BUGS IN MY GARDEN April 2014

The first of what I hope will be monthly updates of what I’ve snapped buzzing, crawling or hopping around my garden in Cambridgeshire

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Well, the mild winter/spring this year has meant that many insects have been out early and in force. Combine this fact with sunny and relatively windless days and it’s been bug photography heaven! The plants have responded well to all the rain so there’s an abundance of Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens), Forget-me-not (Myosotis spp), Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis) and White Dead Nettle (Lamium album) – among others – to provide pollen and nectar plus a stand of bamboo and a yellow-leaved dogwood (Cornus Alba Aurea) that have proven to be popular basking and resting places for a multitude of invertebrates.

FLIES

To be honest, I’ve got such a backlog of flies to identify I’ve been ignoring them a bit this year. That said, apart from the ubiquitous blow flies that have been active all winter, one of the first insects I noticed when I went out with my camera at the end of March/beginning of April was one of my faves, the Bee-fly (Bombylius major). There’s been a few of them flitting about, feeding and basking, and they’ve been posing beautifully! Although at first glance it could be taken for a bee, the single pair of wings with heavy, black markings on the leading edge and long proboscis make this an unmistakable fly.

Two other flies I snapped were a couple of furry, but very different individuals. The first was a male Yellow Dung fly (Scathophaga sp), probably S. stercoraria as this is the most common species. The females are less furry and a greyish-green colour and lay their eggs in animal dung, hence the name. The other was a St Mark’s fly (Bibio marci), so called as they usually emerge around St Mark’s day on the 25th April. This lone individual was hiding up in a fennel plant and was a little early it being the 13th when I saw it. Usually large swarms of them emerge, legs dangling as they fly weakly about and a big, old mating frenzy ensues!

There’s been no shortage of those lovely little creatures, the hoverflies, in my garden. The most obvious have been the Drone flies (Eristalis pertinax) holding territory both out front and in the back. Their large size and orange-yellow triangular markings on the abdomen make this hoverfly easy to recognise.

The most numerous species has been one of the smaller hoverflies, Platycheirus albimanus, and I’ve seen several males and females. Their markings are usually grey, although the male’s can look bronze-ish from certain angles. The males also have distinctive front legs that widen into a long, paddle-like shape (see pic) unlike other grey Platycheirus species.

Another species that’s been around – similar in size to P. albimanus (about 10mm) – is Melanostoma scalare which has three pairs of orange-yellow markings, oblong-ish in the slim-bodied male and more triangular on the female. They can be confused with some orange marked species of Platycheirus but male M. scalare have cylindrical front legs and yellow antennae to distinguish them.

Even tinier was the Neoascia podagrica that I spotted on a Welsh Poppy. There are six species of the strongly waisted  Neoascia in the UK and the swollen hind femurs plus infuscated (that is blurry) outer cross-veins on the wings helped point me towards N. podagrica.

Of the medium-sized hoverflies that landed on my plants I managed to snap Epistrophe eligans and Eupeodes luniger. E. eligans is variable in appearance but there’s always bold yellow marks on the second tergite ranging from small triangles in the male through larger, rounded triangles to an almost a solid fat bar in females, followed by one or two thinner bars on tergites 3 and 4. (Tergites, in case you don’t know, are the plates on the top of the abdomen). I’ll admit that the Eupoedes luniger could be E. nielseni but I didn’t have many shots to go by. However, the shape of the comma-like markings and slightly pale colour form lead me more towards the former.

(For help with hoverfly identification you can’t beat ‘British Hoverflies’ by Alan E. Stubbs and Steven J. Falk and Steve’s excellent Flickr site is a great online resource.)

BEES
I’m happy to say there’s been loads of different bee species buzzing around my deliberately untidy patch. I’m afraid the Bumblebees have been a bit neglected on the photographic front as I have many pics from previous years but I’ve spotted queens and workers of Buff-tailed (Bombus terrestris), Early (B. pratorum), Red-tailed (B. lapidarius), Common Carder (B. pascuorum) and Tree (B. hypnorum) BBs out and about.

Photographically I’ve been a little obsessed with solitary bees of which I know relatively little, so it’s been a bit of a steep learning curve. The most obvious species has been the Hairy-footed Flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) of which there’s been a couple of males and five or six females busy foraging on the various patches of lungwort. One male in particular has been aggressively defending a stand of plants in the front garden from not only the other male but anything else that flies by. Easy to find due to their noticeably high-pitched buzzing but a bugger to photograph as they rarely stay still!

A little easier have been the mining bees which seem to like basking on the leaves of my bamboo as well as the dogwood and a viburnum out the back. I also noticed small gatherings liked to congregate above the bamboo and a couple of hedges but why, I don’t know! The first species I photographed was Andrena haemorrhoa, identification made easier by its little red bum! (Along with wing venation, among other things). About at the same time were Andrena carantonica, another species with a furry, red abdomen. I also saw a couple of Tawny Mining bees (A. fulva) foraging but didn’t manage to get an in-focus shot. The only other two solitary bees I’ve reliably identified so far both appeared towards the end of the month and they were Red Mason bees (Osmia bicornis formerly rufa) of which there’s been a few foraging and a handsome Melecta albifrons that made a brief stop-over on the dogwood.

Having not seen one before I initially mistook the Nomad bee Nomada marshamella for a solitary wasp. Fortunately my Naturalist’s Handbook on solitary wasps points out this is a common mistake! Having got my eye in I also spotted  Nomada goodeniana on another day and since then I’ve seen both species in the garden fairly regularly. The pattern and colour of spots on the thorax and the tegulae (lumps at the base of the wings) help to separate the black and yellow nomads. They are cleptoparasites of various Andrena species, apparently.

Another thing that foxed me briefly was a bee that I initially thought was another solitary species. However, when I downloaded and enlarged the pics and saw the characteristic long marginal wing cell I realised it was a honeybee, Apis mellifera. It was smaller than the honeybees I was used to seeing, greyer and only had a little orange on the abdomen. After a bit of research I now know there are several strains of honeybee and genetics is the only sure-fire way of telling them apart. However, the wing venation and hind legs will always let you know a bee is A. mellifera even if the sub-species is unclear. And while I’m on the subject of honeybees and my own ignorance, it never occurred to me that different plants had different coloured pollen (despite the fact I’m a gardener by trade) until I noticed a couple foraging on the bluebells had collected blue pollen! Sometimes I can be a bit dim… (‘only sometimes’ I hear my lady cry).

OTHER HYMENOPTERANS

Yet another visitor early in the month was an Ichneumon stramentor. I’ve been told, and read, that you can’t reliably identify ichneumons from photos but every single one of the disparate sources I can find on the net leads me to believe that’s what it is. Same goes for the Ichneumon xanthorius that turned up a week or so later. However, these are relatively large and well marked ichneumons unlike the rest of the tiny little parasitic wasps that are flitting restlessly around my pyrocantha, viburnum and dogwood among others. So thanks to no good single source of reference and keys that are impossible to follow without a specimen and a microscope I’m getting nowhere fast in identifying them!

The same can’t be said for the good, old social wasps. I’ve seen queens and workers of both Common (Vespula vulgaris) and German (Vespula germanica) wasps and they seem particularly attracted to the honeydew that covers the leaves of the bamboo and a small, ornamental cherry I have.

It looks like, once again, my Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum spp) will be decimated by the larvae of Phymatocera aterrima aka the Solomon’s Seal sawfly. There’s been around 12 – 15 dark winged adults flying weakly around the plant and I’m always impressed at how they manage to appear just as it’s about to mature. The only other sawfly I photographed is one of the Athalia species and that’s a genus that you really can’t confidently identify from a photo.

TRUE BUGS

A black bug I’d not noticed in my garden before turned out to be the Forget-me-not bug Sehirus luctuosus. This came as no surprise as there’s Forget-me-nots all over the place and the more I watched the more individuals I noticed scuttling around in the gravel underneath the plants. The day I saw the first of these I also spotted a couple of  Green Shield bugs (Palomena prasina) too.

Some neat little red bugs that I kept seeing – and are still around mid May – are the Scentless Plant (or Rhophalid) bug Rhopalus subrufus. Usually spotted on the Alkanet plants. Also quite numerous early on in April were Lygus cf. pratensis (I think the cf. bit means that the genus/species is a bit ‘fluid’ – but I could be wrong!) There were quite a few of these Mirid bugs wandering around and mating but I only see one occasionally now.

Another Rhophalid bug that was around for a few days was the stunning red and black Corizus hyoscyami. Originally a southern coastal species it is now reasonably widespread in England. I’ll admit it’s stay may have been brief because it got sick of my camera being aimed at it!

And the last of the Heteropterans I caught on camera was the Common Flower bug Anthocoris nemorum. Despite being ‘common’ I only saw one of these.

BEETLES

It was shag-tastic late March/early April with Cereal Leaf beetles (Oulema melanopus) mating all over the place. They’ve since moved on but the stripey, metallic Chrysolina americana are still lurking in the Rosemary plants in the front garden.

There’s also been a quite a few ladybirds in the garden including 10-spots, 2-spots and the odd Harlequin all of which have been photographically ignored for the usual reason. I did try to snap a Cream spot I saw but all the shots were out-of-focus! So the only representative here is one of the many black and yellow Propylea 14-punctata that have been, and are still, wandering about.

Right, that’s it for the April round-up. Hope to see you for May’s collection in a few weeks.