Hedge and Frog-hoppers...

I think it was Homer (Simpson, not the Greek bloke of The Iliad fame) who said "If it wasn't for bad luck, I would have no luck at all."

That's how it feels some days anyhow. Days when you think that if they invented a pill for everlasting life, you'd die swallowing it!

Here then is my tale of bad luck: but in the best BBC manner (not) I shall try to create a balance by regaling you with one of good fortune (hopefully) too. 

I am not even sure this woeful fable is down to luck at all; and having done my utmost to research in every manner possible, (I even probed my annals) I am still none-the-wiser. Wanna know what this concerns then? Of course you do: you only have an 8 second attention span, and that ran out about...8 seconds ago!

YES...the dreaded female mosquito. I try to love all insects equally, but when I hear the high-pitched whine of an approaching mossie it tries my patience to say the least. But why do I keep getting bitten lately? For years and years, they didn't pester me at all. What has changed, or is it down to luck?

A few years ago I suffered a nasty bout of pneumonia, and I think that could be relevant! I'll expound on my theory shortly, but firstly here are some known reasons why you might be a target:
Tall people, overweight people, females in general, wearing dark clothes, and something I need to check out myself, your blood group can be an indicator, and I have no clue as to what my blood type is. Type O seems to be favoured by the little blighters.

The following clip from an article I read seemed quite harsh...

Non-attractive indeed!

I'll press pause on the mosquito rant there: it's already getting too wordy. Let's indulge in some bug photographs for a while...

Philaenus spumarius - A Common Froghopper

I often see the little froghoppers that make this 'cuckoo spit', but usually they are much smaller and yellow in colour. Once adult, they no longer need the protection of the foam bubbles. My guess is that this one had just completed its final moult and was still the pale, teneral colour of a freshly emerged adult hopper. 

A fully mature Common Froghopper

2019 has again proved to be quite a poor year for sightings of true bug nymphs. I have seen and photographed a few, but numbers have been well down for a few years in a row now. I was lucky enough to spot this character though: this is a late instar nymph of Rhabdomiris striatellus which is usually associated with oak.

Grypocoris stysi - A Mirid Bug

This little bug is found widely throughout the UK, usually on nettles in woodland, and sometimes umbellifers. The adults and larvae feed on both flower heads and small invertebrates such as aphids. 

I've found adults of this species too; this was in my garden on the cosmos flowers...

Grypocoris stysi (adult)

Miris striatus next: the nymphs of this species are rather ant-like and are quite dark in contrast to the striking adults...

Miris striatus nymph (Miridae)

I have seen lots of these Fencepost Jumping Spiders over the years, but never one quite as long as this one...

It really was like a stretch-spider! I guess one spider is probably one too many, and so let's move on to something much nicer shall we. How about a bug carrying its own excrement on its back...

Cassida viridis larva

Yum! Well I suppose the idea is to put off any would be predator; it would certainly make me think twice about making a meal of this one. Here's what the adult looks like, much better huh...

Cassida viridis - A Green Tortoise Beetle

I still have to tell you about my stroke of good fortune, don't I. Firstly though, let's return briefly to the mosquito story. Doctor Jonathan Gray, a medical entomologist, says that your metabolic rate could be a prime factor in making you attractive to the local mosquito population.

He concludes that mosquitoes use CO2 as their primary means of identifying bite targets. “All vertebrates produce carbon dioxide, so what better way could there be for a mosquito to cue in on a host?” Physically exerting yourself raises your metabolic rate, he adds. 

My theory is that since having pneumonia a while back, I know that my lungs have never fully recovered, and that means I can get short of breath much faster than before. A raised metabolic rate makes me irresistible to females! Female MOSQUITOES that is of course.

And the good news is?

By the way, I never did understand that song by Hedgehoppers Anonymous: 'It's Good News Week'

Lyrics: 

It's good news week

Someone's dropped a bomb somewhere

Contaminating atmosphere

And blackening the sky

It's good news week

Someone's found a way to give

The rotting dead a will to live

Go on and never die have you heard the news...

Irony I guess? Anyhow, I digress, my little bit of good fortune was finding this on one of my early morning walks with the hound...

A FIVE-leaf clover...count 'em...FIVE!

I've found a number of four-leaved across the years, but never five. I needed to find out more and so I plucked my Googling finger from inside my shirt, where it had been scratching my ever so itchy mossie bites, and got typing. That isn't my question at the top of this article by the way, that's just what came up when I put 5 leaf-clover into Google...

The good news then is that I am one in 20,000 (and I always thought I'd been won in a raffle). Surely by default this means though that I will need 20,000 more walks before I find another? No time like the present then; I'm away to cut that down to 19,999 walks required. One last photo to complete this update...

Long-jawed orb-weaver - Tetragnatha extensa

Attention!

 I have been reading recently that Blogging is now a complete waste of time and one of the main reasons is that people now seem to have the attention span of a 2 year old! 

Elephants and Leopards in my tent...

I like to get news headlines on my phone to try and keep up with what's happening in the world. I also get a few notifications from websites of interest. I've discovered though that it's probably not a great idea to just read the headline and nothing else. Here's an example that arrived a few days ago...

Could easily be misconstrued don't you think? When I clicked on that line of text however, all became clear...

Some newspaper headlines do make me chuckle on the other hand...

Enough of this malarkey,

What's this then JJ?

 Another of your tenuous clues to summat or other? 

Nope! One hundred and seventy is actually the number of moths I found in my moth trap one morning recently. Well, very close to 170. Hard to say exactly because I had a few escapees as always. I didn't know that the trap contained quite as many insects; this is what I saw when I peered in to it...

I wanted to have a go at photographing every moth: just phone grabs mostly, but how to go about it without having some escape each time I opened the trap to remove one? This was the solution I came up with...

Yes, I got out the old festival, pop-up tent and set about emptying the trap inside so that any escapees would be easy to re-capture. If you know of a better way (and I am sure there are plenty) to empty a trap, I would love to hear from you.

Here are the photos that I did manage. They won't win any photography competitions but I did spend way too long doing this. about four and a half hours actually, and by the end, just wanted my life back!

I haven't got around to identifying all of them yet. I doubt I ever will, moths are tricky at the best of times. I have managed a few though:

38 x Grass moths

6 x Common Footman

1 x Buff Footman

1 x Leopard moth

1 x Dark Arches

2 x Buff Tip

1 x Elephant Hawk moth

1 x Buff Arches

1 x Small Magpie

2 x Clouded Border

1 x Rosy Footman

1 x Lead-coloured Drab

1 x Spectacle

2 x Riband Wave

1 x Plain Wave

5 x Small Scallop

2 x Heart & Dart

2 x Gold Fringe

Still with me? Oh I am pleased: I nearly dozed off myself writing those out. How about some better photographs of the stars of this particular night. In fact, let's begin with what must surely be the star...

Meet if you will Deilephila elpenor, the Elephant Hawk-moth...

He looks kinda angry in this picture huh? I say 'he', I think it is male; females are a little less bright (no jokes please).

This species is nocturnal and of course feeds at night. That means choosing flowers that open or produce some nectar at night. The Elephant Hawk-moth has incredibly sensitive eyes that allow it to have night vision. In fact it was one of the first species in which nocturnal colour vision was recorded.

How can I follow that? Well, can't top it for colour and beauty, but what about the antennae on this next guy!

This one is Lymantria monacha, Black Arches.

In this species the males are actually smaller than the females, but have these large, feathery antennae. Notice the tell-tale splash of pink above the eye. There is usually pink somewhere, more often on the abdomen. Of course we cannot see the abdomen in this photo and so there may well be pink present.

Anything else JJ?

'Mais bien sur mon ami'

(I think that means, mines been sore Monday Amy!)

'Phalera bucephala' or the Buff-tip Moth.

The Buff-tip camouflage technique, is to resemble a broken twig of the silver birch tree.

Do you have a buff-tip missus? Ooops! Sorry, sometimes I have delusions of grandeur and just for a second or two, think I am Donald J. Trump. Let's get back to the job in hand? No...I am not still being Trump!

We have had some really interesting moths already, I hope you agree: but this next one must have one of the coolest names. This is 'Miltochrista miniata' more commonly known as the Rosy Footman...

One more? Certainly...

This is rather a brightly coloured specimen, but I think it is 'Agapeta hamana'.

It may look large in my photo but is actually only about 20mm long. It doesn't seem to have a common name; so I'll give it one...Wayne!

Hello, I'm Wayne...


One more and then we can all go home and have tea...

The aptly named Leopard Moth - Zeuzera pyrina

There were also a couple of non-moth critters in the trap...

Probably Rhagonycha fulva - A soldier Beetle

An Ichneumon Parasitic Wasp

Notice how all of these insects are covered in moth scales: moths tend to loose scales readily.

An Orange Ladybird (16-Spot) - Halyzia 16-guttata

And finally, this amazingly small beetle. About the size of an average Springtail, so no more than 2mm at a guess.

This little beetle belongs to the Aderidae family. There are only three species in the UK apparently: I believe this to be 'Aderus populneus'.

There is actually a lot more I could add to this blog but I don't want to impose on your time too much, so will save for the next one.