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Swiss Alps: mountain woodland flowers at Pfinstegg, Grindelwald🚡

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

Continuing my series of posts about the landscape of the Jungfrau mountains in Switzerland, here is a look at some of the woodland plants seen above Grindelwald.

Just to say: picking or trampling on wildflowers is not advised, and may be illegal in some locations. The meadows shown here form part of people’s livelihoods as well as being sensitive habitats. Woodlands are extremely sensitive to our footsteps so stick to designated paths where you can. Check the regulations around foraging before you go and show respect for people and wild plants, animals and fungi when you visit. There’s a lot of livestock around, usually behind fences, but they’re so noisy you can’t miss them.

The photos here are a mix of mirrorless camera and phone. The plants photos are mainly taken with my Pixel 7a, the landscape photos with my Olympus EM1 Mark III. All have been lightly processed.

The walk

The walk was a fairly short one in length, mainly due to the altitude and general tiredness from travelling. It would be a good one if you’re visiting from Interlaken on a day when it’s not worth going higher or it’s too early in the season.

The walk is about 2.5 miles and can be done more quickly if you’re not taking photos of plants!

All the high trails, including the Eiger Trail, were closed when we visited. Climate change may be making rockfall more common and therefore the higher trails are more dangerous.

It’s possible you can do this walk and see absolutely no one, but for a farmer or two, after you pass the toboggan run.

We took the Pfinstegg cable car up to the Berghaus restaurant, had some chips, and walked down to the village, past the toboggan run.

What you can’t hear is the sound of middle-class Americans talking about their Adriatic travel plans.

One image I wanted to share was this exhibition of alpine heritage. Here you can see the array of bells used in the Jungfrau for cattle management. The sound of the cowbells is one of the signifiers that you are in the Swiss Alps. Of course the same can be said for many mountain regions, but each one has its cultural differences. That’s a different blog entirely!

Alpine flowers (1300m)

One of the more common sightings in the alpine zone was alpine butterwort, (Pinguicula alpina).

Another common one was shrubby milkwort (Polygaloides chamaebuxus).

A regular of this habitat was leafless stemmed globularia (Globularia nudicaulis). They look like little lilac mops.

At this point the views of Grindelwald began to be swallowed by the spring woodlands.

In the woods

As you can imagine, the water was crashing down as the snow melted. A lot of work is going into observing the changes in the glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which is happening at an alarming rate here.

You can get views of the Lower Grindelwald Glacier from this walk (though this was taken lower down). This glacier shrunk by over a mile between 1973 and 2015.

I love a new violet species that’s easier to identify than ours at home. This is twoflower violet (Viola biflora) and was only seen in the woods at the edge of lanes.

It’s always nice to find globeflower (Trollius europaeus), a species of buttercup.

This was a new species for me – may lily (Maianthemum bifolum). It looks more similar to something like black bryony or bindweed to the untrained eye (this one).

This cranefly was resting on the leaves of yellow archangel, a woodland plant we seem to be losing in the UK.

It’s always a joy to encounter herb paris (Paris quadrifolia). I think the columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) seen here is probably a garden escape, though it is an ancient woodland plant as well, so I may be wrong. I hope it’s the wild one!

There was more herb paris, but only in the woods.

There were a couple of valerians. This one is three-leaved valerian (Valeriana tripteris). It was growing in wet areas.

I also saw marsh valerian (Valeriana dioica).

Now, there weren’t a lot of orchids out at the time as it was probably too early in the season. But this is bird-nest orchid (Neottia nidus-avis), which I’ve only really seen in the chalky woods of the North Downs in England.

This is fly honeysuckle (Lonicera xylosteum), a strangely shrubby honeysuckle compared with the climber we have in the UK. It’s been introduced to Britain but I’ve never bumped into it.

Hillside meadows

Let’s just take in the views of the Wetterhorn for a bit…

I’d like to be out walking in World Heritage landscapes every week, but alas, it will just have to be once or twice in life.

Looking south-west towards the Eiger.

Mountain sainfoin (Onobrychis montana) was one of the most eye-catching plants, growing at the edges of the lane if I remember rightly.

The spring really glows in this image, despite the misty conditions. The sycamores are coming into leaf.

This is a view down the valley where the train returns to Interlaken.

This is something I’d never seen before – a totemic welcome for Aaron who was born on 4th May 2024. Perhaps this is a tradition in this part of Switzerland?

The views across towards Grindelwald First come into view as space opens up on the woods. You can see all of the chalets that dot the meadows.

I was intrigued by these rustic chalets that were more indicative of a rural way of life, compared with the guesthouses in the valley. It looked lived-in or at least used by people who made use of wood products. What a lovely place to be able to escape to in the summer. Of course communities would have developed from these single dwellings across the Alps.

This image looks north towards the other side of the valley. The yellow hue in the meadows is either kidney vetch or birds-foot trefoil.

The lovely spiralling shell of a snail roosting in a tree.

These umbellifer-rich meadows were a joy to behold.

The lower we got (c.1000m) the more abundant yellow rattle become. This is probably Rhianthus serotinus.

This is the Black Lütschine, one of the rivers that flows into Lake Brienz. It was very powerful. Its source is the Lower Grindelward Glacier, pictured earlier in this post.

The meadows around people’s houses – this looks like an orchard – were in fine condition.

Thanks for reading.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of our landscapes. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

Autumn 2024: the Ghost Road

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

Welcome to my seasonal ‘brain dump’ of stuff. Now that I basically only use WordPress for anything that remotely resembles social media, there’s more to say.

I feel like I’m falling behind with writing and photography, mainly because of my job being so full on and having to work weekends of late, sometimes 6 day weeks. It can’t last.

While writing a book is not high on my list of things to do, I have a book there to be written about my time working at Sydenham Hill Wood and all I learned about woods during that time. I don’t know if it will ever come to pass though, it’s very hard to make space for that kind of writing when I work full time and have life to do.

Fungi Friday keeps flowin’

I’ve been quiet on here but the mushrooms are flowing every Friday on my dedicated fungi blog. You can now subscribe to posts on there via email if you want to.

The autumn of 2024 was one of the worst mushroom seasons I have known, having been keeping an eye on such things since 2011.

Fly agaric in Hemsted Forest

Why has it been so bad? I don’t know. But a lot of my normal sightings haven’t happened this year in places where they usually appear. The rain in recent months (so much rain) made me think that this would be a good autumn. It’s below freezing now and the leaves are down, so the season has passed. Next year we go again, as the footballers say.

Then again, my website has had an exceptional mushroom season, with October having double the traffic of some previous years entirely. It has got to the point that the Forestry Commission contacted me asking for me to edit blogs and add in information about their byelaws. I was happy to do that, having worked in woodland management in the past, and specifically in partnership with them on occasion. It doesn’t half feel odd when you get an email like that, though.

New photo galleries added

I’ve been updating some of the pages on my website and added two new gallery sections. I’ve now got a page for my oak timber-framed buildings and church photographs.

Churches

I’m not an expert on either subject and am not promoting any religion or building style, but these images need a home and are probably of interest in research terms to someone.

Oak timbers

Check them out above. These pages will be updated as I find the time to organise the images properly.

Swiss Alps blogs

I’ve been working behind the scenes on more of my Swiss Alps blogs after visiting in May, with another two to come. I don’t know all the species I’m posting about so I need to identify them, which means it takes longer.

Swiss Alps: Grindelwald’s magnificent meadows 🦗

I think about those landscapes everyday and pine for a return.

Fishbourne Roman Palace

In October I visited Fishbourne Roman Palace in Chichester for the first time since childhood. Living in West Sussex and having worked across the county, you learn that Roman heritage is everywhere. It even forms the basis for some major roads like parts of the A29 or Stane Street.

This visit may have instigated an interest in Roman history, something I find to be very broad and difficult to find a way into. Mary Beard’s books and TV series have been a good step forward. Please let me know of any interesting Roman stuff in the comments.

My great-grandfather in his First World War military attire

Understanding the First World War

This year I’ve read six Pat Barker novels, all of which cover the stories of people living through and around the First World War (1914-18). I also realised that it has been 20 years since I sat my A-levels studying Barker’s novel Regeneration, among others. Last week I finished The Ghost Road, the finale of the Regeneration trilogy. It won the booker prize in 1995, and I can understand why. How lucky my generation was to grow up in a time of peace.

Remembrance Sunday has just passed here, but beyond the poppies it can be hard to see the real stories of the people whose lives were destroyed by the war. Poppies are everywhere, on everything, and I think this long article covers a lot of the issues arising from that.

My great-grandfather Wilfred served in that terrible war (pictured above) and I wonder how he, or my other paternal great-grandfather ever survived. My dad said that his grandfathers either didn’t say anything much at all, or they didn’t talk about the war. My aunt tells me that Wilfred was buried alive during some shelling and dug out by Canadian soldiers. I believe he was a runner in the trenches.

Lest we forget that several terrible wars rage today. If only they could end and their architects face justice for their crimes. History tells us that eventually that can, and often does, happen.

And finally, new music

One of my favourite artists of the last 20 years is Sufjan Stevens. I was introduced to him by my Scouse friends Kev and Graeme at university in Liverpool. Stevens has recently released Javelin, and it’s very good. A mix of his famous hushed acoustic tracks and his more eclectic electronic styles. He lost his partner and a lot of the grief has likely found its way into the record. You can listen to the full album above.

On Friday the legendary Joshua Tillman AKA Father John Misty released his latest album Mahashmashana. I’m waiting for the CD to arrive in the post! What I have heard, I love.

That’s it for now. Hoping you’ve had a good autumn, however many mushrooms managed to pop up near you.

Thanks for reading.

Swiss Alps: alpine wildflowers on Männlichen 🇨🇭

Daniel Greenwood10 Comments

The Jungfrau, Switzerland, May 2024

Carrying on from the magnificent meadows of Grindelwald post, this post covers some of the alpine plants my wife and I saw on our honeymoon hike around Männlichen in May 2024.

The view from Männlichen

It was rather wintry atop the peaks of the Jungfrau with snow still covering grasslands above the treeline.

The Jungfrau peaks left to right: the Eiger, Jungfrau and Mönch

The Peaks of the Jungfrau

Männlichen is accessible via gondola from the Grindelwald Terminal station. The Grindelwald stations can be confusing so do look into it to ensure you don’t get off at the wrong station, wherever you’re going.

View into the Lauterbrunnen Valley from Männlichen

When you reach the gondola station you alight at 2220m. Here you get fantastic views of the major peaks of the Jungfrau – Eiger (Ogre, 3970m), Jungfrau (Young Girl, 4105m), and Mönch (Monk, 4107m).

As it was still snowy and we were only kitted out for ice-free hillwalking, we walked down to the middle gondola station on the road.

Along the way we saw a lot of nice wildflowers, most of which we hadn’t seen before.

Wildflowers near Männlichen (2200-1800m)

The most dominant flower was a species of crocus that was appearing from under the snow.

This shows that rather nicely.

White crocus (Crocus vernus), and a purple variety:

Meadow saffron always come to mind.

A nice surprise was this spring pasqueflower (Pulsatilla vernalis) close to the top where the first rocks were appearing from the snow.

They are rather hairy.

Pasqueflower is found on chalk and limestone grassland in England, though I’ve never seen it. The Cotswolds is a stronghold.

It’s almost as hairy as a bat, or a tarantula.

Appearing from the snow was another new plant for me – rusty-leaved alpenrose (Rhododendron ferrugineum).

I’ve never seen any species of rhododendron in their natural habitat. I’m used to seeing the ornamental versions either in gardens or when they escape and cause harm in other habitats.

Snowbell (Soldanella alpina) is a plant I’ve seen in the Bavarian Alps but I’m not there often, so this is a nice thing to see.

The flowers are very ornate, though most flowers are! They look like paper lampshades.

Purple mountain saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia), not well represented in these pics, and probably quite early in its growth.

This is probably mountain everlasting (Antennaria dioica).

Now this has a great name – sweetflower rockjasmine (Androsace chamaejasme). Sounds like a James Taylor song.

One of the joys of the Alps for us was seeing the range of gentians. They are a stunning blue colour, the kind of vibrancy that only wildlife can muster naturally. This is probably trumpet gentian (Gentiana acaulis).

Birds-eye primrose is a species I’ve only ever seen in the Yorkshire Dales before, near Malham Tarn. The slopes down from Männlichen did have a moorland feel to them, like the Dales does.

Colts foot is one of the first spring flowers and these were very high up. Hardy daisies indeed.

Bright little lion’s manes, though not purely alpine in their habitat preferences.

This is probably cow berry (Vaccinium vitis-idae), a relative of bilberry.

I’m fairly sure this is bilberry.

Oxlips are no longer common in England, and I can only ever remember seeing them in Germany or Czechia in spring.

I think these may be oxlips, but their abundance has thrown me. This was near to the middle gondola station on the way down.

Jostling for prominence.

Nearby to them was this lovely plant, yellow star of Bethlehem. If only peace could come to that part of the world today.

Next I’ll be covering more woodland finds around Grindelwald, and later in the mountains around Lake Brienz. Then it will be what everyone seems to navigate to this website for – sycamore content.

Thanks for reading.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of our landscapes. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

Swiss Alps: Grindelwald’s magnificent meadows 🦗

Swiss Alps: Grindelwald’s magnificent meadows 🦗

Daniel Greenwood8 Comments

In May 2024 my wife and I went on our interrail honeymoon to the Jungfrau region of the Swiss Alps. I am finally ready to post my photos from the trip, starting with some macro photos. I’ve popped in some short videos here to give a bit more texture and sound to bring things to life.

My cat whispering wife

It was an incredible trip, all done by rail there and back. The nostalgia is already with me.

In addition, I’m aiming to post about the spring alpine flowers and the amazing sycamore wood pasture. Hopefully one each week. I posted about the smattering of fungi back in May on Fungi Friday.

On the trip I took only one lens with me, one capable of pretty much any photography between 12-45mm (equivalent to 24-90mm in full frame cameras). That includes excellent close up capabilities. I also had a pocket compact camera and my phone.

The meadows were in full bloom, days from being cut for hay to feed the alpine cattle through the winter months.

Breathtaking alpine meadows

Oxeye daisies with the Wetterhorn (I think) in the background. This pic is taken with my Olympus TG-6 compact.

It was nice to see the variations in the grassland species in the different locations. At about 1200m up these meadows were packed with umbellifers. They make up the wash of white here. This meadow must have been impacted by the snowmelt as it nourishes the foothills in spring.

The typical mix around Grindelwald was one of red clover, scabious, oxeye daisy and hawkbits.

The Eiger looms over chalet homes and rich hay meadows. You can see the allure of Switzerland. High living standards and abundant nature.

It is a breathtaking place, as this beautiful phone pic suggests (as in the phone’s capabilities!). This meadow was one that lacked the diversity of others, with the dandelions being evidence of nutrient enrichment, which encourages more vigorous plants at the expense of others. The most diverse meadows will have lower levels of nutrients in the soil.

The Grindelwald meadows were at a height of around 1000m. They were peaking and very loud at times. Just listen to this:

It was a chorus of crickets, not something that we get in England much anymore. The management of these meadows follows a largely medieval practice of haymaking, though it is now mechanised:

This is probably a family cutting and collecting the hay. This photo was taken from a cable car heading up to Männlichen.

Now onto the invertebrates that lived in the meadows.

Bush crickets

The sound in the meadows was made by the European field cricket, a species that has received support via conservation projects close to me in West Sussex. According to the iNaturalist page it’s flightless, so when it becomes locally extinct it struggles to repopulate lost ground. In the UK it has suffered from the decline in heathland, its favoured habitat. The cricket above was travelling across a lane to reach another meadow. There were a number of them squashed by vehicles. It’s unavoidable.

Moths and butterflies

During a walk in the valley woods at the foot of the mountain this green-veined white butterfly (I think) was on the wing. The main butterfly we saw was the swallowtail, but they were too fast, restless and far away for my lens to reach.

In stark contrast, this latticed heath moth alighted on my actual lens before being coaxed onto my trousers:

This is a species we also have in southern England.

Wasps and sawflies

One insect you don’t see in the UK, as far as I know, is the European paper wasp.

They have a lovely orange hue to their antennae, feet and wings. I’ve seen them before in Czechia making nests in residential post boxes. Here you can see one gathering wood shavings for nest building.

Meadow cranesbill was another common flower in the – you guessed it – meadows. I noticed that one area we passed when returning to our accommodation had a number of cranesbills that held sawflies in their flowerheads. The iNaturalist sawfly oracles have decided this is Tenthredo koehleri.

Beetles

Beetles are not my strong point, unless they are from Liverpool. This is a species of click beetle from what I know, visiting an oxeye daisy flower.

Spiders

Now, I did mention those beardy daisies the hawkbits, earlier. I’m not up on my ID with these plants, but I did spot a crab spider which had joined in their colouring and caught a honeybee (I think) in one of the flowerheads. This was a statk example of how they can change their complexion to camouflage themselves in certain plants.

That’s all I really managed in the macro photos stakes. There’s much more to come from the Swiss Alps though.

Thanks for reading.

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of our landscapes. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

You can find my fungi blogs on Fungi Friday.

The magic birch tree

Daniel Greenwood3 Comments

High Weald, West Sussex, August 2024

I had some hours to take one Friday afternoon in August and so headed to my local heathy woodland to seek out some summer fungi.

I found zero mushrooms, but did learn that summer wasn’t quite over.

In a clearing created a few years ago by the removal of non-native conifers, a heathland has flourished. Sussex, like other southern counties, once had far more heathland before it was either built on or converted to coniferous forestry (like this particular site).

This little patch of restored heathland was zinging with insect life, not least on a fallen birch tree.

Enter: the magic birch tree. Or at least sunbathe on it.

I revered it in such a way because it was providing roosting space for one of my favourite subjects – robberflies!

I’ve blogged recently about robberflies’ love of wooden fenceposts and handrails. I suppose a suspended birch trunk is just that. Nature’s handrail.

I managed to get my best ever photos of robberflies here, thanks to the capabilities of my camera, and a little bit of that famous fencepost knowledge.

Robberflies are predators of other flies, but also wasps. The photo above was taken using an in-built function of the camera to stack about 15 photos together to create a seamlessly in-focus image. It worked to great effect here.

Less dramatic was this flesh-fly, one that is actually quite smart in their black and white get-up with red compound eyes.

On the toe of my shoe a hoverfly that looked like a scuba diver was resting.

There was plenty of evidence of burrowing insects in the form of these pilot holes.

I didn’t get to see who lived here. Probably solitary wasps or bees.

What this blog can never express is the sheer number of grasshoppers. Every footsteps sent insects like the one above flying for the safety of a grassy tussock.

The birches were showing signs of autumn and its inexorable approach.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

Camped out on a dragonfly

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

In August I was camping in West Sussex. On the final morning I opened the tent door and nearly stepped on a dragonfly that was resting in the grass outside.

It had been a cloudy night and the ground was very dry compared with the previously dew-laden start.

The dragonfly is probably a migrant hawker (Aeshna mixta) and is known to breed in SE England. As its name suggests it can also migrate to England from southern Europe.

It’s a dream to find a dragonfly in such a restful state, although the insect is vulnerable. It was in the right place however, especially if it wanted its portrait done.

It was an excellent opportunity to look at the wings of the dragonfly close up. They are renowned for their beauty and likeness to stained glass.

By looking at the wings I noticed that a planthopper bug had leapt aboard the dragonfly.

Here’s a closer view. I’m not sure of the species but it’s one I don’t remember seeing before.

A day earlier we had walked along the River Adur, famous for its connection at Knepp Wildland. It was good to see some more wasps around, with so few of them being reported this year.

The wasp is scrapping a layer of wood from a handrail or fence post to be used in the construction of a nest. You can see the ball below its mandibles above.

What a lot of hard work, worthy of my respect that’s for sure.

Thanks for reading.

Macro

10 photos from a decade of macro

Daniel Greenwood11 Comments

A break from my blitz of my usual summer macro posts for something a bit more, monumental.

I’ve been using a dedicated macro lens since 2014, so this year marks my 10 year anniversary.

Now, no one cares about this, and I only just remembered, but it gives me an excuse to share 10 of my favourite invertebrate macro images. I’m not including fungi in this, they are a different game entirely for me.

In no particular order:

Hairy-footed flower bee in Peckham, London (April 2018)

Nikon D750 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

This picture was taken while I worked for London Wildlife Trust at the Centre for Wildlife Gardening in SE London. I knew that hairy-footed flower bees were keen on flowering currant. I got down at a good angle and managed to capture the bee just as it visited the flower. I love the pink of the flowers and the isolated shape of the bee.

Chalcid wasp, West Sussex (August 2021)

Olympus EM-5 Mark III + 60mm macro lens

Wasps fascinate me, none more so than the parasitic species which are numbered in the thousands. This little wasp is a chalcid wasp which I saw one grey summer’s afternoon. You can read the post about it here.

Ant harvesting honeydew, my garden in West Sussex (June 2021)

Nikon D5600 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

Ants farm aphids for their honeydew and it’s something I’d always wanted to get a decent photo of. Right by my garden door this garden ant was gathering the honeydew from a group of aphids. I took a number of photos and cropped this one down. I like the glow of the globule and the warm background colours.

Fencepost jumping spider, my garden in West Sussex (June 2021)

Nikon D5600 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

Spiders are an unknown quantity for me but the lockdowns helped me to learn more about this in my house and garden. I was taking some photos after work one night when his large and rather pink jumping spider emerged from my fence. It was such a joy to have it wait so patiently for its close up. See blog here.

Silver-studded blue, South Moravia, Czechia (August 2016)

Nikon D750 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

I have to thank my friend Karel for inspiring me to take the plunge and buy a macro lens. So Czechia, where I first met him, forms a place in my macro story. When visiting there in 2016 my friend Pete and I were introduced to a meadow by Zuzka, our host. The meadow was alive with butterflies and wildflowers. We found hundreds of silver-studded blues, many of them roosting on cooler August days. This is a memory as much as a favourite macro photo. See the blog here.

Javelin wasp, my garden in West Sussex (August 2020)

Nikon D5600 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

I will always remember this photo because my dad was with me, visiting from London for the day in those strict Covid times. Along with my mum (hello), my neighbours were also there to see this stunning ichneumon – the javelin wasp. It was a rare social moment, and one of the last times I managed to enjoy nature in the company of my dad before he passed away the following year. See the blog here.

Planthopper, my garden in West Sussex (June 2020)

Olympus EM10 MIII + 60mm macro lens

In June 2020 I was taking a macro photo every day. It was a rainy afternoon when I realised I needed to pull a macro pic out of the bag. I opened the garden door and found a grass head a few steps away. Inside it I found this planthopper roosting, so took a few pics and went straight back inside!

Tawny mining bee, my parents’ garden gate in London (April 2017)

Nikon D750 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

I was staying with my parents during the Easter weekend and keen to explore the macro world in their garden. I noticed some little holes drilled into the garden gate, which had been in place for maybe 50 years. I noticed a bee heading in and out and waited on the step for the bee to emerge. Bingo! This lovely male tawny mining bee popped his head out to say hello.

Plant bug, Coulsdon, Surrey (July 2017)

Nikon D750 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

Farthing Downs on the Surrey/London border is where I would spend hours at a time honing my macro skills (basically the art of positioning and then finding subjects, nothing too technical). You could lie on the grass paths and not see anyone for hours. It was also the first place I took my new lens in 2014 (Sigma 105mm) to try it out. One summer’s day I found this plant bug climbing to the top of a scabious flower. It is one of my most accomplished pics and shows full-frame cameras at their most powerful, with beautiful colours and detail. See the blog here.

Paper wasp, South Moravia, Czechia (August 2016)

Nikon D750 + Sigma 105mm macro lens

Another one from my visit to Czechia in 2016. It was a great time for insects and with a more gentle heat than the months preceding. This was my first time seeing a paper wasp. I love these social wasps, which we don’t have in Britain, and I love the way it’s in a bed of wild carrot.

Here’s to another decade in macro.

Thanks for reading and for the support on here. I really appreciate it.

Macro

I write these blogs in my spare time because I want to raise awareness about the beauty and diversity of our landscapes. If you enjoy reading them you can support my blog here.

The javelin wasp returns sharpish

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

On a Saturday afternoon in early August I was reading a real newspaper, and I happened upon an article about the diversity of wasps.

I nearly choked on my avocado.

The article was outlining how significant wasps are in our world, as controllers of other invertebrates that, in over abundance, would create a damaging imbalance in our farming- and eco-systems.

We should worry about the lack of wasps this summer, the article said. Helena Horton would probably enjoy this blog, to be honest!

As you may have noticed, there are very few images in this post. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get to. After reading the article I went to put the washing on the line. With a cursory glance at the fennel in the flowerbed I noticed that one of my favourite wasps was visiting.

The javelin wasp (Gasteruption jaculator).

I skipped indoors, grabbed my camera with macro lens and began following the wasp around the fennel flowers. I didn’t get anything worth sharing, until the wasp was spooked and dropped down to cover in some grasses. As you can see above, it then began to clean pollen from its face and antennae. I fired off some pics and then checked them. They were super sharp and beautifully lit by the soft light from the clouds overhead.

There are only two pictures, almost identical but for their crop, because they represent the wasp in the best way I can. Clear, in focus, and sharp.

I have written several times about these ichneumon wasps and their seeding of eggs in live caterpillar hosts. It’s grizzly, but it’s not done out of cruelty.

The insect season is drawing to a close and it’s been a poor one. Hopefully absence may make the heart grow fonder, and action taken at scale to ensure these pollinators, not just honeybees, can be protected.

Thanks for reading.

Damselflies at Sheffield Park 🐉

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

For my mum’s birthday in early August, we visited Sheffield Park in East Sussex, just over the border from West Sussex. It’s a National Trust estate so membership is needed to avoid the £17 entrance fee.

I didn’t have a camera with me other than my phone, but the Pixel 7a has an amazing camera, so I managed some nice pics of a few damselflies.

Obviously these are people not dragonflies, but the area was absolutely zinging with Odonata (the scientific name for dragons and damsels). This is looking back towards where the estate house is, though it’s not somewhere you can enter. People live there like in olden times.

Perched on the edge of the giant rhubarb (Gunnera – a super invasive wetland plant installed in places like Sheffield Park long ago for their showy foliage) was a small red-eyed damselfly.

What a beauty. Damselflies generally rest with closed wings, while dragonflies have them open. That notion was quickly dispelled by my next sighting. Usually dragons are much bigger anyway, by the way.

I was chatting to my sister when I noticed a damsel had taken a very pleasing perch in a shrub. A damselfly holding its wings out!

Now this is a willow emerald damsel, a species which ten years ago people were losing their minds over. It was a new arrival in the UK, and likely indicative of a warming climate. Now they are everywhere in southern England, and we’re experiencing temperature breakthroughs year on year.

I was just pleased to share a nice day in Sussex with my nearest and dearest. You can’t ask for much more than that, except for maybe some beautiful damselflies.

Thanks for reading.

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Midsummer buglife 🪲

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

Warnham Local Nature Reserve, West Sussex, July 2024

I was making my first meaningful trip out to a wild space after being ill with Covid, to see if I could concentrate enough on taking some macro pics. Thankfully there were some very docile bugs pleading for their close up. Here you go, team.

I’ve missed a lot of the macro season this year, what has probably been one of the ‘worst’ summers in this part of England. Lots of rain, quite cool, clear lack of insects. I’m only just getting over brain fog so not able to compute how worrying the insect declines are right now. It seems that approving the use of bee-killing pesticides without appropriate risk assessment doesn’t help.

I was fortunate to spot this cinnamon bug nectaring in the flowerhead of a Michaelmas daisy within a few minutes of my visit to Warnham Local Nature Reserve. I love how this pollinating beetles get so covered by the pollen. It’s a bit like me after eating a choc ice.

Though flies are feared and reviled for their connections with unpleasant organic matter in this world, some of them are very interesting to look at. Many of them also tend to be pollinators. It’s not all about the bees. This fly is probably Nowickia ferox, which feeds on flowers. Moth fans – look away now. Their larvae develop in the dark arches moth.

Dock bugs are a common sight in southern England, especially in flowery grasslands and meadows. They are very easy to photograph – they’re like the mushrooms of the insect world, slow moving, if at all. How trusting.

Elsewhere, this mid-summer period is one of hoverflies, many which looked very similar to the untrained eye (this one) but which can be nice subjects among the flowers of hogweed and other umbellifers.

I was pleased with this photo of a dancefly as it nectared on some ailing hogweed flowers. That is one heck of a proboscis. The light is very soft and the background is a serene green.

Over the years (I’ve been using a dedicated macro lens since 2014) I’ve learned about species behaviour, and how a little bit of knowledge can really help you to find wildlife. In terms of invertebrates, I remember a blog written about fenceposts and how they were a good place to find roosting insects. This is solid advice.

During this visit, in the forefront of my mind was a past, failed attempt to photograph a robberfly where it sat on a handrail. On that same handrail I didn’t find a robberfly, but instead my mother and father-in-law, which was also nice. But, that wasn’t the end of the story…

Turning to head home, realising how fatigued I was, and lacking in normal, basic levels of energy, I spotted something. A robberfly was sat on a different handrail! It’s so pleasing to have this sense of validation for my fencepost knowledge.

In the world of wasps, we are of course in the throes of the UK Media Silly Season (despite there being a General Election, potential dictatorship in the US, and far-right riots across the UK!) and wasps are in the news. Interestingly the mwin story is, where are they?

iNaturalist users think the wasp above is a German wasp. What you can see is the wasp gathering wood shavings for a nest. But that wasn’t the only wasp I saw.

July and August are good months to see the iconic ichneumon wasps. I absolutely love them, an interest which was deepened by reading The Snoring Bird (I recommend it). I wasn’t fast enough for this ichneumon to really get a strong pic, but this will do.

Even worse was this attempt to photograph one of the Gasteruption ichneumons. People, I am just too short for plants that want to grow this tall. I do enjoy the bokeh here though (circular light in the background). Take that, full-frame cameras!

So, all in all a decent showing for a fatigued individual.

Thanks for reading.

Photos taken with Olympus EM1 Mark III and 60mm f2.8 macro lens, edited in Lightroom.

Macro