It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht

As it's almost Christmas, a time for fun and frolics, I shall begin this update with 30 seconds of funny British TV advertising from the 1990s (you'll need your sound on for this)...

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I of course, being slightly older than Methuselah, recall the original tune which went like this: Lord Rockingham's XI – Hoots Mon Lyrics: Hoots mon, there's a moose, loose, aboot this hoose...

But as any true Scot, and even most Sananachs could tell you, moose in this instance, does not refer to the North American Elk, but to a tiny rodent...

I can even give you the scientific name and a brief description of the species I want to talk about: Mus musculus: Characteristically having a pointed snout, large rounded ears, and a long and hairy tail. What do you mean it sounds like a description of me - I don't have a long and hairy tail!

EDIT: I now believe these to be Field/Wood mice rather than house mice. 

So what's this all about with the 'Moose, loose' thing then JJ? 

Well I'm afraid I have had to evict a moose from my hoose - yes, it was keeping me awake at night with its nocturnal shenanigans in the loft. Not just one actually, not even two, but three...thus far!

I did use a humane trap though and have now safely re-located them away from the house. All I need to do now is to check tonight for more, and then start the search for where they are entering the house, to prevent a repeat performance.

Cute little buggers though...

I must admit to being slightly puzzled as to how they managed to bring all of that loft insulation into the trap though. Impossible all at once, therefore they must have made several journeys. If they did that, managed to get in and out of the trap, why were they still there when I found them? 

Oh well, it's not the only thing that puzzles me in life: I have lots of 'why is' questions that remain unanswered. Look what happens if you Google that phrase:

Moving along then: there isn't too much left of this year and I do intend to publish this update before December is out                        . (apologies for the full-stop being right over here - my period was late!)

Once again this year I have been finding quite a few springtails in the back garden. December is a good month for them and they can even withstand the cold, so can be spotted on frosty days too. 

Unfortunately I have failed to spot any of the spectacular 'Katianna' species that I was finding 5 years ago. They look like this...

I shall carry on searching though: I reckon they are like my brain cells, I know they are there somewhere! "In the wardrobe of my soul, in the section labelled shirts" perhaps? (Thanks Viv.)

Speaking (or writing anyhow) about brain cells: do you know what a 'Haiku' is?

Wiki says: Haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry in three sentences going in the order 5 syllables 7 syllables and then 5 again.

Not sure what syllables are? Here's a simple explanation (not!)

How do you count syllables?

Count the number of vowels (A, E, I, O, U) in the word.

1. Subtract 1 for each diphthong or triphthong in the word.
2. Does the word end with "le" or "les?" Add 1 only if the letter before the "le" is a consonant.
3. The number you get is the number of syllables in your word.

To (miss)quote Ronald Reagan: "I'm buggered if I know." Luckily there is a website that will generate a Haiku for you; here's mine...

Springtail - A Haiku

by JJ

Garden wintertime

before tiny springtail jumps

above the purple

There, and not a dippy/trippy thong in sight!

____________________________________

Shall we return to the subject at hand? I think we should. You are not going to believe the caterpillar I found the other day in the orchard behind my house...

You're not going to believe it are you? Good, because I was only dreaming.

I did actually find a caterpillar, but it was dull as dishwater by comparison...

Not a great photo either, right. My flash misbehaved that day and would only work on full power. But still, great to see a caterpillar of any kind this late in the year. It looks like it was preparing to pupate.

Yes, if you don't like our eight-legged friends then I suggest you skip this part. Treat yourself to a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine and come back further down the page. 

Spider is just here

Yes, this little one turned up in the house the other day (which is the 'other' day?) and I thought it was possibly Lathys species: however, ace spider man Tylan Berry kindly informed me that it is actually a young Amaurobius species.

It wasn't the only thing looking to find a nice warm winter home either. This lacewing was also in the house. Sadly it seems to have a damaged wing and so I re-sited it in my studio in the garden, where it should be fine until spring...

I think that's about enough for now, for this year in fact. I just want to thank all of you who have been kind enough to support my blog through yet another year. I know most of you no longer have the time to comment, but can see from my stats that the blog is well read in many countries.

I'll leave you with what was the only Monarch butterfly I saw whilst in America recently; even then, I was not lucky enough to get close to it - at least, not as close as I would have liked...

How do you sterilise a butterfly?

There is a saying in London which runs “You wait for ages for a bus and then two come along together”. Well assuming that I get to complete this latest writing in good time, this could be metaphorical bus number two. I'm not sure of the destination yet, but climb aboard anyway and we'll see where it takes us.

Actually, let's take a small diversion right away: we'll get back on track shortly but I need to share some 50 year old news first!

I've been reading the 1983 book by Stanley Booth called 'The True Story of The Rolling Stones.' It's been an easy read but I have mixed emotions about both the author and the book itself. Anyhow, at the end of the story the author talks about the untimely death of Brian Jones in 1969 and the subsequent Hyde Park concert in his honour. 

Here's a newspaper cutting quoting promotor Andrew King's recollection of a gesture Mick Jagger had suggested:

The story goes that the butterflies had been bought from a butterfly farm  for £300. The crew went on to try and warm the butterflies by putting the boxes directly onto food hot plates - one is said to have caught fire. Then despite the Royal Parks authority stating that any butterflies released should be sterilised (how do you do that?) and that they should certainly not be cabbage whites, the plan was to go ahead.

Another clipping:

And this:

Apparently, depending on which report you believe, there were due to be somewhere between 2,500 and 10,000 butterflies to release but the actual number might have been close to just 250. 

And what of the story regarding the advice from the butterfly farm that "they're not dead, they're cold, they are sleeping" ? That was at odds with these words printed in a daily newspaper at the time: The hot weather upped the pollen count, meaning Mick's allergies flared up.

Journalist John Ingham writing in The Times though thinks there is another way of looking at this story: 

Yes, apparently  Butterfly Conservation have stated that 'The Rolling Stones helped launch it on 50 years of success'. 

I think I probably agree with Jacky Creswick!

I had been planning to get back to sharing my bug photos before concluding this update, but on reflection I think I will wait for the next one and leave you to reflect on the rights and wrongs of this 50 year old story.

One final thought from when the Stones played Hyde Park again in 2013

Sir Mick Jagger has promised The Rolling Stones will not  release any butterflies when they perform at London's Hyde Park.

The 'Brown Sugar' band staged a concert at the park in 1969 to commemorate the recent death of guitarist Brian Jones, which started with them releasing butterflies in front of the crowd.

However, Mick has ruled out any such stunt when the band plays on Saturday July 6 2013.

Has he repented maybe? Well not from the sound of this quote:

Mick told Absolute Radio's Pete Mitchell the stunt ''didn't go down well with the Park men. So I don't think there's gonna be a lot of that.''

The first new insect type in 100 years...

It's probably about  a month since I was here last. But just because I have been away from the blog does not mean I have been idle. Oh no! Far from it. Where have I been, what have I been doing?

Let's start with where I have been: it used to be bear, now it's golden. Its motto is 'Eureka'. 'General Sherman' is almost certainly its oldest inhabitant  estimated to be 4,650 years old!  A well known valley here set  the hottest temperature ever recorded in the world- 134 degrees Fahrenheit. One visual clue? Okay here it is...

                  

Nope, I don't really understand that graph either; but it is supposed to represent the vowel shifts associated with 'California-English'. And so just in case you missed the not-so-subtle clue there: yes, I have been in California again.

Did I take my macro camera gear with me? You betcha!

Do I have photographs to share? You bet your sweet bippy I do...

Now I am no expert on North American insects but I think this might be Hylephila phyleus - The Fiery Skipper.

Not too sure about this darker one though. I spent way too long trying to research an identity for this little skipper and the closest I could get was Poanes melane - The Umber Skipper: hope that's right.

I do have more skipper photographs, plenty more to be exact as unlike here in the UK, there were still lots around: but let's skip those for now and move on to one of my favourite tiny creatures...

These  jumping spiders are pretty commonplace it seems, but a real challenge to photograph. I kinda wish I had taken the extreme macro lens, but was trying to travel as light as possible.

Then again, I wish I hadn't just invented an excuse as to why these photos aren't sharper. How about if I said that I was enjoying being in America, and in particular the Californian sunshine, so much, that I  was possibly not giving photography my fullest attention? 

Let's move on shall we. I know you don't all appreciate the beauty that I see in spiders. I cannot claim that I found this next creature myself, because, well, I didn't. But...I did manage to sneak a couple of pictures of what turned out to be a pretty impressive shieldbug, or stinkbug as they like to call them ...

Brochymena arborea, otherwise known as the Rough Stink Bug would be my guess for this one. Rough stink bugs are very well camouflaged and closely resemble the colour and texture of the tree bark on which they live. And in case you are looking at my photo and thinking to yourself 'It doesn't look well camouflaged to me', this one was underneath the bark, the other side was very similar in appearance to the bug.

There are a couple of other Bronchymena species that it might be, but I plumped for this one after much consideration. Frankly I was starting to get bug-eyed and losing the will to live anyway, so settled on it being Bronchy-thingy-wotsit...whatever I said at the start of this ramble.

Well if attempting to identify the last critter tried my patience, then this one, at least for a while, completely banjaxed it! At first sight I thought it might be Plectoptera (Stonefly) but that didn't seem to fit perfectly. Snakefly? Nope. Flying ant? Nope. Have a look at my photograph, see what you think...

While you are contemplating that image, did I mention that there was an earthquake during the second week of my visit? Yes, 4.5 or 4.7 depending on which report you read. It was surreal: it was about 10.30 at night and I was already in bed. You don't expect to be lying in bed and then the earth suddenly moves do you! Not in my bed you don't.

                                                     😂

Anyhow, back to the story; after doin' me 'ead in trying to  find out just what kind of creature this was, I had a lightbulb moment. Doesn't happen very often, but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I recalled reading something on the BBC website that might be pertinent, and sure enough, a quick Google revealed this...

Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit! A webspinner eh, and we now have them here in parts of the UK. But what is a webspinner? Here's the official word:

The order Embioptera, commonly known as webspinners or footspinners, are a small group of mostly tropical and subtropical insects, classified under the subclass Pterygota. The order has also been called Embiodea or Embiidina. Webspinners have up to 2.5cm long brown bodies and are the only insects that produce a silk webbing from their front legs, living in tunnels constructed from it to protect themselves from the elements and predators.

And so this actually turned out to be quite an intriguing find for me.

The story even made the Telegraph newspaper who ran this headline:

Britain gets first new insect type in 100 years, as webspinner from the Tropics found to have migrated to Surrey.

Too much excitement is bad for your ulcer, and so let's calm things down a little here; there was one particular insect that I had on my wish list for this visit, not going to reveal it just yet, but here's an anagram to tide you over...'tis a man'. C'mon, I may as well have told you outright huh?

This photograph (above) is 'Asclepias speciosa' the Showy Milkweed. It belongs to the Acanthus family of plants and seems to be well suited to the Californian growing conditions. It has these rather large (about 3 inches or so) fruit pods and attracts many insects, including aphids by the thousand, and a superb looking bug called a Large Milkweed Bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus). 

The large amount of aphids is of no consequence to the milkweed bugs as far as being a source of food. Milkweed bugs are herbivores and consume milkweed seeds. Compared to here in the Uk it seemed very late for nymphs to be still around, but not in California: in favourable conditions reproduction occurs all year round. 

An adult male and lower photo shows two nymphs.

Many fruit pods were alive with both adults and juveniles.

Apparently studies have show that northern populations of these bugs will migrate, whereas southern ones remain sedentary.

Well this blog update that began as a leisurely stroll through Californian wildlife, has already become something of a behemoth. I guess I should get to my exciting 'tis a man' finds; or MANTIS as I like to call them. Yes, I am sayin mantis rather than 'a mantis' for a very good reason.

Yes, the one thing I was hoping to find this visit was a mantis: timing seemed good and so I was hopeful that by the end of my stay  I'd be able to cross it off my bucket list.

Wednesday October 9th was my first day out with the camera searching for these amazing insects. Did I find one? No I did not.

What I did find though was FIVE! Yes...F-I-V-E !!

Well...paint me green and call me a cucumber!

I took squillions of photos, but somehow managed to keep the total to just six for this update - although I may get tempted to add more to future updates.

I was SO excited to see these that I almost had an accident! On the very first day as well: in their natural environment too. Fabulous insects full of intrigue and wonder for this English country boy. 

Now you are not going to ask me to identify these to species level are you? Oh, you are... bugger...erm... Arizona Mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) was one possibility, with European mantis (Mantis religiosa) being another. Or even possibly California Mantis (Stagmomantis californica)  for the green ones. Perhaps the darker/slimmer one might be something like Japanese (Tenodera aridifolia) or Chinese (Tenodera sinensis) Mantis?

What I do know is that they are stunning insects for me and after finding and photographing them, I was on a high for the rest of that day. I had several more encounters over the next days and weeks which I may get to share sometime soon.

Alright, time to call an end to all this indulgence for now. A couple of final thoughts to share: I discovered that I do not like dill pickles! Euwwww! I don't even like the look of corn dogs, let alone the thought of eating all that batter. As for the corn cob pipe, which looks like this...

No thanks friend. 

What did I enjoy? Well I now have a penchant for brownies and the root beer I tried was pleasant enough. 

Thanks for wading through this rather long update: I am most grateful to you -

A very quick postscript?

Okay, I will be concise: when I got to San Francisco airport to board a plane home, I was amazed, and more than a little excited, to find that INSECTS were on display throughout the part of the airport I was in...

Shame nobody spell-checked the text!