellow flowers of the rape are long gone, leaving the little pods containing the seeds from which the rape seed oil will be made. In this case it will contain a teeny bit of poppy too…

March 27th

As the sun lowers

mercurial pipistrelle

skims stone cottages

 

Saw a bat as I was driving home the other night. They are so tiny and manoeuvrable, always looking frantic and busy, yet still elegant in night flight. Forever catching insects. Pretty little things.

January 5th

 

Palaces of glass,

Scuttling drones and workers strive,

In shadow not light.

 

On a windy Thursday I took my first commuter trip into work. The sun poked through the unsettled sky and brilliantly reflected off this unusual building on Baker Street near our offices.I’d normally have tried harder to capture the sunlight, but I was in a hurry! Another day at the hive awaited me!