If, and I stress if, you are of an age to recall when the wireless was king, you might be able to figure out what my first photograph has in common with an 'adenoidal squeaky-voiced Boy Scout from East Finchley'?
On a rare fine weather day, this was the first thing I saw when I ventured out with the camera...
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| Calliphora vomitoria |
There are lots of unsavoury facts about Bluebottles (or Blow Flies) but here are a few of the more tasteful ones:
The eyes of a bluebottle are made up of 8000 facets
The bluebottle fly can smell things 750 yards away
A bluebottle fly can travel 300 times the length of its body in a single second
The wings of the fly move at a rate of 200 times per second
Alright, alright! Just for you deviants; here is one, well let's call it, indelicate fact: Females deposit their eggs on rotting corpses: this can be a useful forensic tool in establishing the time of death. There...sated? (nice scientific name too huh?)
Once again I am indebted to friend of this blog Maria Justamond. She was able to tell me in double-quick time that the sound clip of birdsong in my last update was in fact this creature...
Yes, a nuthatch: to be precise, the distress call of a nuthatch. Maria also kindly sent me a link to a bird call sharing website and I had hoped to share the call from that here: unfortunately, Blogger is telling me it takes too long to load (that's Blogger for you!)
Ironically I have had a nuthatch visiting the bird feeders in the garden: I have not heard it though, so I guess it hasn't been distressed. In fact the photos above are of 'my' nuthatch. Not great quality I'm afraid because I no longer own a birding lens and they were taken through glass.
As per usual at this time of year, I am wondering what spring will be like: will it be early or late? Well right at the end of February 2018 this is what it looked like here in my part of the world...
But then in 2019 by 7th of March we had spring flowers already blooming in local woods...
I had thought that the milder (if very wet) winter may precipitate an early onset of spring this year. But if the wood anemones are a reliable indicator, then it seems to be already a couple of weeks later. On this very day (March 10 as I write) of last year, I came upon this little spider...
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| Probably Araniella cucurbitina, sometimes called the "cucumber green spider" |
Whilst I am on a spider kick: I was pleased to find this rather rare spider badge the other day...
Would you like to see a nice chunky spider that I found on my last visit to America? No...thought not!
You might recall that back in January I posted this picture of a beetle that seemed to have fungi sprouting from its...erm...back end?
Well look at this hopper nymph I discovered just yesterday in my local woods...
Can you see in the small image, the area I have circled. It looks like something very similar is going on: I wonder just how commonplace this is (and how I could find out).
Meantime:here's an image that I pulled up from a folder dated May 13 2011
I well remember watching this wood ant pulling the moth back to its nest. Okay so wood ants are quite large as ants go, and this wasn't the biggest moth, but even so, it had no way of resisting.
But when is an ant not an ant?
Answer: when it's a wasp!
Yes, this IS a wasp; and just to complete the illusion of it being an ant. it is wingless. Probably a female, wingless Ichneumon wasp (Gelis sp?)
We've tackled when is an ant not an ant; but how about when is a spider not a spider? Well, all spiders are arachnids right. But all arachnids are not spiders:
This creature has eight legs. It is an arachnid. But it's clearly not a spider.
Spiders, Daddy longlegs (Harvestman), False scorpions and ticks are all arachnids. As are Mites. This is a mite: a spider mite to be pedantic. Here are a few snippets of information courtesy of the BBC: They start life with six legs, but develop eight as they mature. When active, the spider mites are light green with two dark spots on their back, but during their inactive periods they become dark orange or red.
I'll end with a photo of a weevil that was either feigning death, or wanting a tummy tickle - I opted for the latter...
Congratulations if you managed to solve my little poser at the top of this update. In case you did and are now feeling smug: can you now find a connection between this next image and radio AND the German aerospace engineer, Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun?
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