Glorious pink!

As summer gets going and the weather warms up, different wild flowers are emerging. 

Knapweed is looking lovely and will attract plenty of insects. It will appear in meadows and even on your lawn if you don't mow it for a few weeks!

More spectacular though are the Pyramidal orchids which can be found in a few places around the parish at the moment. Their name is a very good description of the flower head, especially before it fully opens and makes it one of the easier orchids to identify.

Rosebay willowherb, another summer flower often seen on our roadside verges is making lovely splashes of colour now. The seeds are specially adapted with tiny parachutes which blow on the slightest breeze and therefore spread the flowers range. Also known as fireweed as it germinates after fires.

 

The Field scabious, whilst not such a vivid pink, but lilac with a hint of pink, is also flowering now and deserves a mention. This plant was used to alleviate plague sores and other skin conditions, which is probably where it got its name from!

Looking down not up!

I have a tendency, as a bird watcher, to look up and not down, so sometimes I have to remind myself that there are lots of things going on below eye level that are worth watching out for.

Recently, especially on the sunny days, there have been numerous butterflies on the wing and the Meadow Brown in particular have been emerging in good numbers.Walking across any longer grassy areas will disturb them and they will fly away from you in an erratic way before landing again and invariably closing their wings.

If you are lucky they may start to feed holding their wings at least partially open, but they rarely stay in one place for long!

Other more obliging butterflies that will settle and that I have seen recently have been Red Admirals

and Small tortoiseshells.

The warm weather has also seen the beautiful day flying Hummingbird Hawk-moth making an appearance, especially in gardens like mine with valerian growing in them. These large moths have migrated from the Mediterranean during the spring and there are even records of them returning south in the autumn!

This year I have noticed more dog roses in the hedges than usual and the blooms seem to attract insects, often in good numbers, like these colourful hoverflies that seem to be having a non socially distance gathering!

This week on my daily walks I have been keeping a close eye on nettles by the roadside and been rewarded by the sighting of lots of seven spot ladybirds. Of the 46 ladybird species now found in Britain only 26 are readily recognisable as ladybirds and the seven spot is the most common.

Unfortunately another non native lady bird, the Harlequin, invaded the UK back in 2004 and are now thought to be causing problems to our native breeds. Along with sightings of our seven spot I have also seen larva (below) of the Harlequin ladybird. These ladybirds are variable in colour and are often more noticeable in the autumn when they gather in large numbers, often on windowsills indoors, looking for somewhere to spend the cold. Last year I believe they congregated in the local church tower! 

The humming, or buzzing if you prefer, of bees on sunny days as they busily gather pollen and nectar is a joy and they seem to like the perennial geraniums in my garden so I can spend time trying to identify them. Not always that easy as they are, as the nickname says, "busy bees"!

So, I hope I have demonstrated that looking down, or at least sideways, and not always up in the air, is really worthwhile!

Recent news from Underway Meade

The Moorhens have been successful on the pond again this year and are currently raising one chick.It is quite active and follows its parent and demands food, though it can feed itself, but it keeps out of sight most of the time hiding in the thick reeds as the rather wobbly video below shows!

There have been some interesting plants appearing in the Meade recently, such as this Water Figwort, which as the name suggests, likes to be near water. This one is growing alongside the stream and will be polinated by common wasps.

The more well known Foxglove has also been appearing alongside the hedges and in small clumps on the mound. This is a biennial so takes two years to go from seed to flower. It is loved by bees, which feed on its pollen by delving deep into its trumpet like flowers.

It is poisonous if eaten but can be used to produce digitalis, a drug used in the treatment of heart failure and high blood pressure.

Another plant that has been quite prolific on the mound this year, probably as a result of the sheep having grazed last year and the scrub clearance, is the birds foot trefoil.The bright yellow flowers are followed by seed pods that look distinctly like bird's feet or claws, ( look carefully at the second picture below!), hence the common name. It is a food plant of the caterpillar of the Common Blue, Silver-studded Blue and Wood White butterflies, so keep your eyes open and you may be lucky enough to see them on the wing around the mound!