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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46211
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Jun 26, 19 11:47 am Post subject:
my mistake they are indeed the bigger of the two. never seen them on mint but only on tansey and almost all within a few meters of a pond or the river we have tansey in drier places but that does not seem to suit panda beetles the thing that puzzles me is how do they survive floods? the most beetly bits of tansey often are underwater for weeks

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Wed Jun 26, 19 12:52 pm Post subject:
According to the Wikipedia entry they overwinter as adults underground "and so they must be resistant to prolonged periods of oxygen deprivation" but no citations about this. The one in my photograph was on the brink of a well filled dyke - a stumble and I would have been in the water with the happy laughter of my pals ringing in my ears Henry

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Wed Jun 26, 19 12:57 pm Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

I hope the longhorn beetle wasn't the Asian longhorn Buzzy, as that is a notifiable pest as it can destroy woodland. If it was, please could you contact the Forestry Commission immediately.

Otherwise that sounds an interesting walk. Afraid I am not too well informed about insects, but your tansy beetle looks rather nice, and good to get a sight and picture of a rare beetle. As Dpack says, they are probably in other places than those know to science as nobody has ever looked in some of them. I do know that dormice were found to be more extensive in the south of England than thought when the Wildlife Trusts did a 'Great Nut Hunt' some years ago and detected them in a lot of unknown woods. In fact I was recently told by a dormouse aficionado that in this area expect dormice until proved otherwise. We have also found some quite 'rare' fungi in the woods, some of it so small that most people wouldn't notice it, so therefore probably more extensive than throught.

No, not the 'dreaded' Asian Longhorn! But I have looked further at the photo that a friend took, and I am not sure that our original identification of a recent colonist is correct. Am making further enquiries.

I well remember the Great Nut Hunt!

Henry

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46211
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Jun 26, 19 7:54 pm Post subject:

buzzy wrote:

According to the Wikipedia entry they overwinter as adults underground "and so they must be resistant to prolonged periods of oxygen deprivation" but no citations about this.

The one in my photograph was on the brink of a well filled dyke - a stumble and I would have been in the water with the happy laughter of my pals ringing in my ears

Henry

when i asked our local expert he said that they hibernate underground , i pointed out that some years a colony would be terrestrial if a bit waterlogged but other years it might be aquatic for a few months and as they are only up and out for a few weeks they should be called swamp mud beetles rather than tansey ones

afaik nobody has taken to scuba observation of what they get up to in wet times or even properly explored what they do when they are not having an orgy on a tansey plant

round here they show themselves for less than a couple of months and usually only a month or so in any one place

odd wee beasts but like pandas they can protect their environment for everything else as well, us included

thinking of the very rare/extinct vs you did not look in the right places equation years ago i saw a news report of a small blue chalkland butterfly that was thought to be extinct but somebody found one down south and it looked very familiar.
next day the dog stroll was along a disused railway line with chalk ballast.
not as extinct as thought and actually thriving in large numbers on a long thin strip of artificial chalk downland in south yorkshire

i didnt have the heart to tell em

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15967

Posted: Thu Jun 27, 19 6:10 am Post subject:
One of our volunteers found a large copper butterfly which is supposed to be extinct. Not sure what happened about that, but he is good at poking around at odd things like that, which is how we got our fungi identified. He also thinks he has found a 'Lewis horizon' reef of flint in the wood. He was a geologist before he retired and is now in his 80s.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46211
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Jun 27, 19 10:25 am Post subject:
if you have a flint seam have you found waste flakes and flawed cores that have been discarded by knappers?

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Thu Jun 27, 19 6:48 pm Post subject:
Just had it confirmed that our suspected 'new' longhorn beetle is just a dark form of a quite common one (Agapanthia villosoviredescens for those interested). Henry

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15967

Posted: Fri Jun 28, 19 7:00 am Post subject:

Well at least you know. Pity it isn't a species unknown to science, but interesting anyway.

We don't have any sign of flint knapping in the woods, but we have a number of pits, some of which we are sure are marl pits (chalky clay to go on fields) but some of which are probably flint pits. One is a several hundred years old as it has an old pollard beech growing in it that we think might be a coup marker. The wood was run as hazel coppice for a long time, but there are traces of Bronze Age field systems under it.

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8918
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 19 7:57 pm Post subject:
Is this an orchid? In a corner by Boswell Park car park by the bus station in Ayr. There are quite a few in Hannahston Nature Reserve (old open cast coalmine ) by Drongan as well.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46211
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 19 10:14 pm Post subject:
id? well it looks pretty orchidy in the snap

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 19 10:41 pm Post subject:
One of the Spotted Orchids (genus Dactylorhiza), I'm fairly sure. Nice plant, nice picture. Henry

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15967

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 19 7:18 am Post subject:
I would say pyramid. They are quite common round here and we have a good selection in the grass verge in the opposite side of the road. This year, thank goodness, the grass mowing monkeys have only cut the front of the verge, so the orchids are happily growing at the back. We have occasionally had them in our lawn, but a few years as a hay field has rather upset them.

gz

Joined: 23 Jan 2009
Posts: 8918
Location: Ayrshire, Scotland

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 19 8:08 am Post subject:
We saw these on a walk round near our village...fascinating shapes as they go over.I think they are growing on the imported woodchip mulch. From the other side of the lane they looked like flowers!

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46211
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 19 2:58 pm Post subject:
wow nice shrooms, do they start as bells and then fray? no idea what they are

buzzy

Joined: 04 Jan 2011
Posts: 3708
Location: In a small wood on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Wolds

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 19 6:29 pm Post subject:

Mistress Rose wrote:

I would say pyramid. They are quite common round here and we have a good selection in the grass verge in the opposite side of the road. This year, thank goodness, the grass mowing monkeys have only cut the front of the verge, so the orchids are happily growing at the back. We have occasionally had them in our lawn, but a few years as a hay field has rather upset them.

I think the shape of the petals (tepals) is wrong for Pyramidal Orchid, and also their petals tend to be unmarked.

As soon as I can get hold of my orchid book, I may be able to give a more reasoned opinion - I'm a bit slow at present having suffered from a Porsche Cayenne destroying our poor little Honda Jazz last week.

Henry

edited to correct car variety

Last edited by buzzy on Wed Jul 10, 19 8:54 pm; edited 1 time in total

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