Green

Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina)

Another day, another shield bug! This one is the Green Shield Bug, so named for rather obvious reasons. When they emerge from hibernation in April and May, adults are this bright green colour. Note that only the last two segments of their antennae and their "tarsi" (i.e. the lowest segment of their legs) are pink. In the superficially similar Gorse Shield Bug, the whole leg and the whole antenna are pink. Green Shield Bugs are mating like crazy at the moment, as they only have a few more weeks to live. The female will lay a bunch of small green eggs on a leaf somewhere (we'll be looking), and the youngsters will go through five different instar stages during the summer before reaching adulthood in the fall. They'll be a deep bronzy colour when they go into hibernation for the winter. Green Shield Bugs live in a wide variety of habitats across much of Britain (though unrecorded in Scotland so far) and feed on a variety of trees and shrubs.

Caterpillar Hunter

Tachina fera

On recent rambles through the garden, we've been struck by the number of these big flies (measuring 12-15 mm, or a bit more than half an inch) we've seen buzzing around the place. They're Tachina fera (no common name that I know of), one of the more than 600 species assigned to the worldwide genus Tachina. The brick-red edges to the abdomen are distinctive, as are the buffy bases to the wings. And the red legs and yellow facial hairs are unusual among Britain's flies. According to Collins Complete British Insects, they fly from April to September. They're said to prefer damp habitats, so I'm not quite sure what they're doing in our distinctly dry garden. Like most Tachina species, this one parasitizes caterpillars — though considering how few butterflies and moths we've seen so far this spring, they must be having a hard time finding any to parasitize at the moment!

Stretch

Tetragnatha montana (underside)

While I was photographing pollinators around our Skimmia bush the other day, I spotted the spider in the picture above; though it was small and very slim, its bright silvery-white striping was eye-catching. I took the picture and went in to identify it — only to discover that this was the underside, and that there are several species that show similar patterns. Getting the "top side" photo took a few additional days (since I didn't want to disturb her), but this afternoon, I finally found her stretched out on a leaf, catching some sun (see below). It turns out that the plain dark "sternum" of the spider's underside is important; some species show a little yellow triangle at the head end. Tetragnatha montana, however, does not. The combination of the lack of the yellow triangle on the "sternum", a yellowish-brown carapace (the top side of the spider's front section) with a dark midline (and a few radiating dark branches) and that dark underside to the abdomen with its two silvery-white stripes is distinctive. This is a common and widespread species in southern England.

The six British species of Tetragnatha spiders, informally known as "stretch spiders", are notable for their very long legs and very long abdomens. They'll leave their webs if disturbed, and extend their legs straight out in front of them along a blade of grass or reed stem or twig (i.e. "stretching"), which helps to camouflage them. They've got 8 eyes in two rows of four; click on the photo below to enlarge it if you want to see them clearly. The spider's location (away from water) and its size (its body just under half an inch long) also suggest this species. To be 100% sure, I'd have to examine its genitalia under a microscope — and I can't even pretend to be interested in doing that at this point!

Tetragnatha montana 

Clepto

Female Panzer's Nomad Bee (Nomada panzeri)

At the moment, our garden is full of bees, including quite a few that we haven't yet been able to put a name to. This handsome girl, however, posed nicely for the camera, which allowed us to identify her. It's a female Panzer's Nomad Bee — one of a group of cleptoparasitic bees that lay their eggs in other bees' nests. Those eggs hatch into larvae that kill the host's eggs or larvae and exploit the pollen that had been collected for the host's offspring. Sneaky! They specialize on Andrena species, particularly Andrena fulva (also known as the Tawny Mining Bee) which we've already recorded nesting in the garden. This is another species which has never before been recorded in our 2km square!

Nomad bees can be a challenge to identify, but the four orange stripes and the orange scutellar tubercles (the orange bumps between the wings) on the thorax of this one are distinctive. The bright orange antennae and the red band at the top of her abdomen are also important ID features. This species is very similar to the Flavous Nomad Bee, but that one has yellow hairs on the face, and the hairs on the side of the thorax (i.e. behind the front legs) aren't quite as white. The Panzer's Nomad Bee also has more red on the segments of its abdomen. Like many female nomad bees, her eyes are a bright red-orange; the male's are greenish, and his antennae are mostly dark. Because they collect no pollen, nomad bees don't tend to be very hairy. In fact, with their bright colors and bold markings, they look a bit like little wasps.

Celery-fly

Male "winter" Celery-fly (Euleia heraclei)

This little fly (which measures only about 1/4 inch from "nose" to "tail") is a Celery-fly. There have been loads of them in the garden of late, standing on leaves and waggling their patterned wings at each other. This one is a male, as indicated by his smoothly rounded backside; a female would have a pointy bit at the back end for laying eggs with. The flies are undoubtedly loving the masses of Alexanders (a close relative of Celery) that we have sprinkled throughout the garden and that run rampant in the surrounding countryside. The female lays her tiny eggs into a Celery (or Alexanders) leaf, and the minute larvae grow up munching their way between the leaf's two surfaces — "mining", as it were.

There are a number of small "picture-winged" flies in Britain. This one has non-continuous bands which split at the back edge of the wing. Some of the flies we're seeing are jet black, while others are a reddish-brown (and a few are half and half). Apparently, the colour is temperature-dependent, with "winter flies" being darker than "summer flies". The books say those bright green eyes turn red when the fly dies, but given that I've seen more than one flying around with bright red eyes, I'm not sure they've got that 100% right. We'll apparently be seeing these flies until November. They're widespread all across Britain, and are considered agricultural pests, due to their habit of attacking the leaves of Celery, Parsnip and other related species. But here in our garden, we don't care what they do to the Alexanders!

Another male; this one half-"winter", half-"summer"

Sunny Two

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

Our semi-wild garden has plenty of well-established perennials growing in places where they clearly weren't planted. This is one of them — Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna), also known as Fig Buttercup — which is growing in a patch of gravel where our garbage and recycling bins live. It prefers bare, somewhat damp soil, and that small space seems to suit it perfectly. Its sunny, yellow flowers contain anywhere from 7 to 12 glossy petals, and its dark green, kidney-shaped leaves are distinctive. Though many gardeners consider it to be a weed and the fact that it can be poisonous to livestock makes it a bane of farmers and ranchers (and has seen it labeled as a "noxious weed" and banned in some U.S. states), it is often seen as a harbinger of spring here, as it blooms as early as March and continues well into May. Lesser Celandine is native to Europe, north Africa and the Caucasus, and has been introduced to North America. A member of the buttercup family, it contains some fairly potent toxins, and can cause some serious medical issues if ingested. Even contact with crushed or damaged leaves can cause itching, rashes and blistering — not something we've experienced firsthand, fortunately. The toxins can be denatured through drying or boiling, which is presumably how they used to prepare the hemorrhoid treatments that the flower was used for in centuries past!

Miner One

Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena fulva)

When it comes to color, few bees can match the all-out wow factor of the female Tawny Mining Bee. The combination of shiny black head and legs, short ginger fur on the thorax and long tawny-gold hairs on the abdomen is a knockout — even if the creature sporting them measures a mere half-inch long. In recent days, I've found a couple of females wandering along on the ground in the garden. According to Bees of Norfolk, this species feeds at a variety of plants, including Alexanders, which we have in abundance both in the wild corners of the garden and in the surrounding countryside. It also likes apple, and both of our apple trees are currently blossoming and full of bees. Like other members of the genus Andrena, this one gets its common name from its habit of making nest holes in the ground. One of the females I photographed had just crawled out of such a hole, which she'd dug between paving slabs just outside the office window. And now, the excitement of our new project: according to the county's bee atlas, this species has never been reported before for our 2km square!

Cinnamon

Cinnamon Bug (Corizus hyoscyami)

This snazzy black and red insect is a relatively rare species in Britain — though you wouldn't know it from the number I've found in the garden over the past few days. It's Corizus hyoscyami, also known as the Cinnamon Bug or the Black-and-Red Squash Bug. A continental European species which established a toehold in southern England some years ago, it has recently been expanding its range fairly rapidly northwards. It's now being seen as far up as York! Like many of the so-called "true bugs", this one is a plant eater; it feeds on a wide variety of species and presumably has found plenty in our garden to munch on. Its common name is a bit of a mystery to me. Some internet sources say it smells of cinnamon, while others maintain that it's part of the "scentless plant bug" family. I didn't give it a sniff myself!

Slow Down

Sloe Bug (Dolycoris baccarum)

One of the things I'm finding thoroughly enjoyable about this new project is the fact that it's making me slow down and look closely at every corner of the garden. And I'm finding some pretty striking things that I've never noticed before. This gorgeous little creature is a Sloe Bug (Dolycoris baccarum), another one of Britain's shield bugs. Unlike the rather plain Dock Bug of a couple of posts ago, this one is mighty fancy. It's most common in wood margins and hedgerows (like the one running along one edge of our property) and feeds on the fruits and flowers of a variety of plants. The stripey sides and antennae help to separate it from the superficially similar Hawthorn Shield Bug, which we'll be keeping an eye out for too, given the preponderance of Hawthorns in the area. Check out the hairy legs too; that's another thing that separates them from other shield bugs. Adult Sloe Bugs are found all across Great Britain and Ireland throughout the year, though most are dormant for the winter.

Lichen It

Funny how you can look at something regularly and still not see everything about it. I rechecked an old wooden bench in our garden that I'd already looked at multiple times and discovered a single colony of Flavoparmelia caperata growing amongst the other lichen colonies there. Given how distinctive it is, I'm surprised I didn't notice it earlier. This leafy lichen (a type called "foliose" in official lichen lingo) is a rather unique yellow-grey colour when dry (hence Flavoparmelia — flavo meaning "yellow") and a bright apple green when wet. This is a baby colony, measuring a bit less than an inch wide; at maturity, it may stretch across more than 8 inches. Its lobes are very wide (up to 1 cm or 1/2-inch) and quite wrinkly and contorted. They'll become even more so as the lichen matures. The central surface is already sprinkled with coarse soredia (lichen's way of spreading itself) even though it's a young colony. That little pink spot on the lichen's left side is a hostile fungus, one of the lichenicolous species that survives only by parasitizing a lichen.

According to Frank Dobson's seminal Lichens: An Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species, Flavoparmelia caperata is "very common on acid-barked deciduous trees" in the south of England. I guess old wooden benches are the next best thing! It's also found on rocks, roofs and mosses (which it overgrows). It has been badly impacted by high sulfur dioxide levels in the UK, but now that we're getting air pollution levels under better control, it's beginning to recolonize some areas where it had previously been eradicated. It's even been found on the grounds of Buckingham Palace!