Bumblebee on Winter Honeysuckle

Dear Readers, there has been a lot of news about flowers blooming out of season this week, to coincide with the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s (BSBI) annual Plant Hunt. Over the years, this citizen science project has recorded a change in when plants flower, with many plants blooming earlier than they used to. There was a very interesting NHBS talk about this very subject during lockdown (I reported on it here).

One result of the milder winters is that some bumblebee colonies are surviving right through the winter, instead of dying off. A more common sight, however, is a queen bumblebee popping out on a mildish day for some nectar. My very first post was on this subject, and it’s one of the main reasons that I try to make sure that I have something in flower all through the year, just in case. Winter Honeysuckle is a great favourite, as is Mahonia, and that so-called ‘thug’ Green Alkanet is also often around.

Bee on Fatsia japonica in central London in late November

Some exotics that may still be in flower in sheltered spots include Fatsia japonica, a real bumblebee magnet, some Hebes, and some clematis, all of which can provide food for queen bumbles on a mild day. The bumblebee in the photo below was snapped on my birthday in January.

So, while the world is definitely out of joint, with flowers blooming and bees emerging at times when you would not normally see them, there is a little bit that we can do to help our fellow creatures – plant some late/early flowering shrubs or bulbs, and see who turns up! Though good luck if you’re planting crocuses, because they are a great favourite with some of our other furry friends…

Crocus bulbs after the squirrels had had a nibble….

And that’s the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas! The decorations are stowed away for another year, the diary is full of Open University assignments (and rather too many visits to the theatre to be compatible with the assignments, but hey), the days are gradually getting longer and once it gets above freezing I will be out and about again. I hope the season has been/is being kind to you and yours, and here’s to another year of nature!

Christmas Spider ornament (Photo By Erika Smith – MSI Chicago – Christmas Around the World 2007 – Ukraine – spider web ornament, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37156527)

Dear Readers, the legend of the Christmas Spider is thought to come originally from Western Ukraine, and it goes like this.

Once upon a time, a poor but hardworking widow lived in a hut in the forest with her children. One  day, a pine cone fell through the roof (as they do) and a fir tree started to grow in the middle of the hut. The children and the widow watered the tree, and were delighted to see the tree thrive  but, as Christmas approached, they were sad because they had no money to buy decorations. When they awoke on Christmas morning, spiders had spun their webs all over the tree, and when the sunlight touched them, they were turned into silver and gold. Which was handy for the little family, who never suffered poverty again.

The End.

Some people believe that this story is the reason that we pop tinsel onto our trees, and other countries also claim the legend and make it their own – in some versions its Santa Claus or the Baby Jesus who are responsible for the transmutation of the  webs into precious metals, and some versions are told from the perspective of the spider, though if I had all my hard work turned into something utterly useless to me (whoever caught a fly on a gold thread?) I think I’d be mightily fed up.

In Ukraine, little spider ornaments called pavuchky are placed on Christmas trees to bring luck.

Pavuchky from https://mountainmanliving.com/2020/12/13/pavuchky-ukraines-8-legged-decorators/

The blog that this photo comes from is a lot of fun – the author is finding different  national traditions to incorporate into their lives. Well worth a look! Although it seems to have finished a few years ago. It’s always  sad when a blog suddenly ceases to exist. I used to avidly follow a literature blog called ‘The Dove Grey Reader’ a few years ago, and was bereft when that finished.Incidentally, good old Australia has, in addition to Christmas Beetles, an actual Christmas Spider – this is related to our common garden orb-weaver, but is rather more brightly coloured, and very varied.

Christmas Spider (Austracantha minax) Photo By Tumblingsky – Photographed in my garden using my Nikon D7000 camera, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23571962

Another Christmas Spider (Photo By Vicki Nunn – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13358386)

These are smallish spiders (growing to a maximum of 12mm long) but they are gregarious, and can build an aggregation of overlapping webs, which can be a bit of a pain if you’re trying to walk along a path and encounter the robust threads at head height. Australia does seem to be especially blessed in interesting invertebrates (and other animals) and is the only place where you’re going to find the Christmas Spider. I must make a visit one day!

Christmas spider web aggregation (fortunately not at head height) Photo By Simpsons fan 66 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6919692

Photo by By David Lienhard – Imported from 500px (archived version) by the Archive Team. (detail page), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71295801

Dear Readers, gather round while I share a most delightful Christmas story, thought to have originated in the 1600s, and to still be heard in Scandinavia, eastern Europe and, apparently, the Yorkshire Wold.

Once upon a time, a farmer did a deal with the devil on Christmas Eve – his only son would become a lawyer, and the farmer would give the devil everything that he possessed, including his soul. The son soon achieved his father’s ambition (in spite of not being the sharpest knife in the drawer), so the devil came back the following year for his payment. What could the farmer do? He suggested to the devil that, before he handed everything over, the devil could taste some of the most wonderful honey in the world if he would only reach into this suspiciously buzzy hole in the ground. Well, clearly the devil wasn’t as clever as he’s cracked up to be, because greediness got the better of commonsense. The devil put his hand into the hole in the ground, and was promptly stung vigorously by no less than the King of the Wasps.

Brief biological correction – male wasps don’t have stings, so this is clearly a fabrication. On you go.

Well, the devil ran off howling, and the farmer was feeling very pleased with himself until the wasp gave him what was known as an ‘old-fashioned look’ in my household. The King of the Wasps was not up for being used in this fashion! And so he stung  the farmer to death.

The End.

Now, apparently the legend of the Christmas wasp was used for a long time to scare the hell out of small children (like a six-legged stripy ‘Elf on the Shelf’ only with a sting and an aggressive manner). And to appease him, striped cakes called Hvepekager or Wasp Cakes were laid out at the Winter Solstice. Sadly, I can’t find a single picture of this baked delight, but apparently it’s made from dark rye and light wheat. I suspect that it isn’t  eaten by the Wasp King, but probably by tired parents, only too keen to persuade their children that they better behave themselves.

Mostly, at this time of year, the only wasps left in the UK are queen wasps, slumbering away in an attic or shed or garage, bless them. Such useful insects! They strip caterpillars from our cabbages, and have even been seen carrying away ant larvae to feed their young. Let’s just make sure that we don’t take advantage of their good nature.

Flatid Leaf Bug (Flatida rosea) – adults on the top, nymphs underneath. Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77800693

Dear Readers, as the cold weather arrives here in the UK (with a chance of snow), I thought I’d draw your attention to this remarkable insect. This particular one is found in Madagascar, where it spends its life in the dry tropical forests. The adults are gregarious, and rely on their resemblance to a pink petal to distract predators, but the nymphs are covered in a waxy white substance that can  make them look a little like a snowflake.

Photo By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Madagascan Flatid Leaf-Bugs (Flatida rosea) nymphs …, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74758632

These little guys are very mobile, shuffling about on a plant  stem and even leaping into the air if disturbed. The family that they belong to (the Flatidae as you ask 🙂 ) is very widespread, with variations in Asia and in North and South America.

This is the Madagascan one….I love all the insect and frog sounds in the background too…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ9r_cCastA

This one, that looks a little like a cotton bud or piece of popcorn, is from Ecuador…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip4qpKXPyd4

And here are some from Burma, though calling them ‘Ridiculous’ and ‘Comedy Creatures’ doesn’t give them enough respect in my view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EVLJChVV48

What all these bugs have in common is a great love for plant sap – they exude honeydew, and  this makes them popular with some birds, who might either eat the bugs themselves, or drink up the honeydew exuded onto leaves. In Madagascar, the Coquerel’s Coua is a honeydew specialist.

Coquerel’s Coua (Coua coquereli) – Photo By DickDaniels (http://carolinabirds.org/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99602451

Generally, though, those white waxy excrescences on the back of the bug work not only to make it look like a piece of lichen, but to extend their ‘radius of sensitivity’ – the slightest touch of one of the ‘hairs’ is enough to make it spring into the air, as we see in the Burma clip above. What splendid and unlikely creatures these are!

Mistletoe Marble Moth (Celypha woodiana) Photo from https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/mistletoe-marble

Firstly, Readers, Happy New Year! May it be a happy and healthy one for all of you lovely people. In view of all the ‘stuff’ going on at the moment, though, it’s tempting to agree with Ogden Nash…

Good Riddance, But Now What?
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
–Ogden Nash

If nothing else, let’s preserve our sense of humour.

And now, back to the invertebrates of Christmas. It’s hard to imagine any creatures getting much sustenance from mistletoe, but there are six species of insect that depend upon it for their living. First up is the Mistletoe Marble, a tiny moth that looks like a bird-dropping (very handy for camouflage). The caterpillar lives between the layers of the mistletoe leaf, causing a blister gall.

Blister gall on mistletoe – Photo by Dave Shenton at https://butterfly-conservation.org/moths/mistletoe-marble

The Mistletoe Marble is declining, probably because our orchards are disappearing – it is usually found on the mistletoe in old apple trees. It’s been suggested that preserving the species (which has a Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) in place) might mean drinking more cider. Alas, a superfluity of the stuff when I was a student has left me unable to stomach the stuff, so you lovely people will have to drink my share.  Cheers!

Then there’s the Mistletoe Weevil (Ixapion variegatum). The eggs of this little beetle (much smaller than some of its relatives so you could say it’s the lesser of (at least) two weevils) are laid on the stems of the mistletoe, and the larva buries into the stem, causing it to become distorted. When it hatches, the adult weevil feeds on the leaves of the mistletoe, causing brown speckling. I’ve just discovered the blog The Mistletoe Diary, a great source of information re all things mistletoe-related. There is a theory that the Mistletoe Weevil only targets stressed mistletoe,  but the author of the blog suggests that maybe it’s the other way round – it’s the weevil that’s stressing the mistletoe by burrowing into it. Nothing in nature is ever straightforward.

Incidentally, I rather like the alternate name ‘Kiss-Me-Slow Weevil’. Ostensibly it’s named because of the mistletoe collection, but we don’t give our insect friends enough love in my opinion, so if you see one, give it a quick peck so that it knows it’s appreciated.

Mistletoe or Kiss-Me-Slow Weevil (Ixapion variegatum) Photo By Udo Schmidt from Deutschland – Ixapion variegatum (Wencker, 1864), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39236720

And finally, there are four species of true bug which feed on mistletoe. Some of these are relatively new to the UK, but as they’re all so small they could easily have been hiding in plain view. One is the Mistletoe Jumping Louse (Cacopsylla visci), one is a rather pretty plant bug resembling a tiny shield bug (Pinalitus viscicola) and one, which was first recorded in 2003, is a rotund and mottled little chap/pess. All three feed only on mistletoe by sucking the sap.

Hypseloecus visci (Photo by Tristan Bantock at https://www.britishbugs.org.uk/heteroptera/Miridae/hypseloecus_visci.html

Pinalitus viscicola (Photo by Tristan Bantock at https://www.britishbugs.org.uk/heteroptera/Miridae/pinalitus_viscicola.html)

Mistletoe Jumping Bug (Cacopsylla visci) Photo Joe Botting at https://www.britishbugs.org.uk/homoptera/Psylloidea/Psylla_visci.html

The fourth bug, though, doesn’t feed on mistletoe directly – it’s a predator, feeding on the plant-eating bugs, particularly the Mistletoe Jumping Bug. Anthocoris visci is a little tiger of the mistletoe, prowling amongst the leaves for herbivores to puncture.

Anthocoris visci – Photo by Timon Boumon at https://observations.be/species/25221/

So, mistletoe is the sole foodplant for a rare moth, an unusual weevil, three bugs which suck its sap and a bug that eats the other bugs. In other words, there’s a whole mini-ecosystem around this hemi-parasitic plant, which normally only gets thought about at Christmas. It’s well worth having a look at any that you have in the house to see if it is home to any insect ‘friends’. 

The Antarctic Midge (Belgica antarctica)

Dear Readers, if I was to ask you to guess the largest purely terrestrial organism native to Antarctica you might, like me, scratch your head a bit. Seals aren’t purely terrestrial and neither are penguins. But I would never have guessed that the answer would be a 6mm long midge, named ‘Belgica’  after a Belgian expedition from 1899. The naturalist onboard collected a specimen of this midge, unknown to science previously. But how on earth does it survive in such a cold and barren place?

First up, this midge is flightless – the winds in Antarctica are legendary, and you wouldn’t want to be a tiny insect blown into the water or onto some even more hostile plain. In fact, the Antarctic Midge can only survive temperatures of -15 degrees Celsius, while the Antarctic regularly drops to -40 degrees. Rather the face the extremes of the weather, the midge burrows under the snow, where the temperature rarely drops below a ‘mere’ -7 degrees.

Even at these temperatures, though, the Antarctic Midge requires a bit of antifreeze – its tissues contain glucose, trehalose and erythritol, all forms of sugar that prevent ice crystals from forming, and help to stabilise the proteins and fats that the insect needs to metabolise.

In fact, the Antarctic Midge is so well adapted to freezing temperatures that exposing the larvae to temperatures as low as 10 degrees Celsius will kill them within a week. However, they can survive losing up to 70 percent of their bodily fluids – larvae born on the west coast of Antarctica live without water for the whole of their larval cycle. They reduce water loss by clustering together, and by doubling the concentration of sugars in their bodies, which helps to thicken their ‘blood’ and makes it more difficult to lose fluids.

Antarctic Midge on Moss (Photo By Igor Gvozdovskyy – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97127382)

For such a little creature, the Antarctic Midge has a long life cycle – it can take four years from egg to adult, with two long, cold Antarctic winters spent as a larva, dormant under the snow. During the larval stage, the young midges will eat moss, detritus, fungi and micro-organisms. The timing of the final emergence as adults is crucial – the adult midges will only live for ten days, so they have to find a mate and lay their eggs in this short time. The males emerge first and perform a mating ‘dance’ (similar to that of the Winter Gnats that we heard about a few days ago). The males can mate multiple times, but the females lay only one batch of eggs, after which their reproductive tracts are damaged and they are unable to produce any more. The females cover their eggs in a blanket of jelly which acts both to protect them from freezing and keeps them from dehydrating – this will also provide the first meal for the larvae when they hatch.

I wondered what on earth the female midges fed on, and the answer is ‘nothing at all’ – neither sex feeds after it emerges as an adult. What would they feed on, after all? The penguins are largely not around in the summer, and any animal that they fed on would only have to jump into the water to get rid of their irritating little friend.  The Antarctic Midge is  decidedly preferable (from a human point of view) to the fearsome Scottish Midge, where the females need a blood meal in order to provision their eggs, and they aren’t at all fussy about where they get it (although if I’m in the vicinity they show a distinct preference for me).

What an extraordinary animal the Antarctic Midge is! A survivor and a specialist. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the Antarctic continues to be cold enough for it to survive, because if it’s too hot for the midge, the consequences for all of us could be pretty dire.

Christmas Tree Worm (Spirobranchus giganteus) Photo By Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6300216

Dear Readers, the Christmas Tree Worm is a feature of Caribbean and Indo-Pacific coral reefs, and quite the sight it is too. The worm burrows into large, live corals and makes itself a tube to live in. This might seem a bit harsh, but it’s thought that the Christmas Tree Worms might protect the coral from predators.  Once established, the worm sieves the water for plankton with its amazing feathery mouthparts (the ‘Christmas Trees’) – our humble limpet does much the same thing, though in a  much less spectacular fashion. Not only do the mouthparts absorb food and oxygen from the water, but they are also light-sensitive, so if the shadow of a predator passes over the worm can instantly withdraw into its tube. If something does take a bite out of the ‘Christmas tree’, the worm can regenerate it over time.

Each Christmas tree worm has two ‘Christmas trees’, so the photo above shows a single worm. There is a huge amount of variation between different worms, in terms of colour and size of appendage. A reef with lots of them is quite the sight to behold. And a single worm can live for up to forty years, a good age for an invertebrate.

Assorted Christmas Tree Worms (Photo By Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6262056)

When it’s time to breed, the Christmas Tree Worms release their eggs and sperm in to the ocean at the same time. Fertilised eggs soon become larvae and, if these aren’t eaten by fish they too will settle down on a coral and the whole cycle will start up again. The thought of seeing some Christmas Tree worms  is almost enough to make me think about digging out the wet suit again. Almost.

Indo-Pacific Christmas Tree Worm (Photo By (c) portioid, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA) – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/331402951, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=146094517)

Orange Christmas Tree Worm (Photo By Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6262067)

Frontispiece from the first edition of Dickens’s ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’

Dear Readers, I’ve seen three separate versions of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ this year (including the highly-recommended ‘Muppet Christmas Carol’), but in fact the author wrote several pieces for the festive season, including ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’. Alas, this piece now languishes, unread and unappreciated. Could it be that this is because the eponymous Cricket is now rarely seen, and when it is it’s usually in boiler rooms or rubbish dumps, where the heat from the decaying midden keeps it warm?

House Cricket (Acheta domesticus) Photo By Geyersberg, Professor emeritus Hans Schneider – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19915899

In the Dickens story, the cricket is described as ‘a little household god’, who watches over the family of ‘slow, lumbering, honest’ John Peerybingle and his pretty young wife Dot. Alas, John is jealous of his wife, and  has all sorts of ridiculous misgivings. In the end, the cricket transforms himself into a fairy to tell John that he is an idiot and his wife is not having an affair. I assume that Jiminy Cricket of Pinocchio fame is cut from the same cloth, what with his insanely happy personality and habit of dropping moral maxims whenever things get tough.

Crickets sang from the hearths of England for hundreds of years – as recently as 1890, W.H Hudson remarks on them shrilling from every cottage as he made his rounds above Selborne.  I suspect they were often brought in with the wood or coal or peat that was used to fuel an open fire, and once in they would ‘sing’ cheerfully away. In ‘Bugs Britannia’, by Peter Marren and Richard Mabey, it’s mentioned that you can tell the temperature by the number of chirrups that a cricket makes  – for Fahrenheit, you simply count the number of chirrups in fourteen seconds. To convert to Centrigrade, add 25, divide by 3 and add four. However, for accuracy it’s pointed out that you should have at least ten crickets and find the average number of chirrups. Good luck with that, people! And note that, wherever crickets were found singing by the hearth, it was considered very unlucky to harm them – the rumour was that the ghost of the dead cricket would inform all of their relatives, who would come and bite holes in the clothes of the cricket-murderer.

I feel a bit sad that crickets no longer pop in to keep us company on winter nights. Or do they? Is anyone still visited by crickets, or do they remember such a thing?

Dear Readers, there are very slim pickings for the insect enthusiastic in December, but if you take a walk on a cold, sunny day you might see clouds of these tiny flies. Known as winter gnats, they are a member of the fly family, and they are amongst the few species which emerge as adults in winter. When you see them flying, you are looking at a group of males who are trying to attract a female – they fly up and down, being careful not to bump into one another. But, if you watch closely, you can see that each one is defending a small three-dimensional territory, which he hopes will impress any passing females.

Winter gnat (Trichocera annulata) Photo by By Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13136524

What always interests me is the way that if you walk through a cloud of winter gnats, they disperse but then form up again as you haven’t done anything at all. They like slightly warmer spaces, so sometimes they may form a cloud above your head. It always reminds me a little of ‘Pig Pen’ in the Peanuts cartoon, who simply can’t keep himself clean. The winter gnats are after your body heat, though, rather than your odour.

These tiny flies will only live for four or five days after hatching. The females will lay their eggs on vegetation, which the larvae will feed on, before disappearing underground to emerge next year. What a brief life, when the days are short and the nights are long. The winter gnats will also provide a welcome snack for insect-eating birds, who are mightily deprived of protein at this time of year. A gathering of winter gnats is known as a ‘ghost’ according to Buglife. What a welcome sign of life they are!

A ‘ghost’ of winter gnats

Image from https://www.meisterdrucke.ie/fine-art-prints/English-School/839025/A-Victorian-Christmas-Card-of-an-Insect,-Stag-Beetle-and-Scroll-on-Which-is-a-Christmas-Message.html

Dear Readers, when the Christmas card was first invented it was quite the novelty: the first ones were sent out in 1843 (commissioned by Sir Henry Cole, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum) but they became really popular by the 1870s. These were the days when you could expect to receive 5 postal deliveries in a day: Dickens could write a letter in the morning, and get a reply by the afternoon. Almost as good as email! But the Victorians really embraced the Christmas card, and it’s nice to see that our insect friends got star billing in a way that seems rather macabre to us today. The happy stag beetle and cheery dragonfly in the card shown above date back to 1880.

Stag beetles dancing with a frog while a fly plays the tambourine? Why not? Plus there are hosts of mayflies in the background. Often frogs suffered a grisly end, but let’s hope this particular beach dance ended happily for all concerned.

From the scrapbook of Mary Cowden-Clarke – University of Leeds Library https://leedsunilibrary.wordpress.com/2021/12/15/the-changing-styles-of-christmas-cards-from-the-victorian-age-to-the-early-20th-century/

Nothing says ‘Christmas’ more than a cicada about to be eaten by a praying mantis, with a quote from Othello in the top corner.

Dung Beetle carrying a sprig of holly

Here, a dung beetle gets into the festive mood by shouldering a huge sprig of holly through a snowstorm.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1272459714706148&set=pcb.1272460281372758

And here, a poor gnome is ambushed by a giant stag beetle. It seems that the Victorians were much more familiar with stag beetles than we are, because they seem to be something of a favourite Christmas insect.

And how about these infants terrorised by a giant hornet/bee hybrid? Tis the stuff of nightmares! Happy New Year to you too!

I know a lobster isn’t an insect, but it is an invertebrate, so here’s a mouse riding a lobster…

And this one, finally, is pretty rather than macabre, with a warning to all those ‘bah humbug’ types who look askance at merry-making. I do wonder whether this particular card was ever sent to some dyspeptic uncle, or miserable Scrooge-like cousin? Or maybe to a much-chastised, boisterous niece or nephew? I fear we will never know.