Lockdown diary: Botany & Bugs (and more!) on your Doorstep – late April

Here we still are, and hope you are all keeping well and coping with the restrictions on our day to day lives.  We are actually finding it quite liberating though we do miss physical contact with family and friends. Thanks to everyone who has sent in their observations and pictures of what nature is up to on their patch.  So much has captured your interest – one of our group was fascinated with the slugs he had in his compost bin (where they are welcome and doing what nature intended). He says  they were ‘little black things to four-inch monsters, and green mottled ones’. He also had six varieties of worm, plus bees, birds and shield bugs. That’s the wonder of nature, once you start looking there is so much to see.

Our friend in Brighton was intrigued to see ants dragging a large centipede into their lair, and a Wivenhoe correspondent found this rather odd-looking critter in her pond: a damselfly nymph. When you look at illustrations of these, they have three ‘tails’, but the surface tension would cause them to all appear to stick together when out of water (like wet hair sticks to your head). It is now safely back in the pond and they await an emergence of a lovely adult version.

Craneflies were snapped doing what comes naturally in France, where there were also lizards, frogs, butterflies and an owl. C’est la vie!

Lots of bees are going about their daily lives, doing their pollination job, and bringing us pleasure as they do so. A beautiful one with full ‘panniers’ was snapped in a sunny London garden, and this female Tawny Mining bee was seen in the Wivenhoe area. There are so many species of bee it isn’t easy to recognise them, but this one is quite distinctive with her red fluffy hair. A lovely description was sent in from a friend in Suffolk ‘…young bumblebees following their noisy passageways through the fields’. Brilliant!

Butterflies are a pure joy and we were lucky enough to spot several Green Hairstreaks in Cockaynes last week, and others of you have seen Orange-tips, Small Tortoiseshells and Green-veined Whites.

Birds are playing an important part in our lives at the moment (Chris is stacking up a list, not sure how many we are at….70 something I think), and we have been lucky enough to hear both Cuckoos and Nightingales from our flat, and to see (and hear) Swifts.  A sure sign that summer is on its way 😊. It seems there are a number of Nightingales in various places around Wivenhoe. I am sure the general quietness is making it much easier to pick the songs out at the moment – we have had reports of woodpeckers in Colchester and Skylarks in north Wivenhoe. A very observant friend in Brightlingsea saw two Ring Ouzels, and we have had reports of an interesting encounter between a Sparrowhawk and Starling in Elmstead. (The Sparrowhawk came off best that time, but they have hungry mouths to feed of course).

Flowers are a source of wonderment and enjoyment too, and thank you to a friend in Colchester who sent a picture of her Snake’s-head Fritillary. What a fabulous flower.  And our ‘identification service’ turned to garden trees when we were sent a photo from Sussex which turned out to be Box Elder (which is neither a ‘Box’, nor an ‘Elder’ but a Maple – that’s English names for you!).

Even mammals are putting in an appearance: we have seen one each of both Grey and Harbour Seals swimming along the river, and bats are out and about in the evenings. We hope to get out there with the detector at some time to see what we can pick up, and will let you know next time.

Just to leave you with an inspirational quote from a local nature-fan: ‘If nothing else in the world can keep you going, at least nature can’ ….

Photo credits: Sue Minta (damselfly nymph),  Val Appleyard (centipede), Ro Inzani (bumblebee), Caty Robey (craneflies), Glyn Evans (Tawny Mining-bee), Sandra Davies (Snake’s-head Fritillary), Chris (Green Hairstreak).