#30DaysWild Day 2 - A watched caterpillar never pupates!

A couple of weeks ago Bug Mad Girl spent the day with Nanny Moth. As usual, she came home at the end of day clutching an assortment of treasure she'd found, including a pot with nettle leaves in it. The leaves held a web full of the tiny black, spiky caterpillars of the small tortoiseshell butterfly, which she was going to look after and rear herself.

They're such gregarious caterpillars, sticking together to build a new web in the corner of their pot, moving onto the leaves to eat together and even changing all their skins together. It was easy enough to look after them at first, as they only needed a new nettle stem each day which we could get from our nettle patch in the back garden. As they grew though things started to get a bit trickier as the tiny little dots turned into eating machines, with Bug Mad Girl topping up their leaves three or four times a day. I persuaded her they may be better off on our nettle patch and we could keep a few, so we moved them down to the bottom of the garden, where they ate their way through most of our nettle patch.

After some frantic eating, our remaining caterpillars, still sticking together, decided it was time to pupate and started to wander around their pot. Eventually they stuck themselves to the lid of the pot and hung upside down like caterpillar icicles. They were finally ready to pupate.

Caterpillar icicles

They hung there for a day or two and eventually the first one pupated. We missed the big event! Then another one pupated and we missed that too! We started to wonder exactly what happened when they pupated. How did they get out of their skin and stay stuck to the lid of the pot? So, Bug Mad Girl set up a camera and decided to try and film the moment.



When they first pupate they are bright green

The bright green pupae soon turn darker

It seemed like every time she took a break from watching them, another one would pupate. There's an expression that a watched kettle never boils, well in this case, a watched caterpillar never pupates! She had to give up and go to bed and by morning only three caterpillars were left to pupate. Would she ever be able to catch the moment on film?

Only three left!

She realised that when the caterpillars were about to pupate, they uncurled slightly and looked longer and thinner. Focussing on those caterpillars and persevering, she actually managed to film the moment a caterpillar sheds it's skin and turns into a chrysalis.

The whole thing took about 10 minutes and started by the skin splitting just behind the caterpillar's head. Then it wriggled the skin up it's body, so it was like a bunched up sock. When the skin was up at the top of the pupa, it wriggled like mad, until the skin fell off.

Our caterpillar icicles had changed into beautiful, gold-dusted pupae.

They look a bit like bats, hanging upside sown from their lid

As for the caterpillars down on the nettle patch. We would occasionally see a few of them on the leaves and I found one that had pupated on the fence next to the nettles. I hope at least a few of the others made it and crept off somewhere a little less obvious to pupate.

#30DaysWild Day 1 - BBC Breakfast

30 Days Wild started today, the Wildlife Trust's campaign to get everybody to do something wild every day for the month of June. This will be the third year we've taken part and the last two years have been a blast!

Last year's 30 random acts of wildness

After moving house a couple of months ago, we had big plans to 'wild' our new back garden. I had expected day 1 of this year's 30 Days Wild to be us making a pond or planting wildflowers, but it turned out to be a very different wild experience.

BBOWT phoned on Tuesday and asked if would be interviewed on BBC Breakfast about our 30 Days Wild experience. At that point it was only a possibility it would happen and the plan was to do the interview at College Lake, one of our local reserves. At first I was a little reluctant, as the thought of being on national television was daunting, to say the least. My arm was well and truly twisted by Bug Mad Girl though and I agreed, thinking it would probably all fall through anyway.

Then yesterday lunchtime I found out it was going ahead and would be in a small reserve called Camley Street Natural Park, which is behind King's Cross station. As it was an early start, we headed up to London on Wednesday evening and stayed overnight, so we could get there bright and early this morning.

When we arrived at Camley Street, we met everybody and checked out some of the equipment they use for the outdoor broadcasts.

The van with the big aerial on the roof

The man in the van

The camera, on a weighted arm which allows it to swing around
smoothly during the filming

We had a quick cuddle with Carol Kirkwood between weather forecasts ...

... then Bug Mad Girl and Lucy McRobert, from the Wildlife Trust, prepared for their interviews ...

Always be prepared!

... and we listened to the Cetti's warbler and reed warblers singing nearby and watched the family of swans glide past us on the canal.

 

 

The time flew by and before we knew it we were standing in position ready to be interviewed. I completely forgot what we were there to talk about and my tongue stuck to the side of my mouth. Bug Mad Girl looked terrified, but we were helped to relax by Carol's rousing rendition of 'I want to live in America'! I can't really remember what we ended up saying, but I think it was vaguely what we were there for and I don't think we made too much of a fool of ourselves. Added bonus that we didn't fall in the pond, so a success really!!

 

 

 

You can see the interview on the BBC iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08rys49/breakfast-01062017.

 

Thanks BBOWT and the Wildlife Trust for asking us to do it and for looking after us so well. It was a really wild way to kick off our #30DaysWild!

New house moth trapping

We decided to put the moth trap out for the first time since we moved, so we could see what was lurking out there in our new garden. I was slightly worried about upsetting our new neighbours (as it lights the garden up like an airport runway!), so we put it at the end of the garden, behind the shed, in a corner surrounded by fence. It would probably be better in the middle of the lawn, but I'm not sure how the neighbours would react to that. Anyway, there's a big field behind the fence, so it could be quite a good place for it.

Friday was roasting hot and the night time temperature was 'steamy', so we set the trap up and went to bed. In the morning, we checked the trap and immediately noticed some great moths sat on the fence around it. Perhaps its location was a good choice after all. Lots of moths are attracted to the light, but won't actually go into the trap, so they were hanging around on the fence.

Swallow prominent

peppered moth

Puss moth

Pale tussock

There were some lovely hairy legs amongst the moths we caught!

The hairy face and legs of a puss moth

Our totals for Friday night were 1 puss moth, 4 pale tussocks, 1 swallow prominent, 1 peppered moth, 1 clouded-bordered brindle, 1 common marbled carpet, 8 heart and darts, 14 common swifts plus one dark form common swift, 1 flame shoulder, 14 treble lines, 1 shuttle-shaped dart and 1 setaceous Hebrew character.

Saturday was cooler and very breezy, but we put the trap out again. It turned out to be a better night for the moths and the highlight was a poplar hawkmoth.  It's always great to catch a hawkmoth ... they're the moth trapping stars. The poplar hawkmoth holds it's wings at a very unusual angle, has a big, fuzzy face and turns its body up. They're very cool moths!

The fence was a good place to look again, as we found 3 pale tussocks (plus another 4 in the trap), 2 buff tips (that look just like a broken twig) and 2 sycamores. All beautifully camouflaged, in their own ways.

Pale tussock, with very hairy legs

Buff tip, pretending to be a twig

Sycamore

The trap had even more moths than the night before, including a pretty white ermine.

White ermine

Our totals for Saturday night were 1 poplar hawkmoth, 2 buff tips, 2 sycamores, 7 pale tussocks, 2 buff ermines, 1 peppered moth, 1 green carpet, 15 heart and darts, 21 common swifts plus one dark form common swift, 1 flame shoulder, 9 treble lines, 1 shuttle-shaped dart, 1 common wainscot, 1 marbled minor, 1 white ermine and 1 magpie moth.

It's going to rain tonight, so we won't put the trap out, but we will definitely put it out again soon for 30 Days Wild.

Beautiful Yoesden

I made the most of the glorious weather and paid my first visit of the year to wonderful Yoesden this morning. It really is such a magical place. Before I even reached the reserve, my spirits were lifted by the sight of this little cowshed in the middle of a beautiful meadow full of daisies and buttercups. The red kites were soaring overhead and the swallows were chasing insects around the meadow (and hopefully nesting again in the cowshed).

I walked down to the reserve and it didn't take long before I saw a flash of electric blue and there was my first Adonis blue of the year. They're beautiful little butterflies and very rare, having very specific habitat requirements. Yoesden is one of the local special places to see them.

They can look similar to a common blue, but they are a brighter blue and the
white edges of the wings are cut through with black lines

There were lots flying, but it was very hot and quite breezy, so they were whizzing around, not settling for long. I accidentally disturbed a pair that were mating, so they took off into the air, still joined together and landed on my top. I let them walk onto my finger, before carefully placing them onto a stalk of grass.


With their wings closed they can be quite hard to tell apart from common blues,
but I think the black lines through the white wing edges (on the left butterfly) make
these Adonis blues. The one on the right was a bit battered and had lost its white edges.

Safely returned to a stalk of grass

While I was there, I saw three types of blue, as there were common blues and small blues flying. Won't be long until the chalkhill blues emerge, then you can see all four there. 

Small blue - they really are tiny 

There were also brimstones, small heaths and dingy skippers flying and there were cardinal beetles in the grass.

Dingy skipper

Cardinal beetle

I sat on an ant hill and admired the view for a while. The common spotted orchids were starting to flower and the blues were fluttering all around me. It was lovely!

Common spotted orchids starting to flower. This one had a little crab spider on it.

 

The view from my ant hill

Bird's-nests and common blues

After a few days of much needed rain, it was very green and lush as I walked around Pulpit Hill this morning. I decided to scrabble down the hillside to check on the bird's-nest orchids, to see how many there were this year and if any were flowering yet. They grow well off the beaten track, on the side of a steep slope, so it's always a bit of an adventure to visit them. I was pleased I did it though, as there were at least 30 plants flowering in one small area.

They're very unusual plants. With very small, stunted leaves and no green chlorophyll, they look almost like the dead stems of flowers that you're more likely to see in the autumn. They're very much alive though and form a relationship with fungus to get their nutrients, which in turn get their nutrients from the roots of the beech trees.

They're quite tricky to photograph, as their cream colour is hard to pick out and they grow in the deep shade of the beech trees, so it's usually quite gloomy. Occasionally the sunlight breaks through the trees in just the right place and puts one in the spotlight though.

There were plenty of white helleborines flowering at the same site. It seems like a good year for both the bird's nest-orchids and the helleborines. I was quite surprised the slugs hadn't eaten more of them, especially after all the rain we've had recently.

White helleborine - you can see how steep the slope is that they were growing on

I got back onto the path and made my way down the hill and into Grangelands and the Rifle Range. The first buds of the chalk scented and common spotted orchids are showing, with just the slightest hint of colour to them. It won't be very long now until the reserve is covered in glorious orchids again!

Chalk fragrant orchid

 

Common spotted orchid

I had a look for the musk orchids, but there's no sign of them yet. They are so tiny though that you can only really see them when they have sent up their buds. I'll keep an eye out for them over the next few weeks.

I spotted my first common blue butterflies as I walked around, 2 males and a female. The males are such a brilliant bright blue and a sure sign that summer is almost here.

 

I also saw a green-veined white and there seemed to be female brimstone butterflies flying everywhere, looking for places to lay their eggs.

Green-veined white

Brimstone laying an egg

The precious egg

#30DaysWild excitement

30 Days Wild is a campaign run by the Wildlife Trust each year to get everybody doing something wild for every day in June. This is the third year it's run and our third year taking part and is something we all look forward to. The excitement ramped up a gear this week though, as an article that BBOWT asked me to write about our experiences last year was published in the Bucks Examiner.

Then this morning, this year's 30 Days Wild pack was delivered by the postman. It includes a wall chart, that we'll complete each day, as well as some wildflower seeds and some stickers. The kids have already started planning what they want to do, but I think we'll do a lot of stuff at home this year. We moved house recently, so we have a whole new garden to 'wild'. Should be a lot of fun!