Well That’s That

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Daisy (PhotoElxanQəniyev, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Readers, considering how long I’ve been banging on about retiring, the intensity of the emotion of the past few days has taken me by surprise. Although I am really ready for this next phase of my life, there is also loss, most especially of the many wonderful people that I’ve worked with. But then I remind myself that I have good friends from more or less every workplace that I’ve ever left, and that brightens me up no end.

During one of the farewells yesterday, someone reminded me of the poem below. We had an informal poetry club going on, and I shared this as one of my favourites. I was so moved when one of my colleagues showed me that she’d printed it out and sellotaped it to her wall. Isn’t sharing what’s important to us vital to friendship? And here it is. I actually think it’s Mary Oliver’s best, and it always reminds me of what, for me, it’s all about.

I, also, don’t want to be just a visitor to this world.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

Mary Oliver
When Death Comes

A Visit to Mudchute City Farm

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Dear Readers, Thursday was the day that I had my retirement celebrations at work, and what a delight it was. I worked on a City Farm in Dundee for a couple of years when I was straight out of university – it was a place of education for children, of work for the homeless people who used the adjoining day centre, and of solace for lots of people. There’s something about contact with animals, and with the soil, that is very healing, and going to Mudchute, which is on the Isle of Dogs opposite the towers of Canary Wharf felt like a way of coming full circle, from my first paid job to what is probably my last. I was very moved that the person who arranged it had gotten things so right.

Sheep at Mudchute City Farm

I know that you are not supposed to have favourites, and I loved all the animals that I worked with, from the cantankerous Anglo-Nubian goat who would butt every body out of the way when food was around to the over-sexed male lop rabbit who would attach himself to my wellington boot and hump away whenever I was trying to change his feed. But the pigs really won my heart. Intelligent and wily and full of character, I loved going to visit them. I was a very young person, and I was far away from home and sometimes very hung over in the early morning when I went to feed them. I would try to sneak into the farm without alerting them to my presence but the two sows that we had were often propped up on their stall wall, bawling their heads off as soon as they saw me.

On one occasion, the pigs managed to get through the two locks on their sty and to nudge the bolt on the main gate open. They then managed to make their way to the bus station, where they wreaked havoc with the buses and the passengers.. Eventually I managed to lure them home with a bucket full of chicken legs (their favourite food). Once back in their sty, I fixed an additional lock. They looked at me with an unimpressed expression. The next day, they were still in their sty but the door was open, as if to say ‘look, we can still get out if we choose to’.

The winters in Dundee are freezing, and there were never enough places in the night shelter for the men who wanted to stay there. On one occasion, I came in in the morning to find the two sows exiting their sty for their breakfast along with the notorious Dyke Leslie, something of a local homeless character. He modelled himself on The Outlaw Josie Wales from the Clint Eastwood films, and was once reputed to have stuffed a dead seagull through the letterbox of a girlfriend who’d jilted him. Anyhow, Dyke had apparently had a warm and peaceful night cuddled up with the pigs. What they thought of it wasn’t clear.

Anyhow, I loved seeing the pigs today. It was an emotional day and I feel completely drained, but also content. It was lovely to feel so appreciated, and to have time to tell the people that I’ve worked with how very much I appreciated them. It felt like a fitting finale. I couldn’t be more grateful.

Giant Tamworth Ginger Pig!

Can You Guess?

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Dear Readers, can you believe that in two days time I’ll be retired? And the lovely folks at work have planned an exciting lunchtime ‘do’ for me, at a most unlikely (but somehow completely appropriate) place on Thursday (or ‘today’ as it will be then this is posted.  I shall say no more, as I am up to my armpits in accruals and interim reports and overheads and all manner of other lovely things, but I shall report back soon.

And now, it’s back to the laptop. Wish me luck! If I get through the day without drowning everybody in tears I’ll be doing ok.

Wednesday Weed – Crape Myrtle

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Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)

Dear Readers, the Crape (or Crepe or Crêpe) Myrtle is originally from India, China and other areas of eastern Asia, though I think of it as being a tree that is synonymous with the southern states of the USA. I was in Washington DC a few years ago, and between the singing of the cicadas and the flowers on the Crape Myrtles it felt very sultry. All I needed was a mint julep and I’d have been in my element.

In China, the tree is known as Pai Jih Hung, which apparently means ‘100 days of red’, after the plant’s long flowering time and red flowers (the pink, mauve and white varieties are cultivars). It was also known as the ‘monkey tree’ because the bark is smooth and difficult to climb. So I suppose it should be called the ‘no monkey tree’. Or possibly the ‘monkey puzzle tree’, except that we already have one of those.

But what is this tree doing in East Finchley, parked at the end of Huntingdon Road in the County Roads and blooming away to its heart’s content? A while back I mentioned that the council was getting much more ambitious with its street trees, and Crape Myrtle was one of the trees mentioned. It really is spectacular, and most unexpected. In his book ‘London’s Street Trees’, Paul Wood mentions that in previous years the tree was considered only half-hardy in London’s winters, but as climate change kicks in, it seems to be thriving. Crape Myrtle doesn’t flower every year, so when it does it’s a real treat.

The fact that the tree doesn’t flower annually has led to some brutal pruning practices (actually known as ‘crape murder’) particularly in the US. All the outer branches are cut off in the autumn, leaving just a stump. In fact, the tree will flower whenever conditions are right and it has the resources to do so, and pruning that hard leads to soft growth, which can attract aphids and mildew, and suckering from the bottom. Be kind to your Crape Myrtle, people! It will flower when it feels like it!

Crape Myrtle is a member of the Lythraceae family, which also includes purple loosestrife of all things. Who knew? I guess they’re both pink (though bear in mind that Crape Myrtle comes in a variety of colours, including bright red.

As far as pollinators go, Crape Myrtle doesn’t have a lot of nectar but it is said to have two types of pollen – the usual stuff, which is full of protein, and ‘false’ pollen, which is generated specifically to attract pollinators. As it blooms in September/October in the UK, it could potentially be a good source of late pollen for any bees who are still active. I shall keep an eye on the one on our street to see if anyone is popping in for a bite.

What I’ve found interesting from reading some of the legends about Crape Myrtle is how, all of a sudden, it’s associated with Aphrodite. What? This is a plant originating in eastern Asia and then heading to the US without so much as a stopover in Europe. What’s happened (I think) is that people are getting confused with a European plant that is interwoven with myth called Myrtle. This is a completely different plant, associated with love and marriage and all those other pleasant things. It is not, however, a Crape Myrtle, so enough already. This is where (Pedant alert) those so-called  boring, elitist Latin names come in so handy when we are trying to identify something precisely.

Common Myrtle (Myrtus communis) Photo By LIGURIAN VASCULAR FLORA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/196946800@N04/52505075873/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=125783445

Back to Crape Myrtle. This really is an excellent tree for a small garden if you want something that has more than one season of interest (though for wildlife value I think there are better choices) – the bark of the tree is apparently very smooth (as mentioned above), and I must go and inspect the East Finchley tree to see what it looks like. The author of the photo below says that you have to actually stroke the tree to appreciate the smoothness (from the Wild in Japan blog, which is a very good read). In the photo below it looks rather like a more-refined London Plane, which is anything but smooth, as we know.

Crape myrtle bark – ‘as smooth as a baby’s bottom’ (Photo from https://wildinjapan.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/even-monkeys-fall-from-trees/)

And then there’s the autumn foliage colour, something else for me to look out for later in the year.

Crape Myrtle leaves in autumn (Photo Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Medicinally, Crape Myrtle is one of those trees that is literally meant to cure everything from diabetes to cancer. stroke to heart attack. A more reasonable assessment is given over on the Plants for a Future website, where it seems to be more use as a ‘drastic purgative’ (yikes!), as a paste for the treatment of wounds, and as a treatment for colds (if you use a decoction of the flowers). As usual, Bug Woman advises extreme caution.

And finally, here’s a poem by Evie Shockley, a black woman who grew in in the Deep South of the US. Here’s what she says about being ‘a southern poet’ –

I grew up: hearing certain accents and vocabularies and speech patterns that were the aural essence of ‘home’ or the audible signal of danger, depending; thinking that racism wasn’t much of a problem in other parts of the country; eating a cuisine that was originally developed under conditions of make-do and make-last; enjoying five- or six-month summers and getting ‘snow days’ out of school when the forecast called for nothing other than ‘possible icy conditions’; knowing that my region was considered laughable almost everywhere else; assuming there was nothing unusual about finding churches on two out of every four corners; and believing that any six or seven people with vocal chords could produce four-part harmony at the drop of a dime—and that all of this informs my poetry, sometimes directly and sometimes in ways that might be unpredictable or illegible.”

I love this, and I love this poem. See what you think.

where you are planted

he’s as high as a georgia pine, my father’d say, half laughing. southern trees
as measure, metaphor. highways lined with kudzu-covered southern trees.
fuchsia, lavender, white, light pink, purple : crape myrtle bouquets burst
open on sturdy branches of skin-smooth bark : my favorite southern trees.
one hundred degrees in the shade : we settle into still pools of humidity, moss-
dark, beneath live oaks. southern heat makes us grateful for southern trees.
the maples in our front yard flew in spring on helicopter wings. in fall, we
splashed in colored leaves, but never sought sap from these southern trees.
frankly, my dear, that’s a magnolia, i tell her, fingering the deep green, nearly
plastic leaves, amazed how little a northern girl knows about southern trees.
i’ve never forgotten the charred bitter fruit of holiday’s poplars, nor will i :
it’s part of what makes me evie :  i grew up in the shadow of southern trees.

New Scientist – Insects at Play

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Tilman Triphan and Wolf Huetteroth via New Scientist

Dear Readers, if I told you that the image above showed a fruit fly voluntarily riding a carousel, I’m sure you’d be surprised.

“Surely, Bug Woman”, I hear you say, “While fruit flies have been extremely useful in genetic studies, surely they barely have two synapses to rub together, so why are they playing?”

And indeed it is a puzzle, but then we are learning that insects and other invertebrates have far more complex lives and emotions than we ever thought. Last year, researchers found that bumblebees left with a wooden ball would roll it about just for the hell of it, without any reward other than the joy of manipulation. Interestingly, young bumblebees ‘played’ more than adults, and male bees (presumably with more time on their appendages) played more than females (who have many, many hungry mouths to feed).

But a fruit fly? Tilman Triphan and Wulf Huetteroth of the University of Leipzig built little arenas for the fruit flies, with food and a carousel, and then popped one fly into each compartment for a few days. In some compartments, the carousel moved, and in others it was stationery. Flies with a spinning carousel would spend up to 5 minutes at a time on it, and would visit it several times during the course of their ‘stay’.

“We were all astonished,” says Huetteroth. “My expectation was that the flies would completely avoid it and wouldn’t like it at all.”

Drosophila melangaster – the fruit fly (Photo By Sanjay Acharya – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63862733)

However, as with the bees, not all the individual flies liked the carousel – some did avoid it altogether, which brings in another point: even at the level of a fly, there are different ‘personalities’. Some flies like a bit of vertigo-inducing activity, others would rather not. It’s a bit like me standing back whenever I’m at a fairground and someone suggests the Waltzer.

To be considered play-like behaviour, an activity must have no immediate relevance for survival, and it must be voluntary and intentional. The flies (and the bumblebees) seem to be engaging in an activity just for the hell of it. It makes me wonder what other similarities between ourselves and other animals are out there, if we just chose to look.

You can read the whole paper here. The bumblebee paper is here.

 

 

A Close Shave?

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Dear Readers, as you might remember I was in Coldfall Wood yesterday for our spider walk, and a lot of fun it was too. Well, between midday on Saturday and first thing this morning, one of the dead standing trees alongside the boardwalk has toppled over and smashed part of the bridge.

For once, it’s very unlikely that this was caused by vandalism – it’s too far from the boardwalk for someone to pull, and it’s completely surrounded by stinging nettles so it’s unlikely that someone would have waded through them to give it a push. Standing deadwood is normally pretty stable, so what could have caused the problem? I have a  theory, so here goes.

First up, the area here in Coldfall is a habitat known as wet woodland, which is extremely rare, especially in urban areas. Water runs down into the area from a variety of culverted streams, and also seeps in from the higher ground that surrounds it. In the winter the area has, in the past, been flooded to a depth higher than the handrails, and the photos below give an idea of what it’s often like in a normal and exceptionally wet winter.

A normal winter

An exceptional winter (Photo courtesy of Neville Young from 2020)

However. In recent years, there have been some attempts to improve drainage – for one thing, one of the pipes that took excess water away was forever getting blocked, so the water backed up. This was then cleared.  But I am now a little concerned that the ‘wetlands’ is getting too dry – where there used to be water mint and water bistort, there’s now a sea of stinging nettles. Clearly, you can have too much of a good thing  where drainage is concerned, because the last thing  we need is for the wet woodland area to dry up altogether.

Naturally, the amount of water in the wet woodland is to a certain extent weather-dependent (and it has been a pretty dry summer), but I have never seen it this dry in late summer.

Water mint and water plantain in the wet woodland from 2014

Water Plantain, amphibious bistort and bulrushes from 2020

Now, of course a dead tree can topple over at any old time. However, I suspect that the  the weather (hotter than usual for this time of year) and the dryness (as evidenced by the changing vegetation) are contributing and helping to destabilise the soil.  We really do need to sort out the drainage issue here, before we lose this precious and unusual habitat for good.

You can read a bit more about the different kinds of wet woodland, and its value to wildlife, here.

A Spider Walk in Coldfall Wood

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The Bird Dropping Spider (Cyclosa conica) (Photo Lucarelli, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Readers, I don’t know what you were doing yesterday (the hottest day of the year so far here in London) but I and a group of intrepid spider spotters of all ages were out in Coldfall Wood looking  for spiders with expert arachnologist Edward Milner. The number of species of spiders recorded in Coldfall Wood is 141 at present (with 2 new species found today), so it just goes to show how complex the web of life in woodlands can be.

First up is the Bird Dropping Spider (Cyclosa conica), which has an absolutely distinctive abdomen. It is a tiny spider, so it was helpful to have Edward’s hand lens to see the fine detail. As is often the case with small invertebrates, it’s the detail that’s so exciting – the white patterning on the spider, plus its habit of sitting in the middle of its orb web with its legs tucked in, makes it look like a bird dropping or a piece of discarded food. It was a new one for me, and I suspect for the rest of the group (photograph above)

Next up is a buzzing spider and a new species for the wood, Anyphaena numida. During the breeding season, the male taps a leaf, producing an audible buzzing sound. We already had a record for a different species of buzzing spider (Anyphaena accentuata) but this one is being seen regularly in the London area now, having made the jump from mainland Europe. It will be interesting to see if it becomes more common than the established species. Note the ‘boxing glove’ structures at the front of the spider – these are pedipalps, which the male spider uses to transfer sperm into the female. Truly the sex life of spiders is a complicated thing!

Buzzing spider (Anyphaena numida). Photo by Esmond Brown, from https://srs.britishspiders.org.uk/portal.php/p/Picture/r/view/s/Anyphaena+numida+male

Then there was a mesh/blue web spider, Dictyna uncinata. This is another tiny spider that makes its small, intricate, fleecy web in vegetation or amongst leaf litter on the ground. Under the hand lens you can see the pattern of white hairs against a brown background.

Dictyna uncinata

But not all the spiders were tiny. We managed to see one of my favourite spiders, the black lace-weaver (Amaurobius ferox).

Black lace-weaver spider (Amaurobius ferox) Photo by By AJC ajcann.wordpress.com from UK – Black Lace Weaver, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47555887

Although not very big, this is a magnificent spider. The one that we saw looked almost jet black. The web, when new, has a lace-like appearance and a blue tinge. This is a spider that practices matriphagy – in other words, the spiderlings will cannibalise their mother after hatching.

Black Lace Weaver on her web (Photo by Tone Killick at https://www.flickr.com/photos/77794733@N05/33912440752/in/dateposted/)

Then there was this spider, apparently known as the ‘Silver Stretch Spider’, at least in North America, and as one of the long-jawed orb weavers over here. It has a distinctive long thin abdomen, and long legs. On the web, the spider forms the shape of a stick, which makes it difficult to see. Over 60% of its diet in one study was mosquitoes, with an average of 3.7 mosquitoes consumed every day through the summer season.

Male Tetragnatha montana in defensive pose (Photo by Gail Hampshire via https://www.flickr.com/photos/gails_pictures/6056350532)

And finally, I can’t leave the description of our walk without a quick chat about another orb-web spider, Metellina segmentata. This smallish spider has the most exciting love-life. The male is attracted to the female by a pheromone that permeates her web, but once he’s arrived, he has to be careful – males have been seen to wait for in a corner of the web for up to a month before approaching the female. What’s going on? The male is waiting for the female to have caught a large fly so that she won’t be hungry when he approaches. In a twist worthy of Machiavelli, if another male is also waiting for the female one male may kill the other, truss him up and leave him as a ‘gift’ for the female to feed on. Once the female at least seems to be full up with food, the male will approach and try his luck. During all this time, he hasn’t been able to eat at all. It’s pretty clear that being a male spider is not a walk in the park.

Metellina segmentata (Photo by A.J. Cann at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajc1/44571985721)

So, all in all it was a great walk, with many other spiders and invertebrates found, lots of questions asked and most of them  answered. There was a general lessening of fear in people who were nervous about spiders, and hopefully a greater understanding of their variety and the diversity of the ways that they live. Plus, it was wonderful to watch the enthusiasm of the children for the spiders and for all the little creatures living in the leaf litter and the dead wood and the plant life. It’s so important to kindle that flame of interest in the young, and then to nurture it. We need all the entomologists that we can get.

Nature’s Calendar – Arachnids Assemble!

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Dear Readers, I have just received my copy of ‘Nature’s Calendar’ by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. I was intrigued because instead of the usual monthly or weekly format, the book divides the year into 72 seasons, based on a traditional Japanese calendar. What the authors did was to ask people to post on social media about their observations of the natural world every four or five days. A list of four would then be presented, and people would vote on which one resonated most for them. The authors recognised that there would be differences in when things happened, both according to where you live and what the year is like, especially in a time of such climate turmoil, but sometimes it’s as interesting to see what isn’t happening as what is.

Each section of four or five days has a name – for the period 8th to 12th September it’s ‘Arachnids Assemble’. I am thinking that I might use the book for inspiration to see what’s happening around me, and  to share anything that I’ve observed. Let’s see how we go!

‘Arachnids Assemble’ is absolutely right for my garden at the moment. Every time I go through the back garden  I am limbo dancing under spider’s webs, and the cellar spiders are looking lean and hungry in the shed.

Cellar spider (Pholcus phalangoides)

If you’ve ever disturbed a cellar spider, you might be surprised to see it suddenly vibrating up and down at high speed. There is a very interesting film showing a variety of cellar spider behaviours, including vibrating, here (though note that it is very spooky trip down into some very dank places). There are various theories about why they vibrate: most likely the movement confuses predators, especially in the caves where the spiders originally lived. In the film you can see how the spider basically becomes a blur, so it must be very difficult for a cave-dwelling bird or another invertebrate predator to ‘lock on’ to the target.

Interestingly,  although I already knew that these wispy, ghost-like spiders are able to kill other kinds of spiders that are much beefier than they are,  I had no idea how until I read the chapter in the book. It appears that the cellar spiders find their prey (usually another ‘indoor’ spider like a house spider) and then do their vibration-dance next to the spider’s web in a way that imitates a trapped fly. The house spider rushes out and the cellar spider immobilises it by ‘throwing’ silk at it, until it is so entangled that it is no longer a threat to the cellar spider. Then, the cellar spider is safe to inject its venom into its much larger prey, and to consume it at leisure.

Cellar spider with ‘larder’

Incidentally, in North America you might know this gangly creature as a ‘daddy long legs’. In the UK this would mean a cranefly. Clearly we are two nations divided by a common language, but fortunately we have Latin names to help us out. If the cellar spider (Pholcus phalangoides) could fly I think we’d all have problems.

Cranefly sp.

Even more incidentally, I wonder why nature didn’t evolve a flying spider? Flight has evolved several times in the insect kingdom, but I’m not sure if any of the other invertebrate groups ever took to the wing. Any theories, please share!

And in the meantime, I do highly recommend ‘Nature’s Calendar‘. It’s taught me lots of new things, and I’ve only read 1/72th of it.

 

The Asian Hornet

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Asian Hornet (Vespa volutina) Photo By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52006827

Dear Readers, it’s difficult to avoid the tales of Asian hornets that are filling our newspapers at the moment, and there is rather a lot of confusion around, so here I am to try to clear things up.

First up, what’s the story? Asian hornets originate in Asia, as the name suggests, where honeybees are also native (they aren’t native to the UK). The Asian hornet specialises in hunting and killing not only honeybees but also a variety of  solitary bees and lesser-known colonial bees. In Asia, the honeybees are largely of the Eastern Honeybee species, and these have developed a variety of means of combating the Asian hornet, including  entering and leaving the hive at high speed, clustering over a hornet so that it overheats and dies, or using a particular kind of ‘wing shimmering’ that confuses the bees. When the Asian hornets arrived in Europe, however, the honeybees (largely of the Western honeybee species) have no such defences, and so are uniquely vulnerable to predation, as are our many native bee species.

The Asian hornets arrived in France in 2004, probably after being accidentally transported with cargo. Europe has banned the import of soil in pot plants from the UK because it’s a way of transporting a variety of invasive species, including the Asian hornet, but we have not reciprocated. The insect could also be arriving under its own steam, or by hitching a ride on ferries etc. Climate change will also make the conditions in the UK more comfortable for the insect.

The first Asian hornet arrived in 2016, but this year has seen a large increase  in the number of sightings. In 2021 and 2022 there were only two confirmed sightings, but this year there have been 22 sightings so far. Worse, these are not just individual insects, but nests, and there is a cluster in Kent, with four nests destroyed in the past week. There have also been confirmed sightings in Eastbourne, Weymouth and Southampton, plus a sighting in Thamesmead on 21st August where a nest was destroyed (altogether too close to home!). You can find the map of Asian hornet incursions here, and very interesting it is too.  Both Matt Shardlow of Buglife and Dave Goulson, bee expert extraordinaire, think that there is a real danger of the insect becoming established in the UK. With all the other threats to our native bees (pesticides, habitat loss, climate change) they can really do without another one.

However! It is really, really important to know what an Asian hornet looks like and what to do if you see one. The last thing we need is for our native hornet, hornet mimic-hoverflies and other insects to be demonised and swatted in an Asian hornet panic. Our native hornets eat a whole variety of large insects, from beetles to wasps to flies, and so are an asset rather than something to dread.

Also please note that the Asian hornet that we have in the UK is not the Giant Asian hornet (the ‘Murder Hornet’ beloved of the press). That is a completely different species. The Asian hornet that we have in the UK is actually smaller than our native European hornet, and its sting is no worse than that of a native bee or wasp.

There is an excellent definitive ID sheet to download here

However, here are the key points: the photo below shows an Asian hornet. Note that the abdomen is largely black, except for the orange segment towards the base. The hornet also has yellow legs (hence an alternative name of ‘yellow-legged hornet’).The British Beekeepers Association sum ID up in three easy to remember steps:

  • Is it mainly black?
  • Does it have a wide orange stripe on the fourth segment of the abdomen?
  • Do its legs look as if they’ve been dipped in yellow paint?

Photo from the National Non-Native Species directive ID sheet linked above.

So, the Asian hornet is actually very different from our native hornet (Vespula crabro). In flight this creature sounds like a Vulcan bomber, but gives much more of an orangey-brown impression than the Asian hornet which looks distinctly black. When the insect has settled, the differences are very clear. Note that the insect is much more wasp-like, with a yellow striped abdomen and that it has brown legs.

Photo from the National Non-Native Species directive ID sheet linked above.

Another confusion that could arise is with a magnificent insect called the Giant Wood Wasp. This completely inoffensive creature has an ovipositor at the back which is often mistaken for a sting. She is also unfortunate enough to have yellow legs, and the base of her abdomen is yellow. Fortunately this magnificent creature is largely confined to coniferous forests, so hopefully she won’t be too hounded.

Giant Wood Wasp (Urocerus gigas).Photo from the National Non-Native Species directive ID sheet linked above.

And, incidentally, here is a creature that is often mistaken for a European hornet, but is actually a hoverfly, another visitor from overseas who is making itself at home in the UK now that it’s getting warmer, with no unfortunate consequences at all. The Hornet-Mimic Hoverfly (Volucella zonaria) is a frequent flyer in my garden. What a magnificent insect it is! But a close look at those compound eyes will tell you that this is a fly, not a hornet.

Hornet-mimic Hoverfly (Volucella zonaria) Photo Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

So, finally, what to do if you think you’ve seen an Asian hornet? You can report it via the Asian Hornet app (available for iPhone or Android). You can report it online here. Or you can email at this address: alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk <alertnonnative@ceh.ac.uk>

If possible include a photo of the insect (dead or alive), and the exact location where it was seen. A group of organisations plus the government are coordinating to detect nests and destroy them to prevent the Asian hornet from becoming established.

You’ll know that I am generally relaxed about non-native species (and I have many, many posts on ring-necked parakeets and grey squirrels to prove it). But the Asian hornet really does seem to be a danger to our native bee species and to honeybees, already challenged by everything from varroa mite to climate change. Let’s be vigilant, informed and sensible.

 

New Life

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Dear Readers, I peered out from my office window yesterday to see this young crow sitting on a gutter and trying to work out if there was anything tasty to eat. What a little sweetheart! I love the way that that beak looks too big for the bird’s head, and that the head and body are still fluffy while the wings have nice sleek feathers.

Crows breed every year in a large tree somewhere in the County Roads here in East Finchley, and this year magpies bred in my whitebeam tree. Crows and magpies are not best friends, although the magpies usually seem to come off best, and the noise of their conflict can be quite alarming. Still, everyone  seems to have reared babies to at least this stage, and while the parents of this fledgling are still around, it seems to be quite self-sufficient. Young crows often stay close to their parents for up to 3 years and may help to provision and take care of next year’s chicks. In some cases, they will even return when they’re older than that to help out if they aren’t breeding themselves.

Cooperative breeding is an interesting phenomenon, seen in 40% of crow species but only 9% of bird species overall. I suspect it’s something to do with food availability – crows are big birds that need a lot of food, especially when growing up, so the more eyes there are to spot opportunities and to find novel food sources, the better. We know how intelligent and adaptable crows are, so when they’re working together they’re pretty much unstoppable. So it seems that although this young crow now looks independent, s/he’ll be hanging out with her family for several years to come, and will in turn benefit when s/he  reaches breeding age.

I am very fond of crows. They are so curious and intelligent, and they repay careful observation with a whole range of interesting behaviours. They’re certainly something that reminds me that while I’m huddled over my computer there’s a whole other world out there.