Magpie family life

 

Magpie having a bad-feather day. We’ve had a couple of dismal days recently, with incessant heavy rain from dawn to dusk, and the magpie family (two parents plus three fledglings) have been taking turns to perch on the TV aerial and shelter under the eaves of the house. They shake the rain from their waterlogged plumage, preen for a while, then head out into the garden again to search for food - mostly worms and small soil invertebrates from our neighbours’ lawns..

 

The fledglings are still mercilessly harassing their parents for food ….

Garden snails Cornu aspersa

 

Garden snails Cornu aspersa mating.

One of the reasons garden snails are so successful is that they are hermaphrodite. In animals with separate sexes in equal numbers only half the population can produce eggs; in hermaphrodites like these snails every individual can lay eggs.

But they still need to mate, to exchange sperm, after a Cupid-like courtship ritual. Two individuals glide along side by side and fire calcareous love-darts into each-other, coated in a hormone which facilitates mating. and sperm exchange.

Larder beetles

 

 

A larder beetle Dermestes lardarium. This little beetle, about 5mm. long, has a particular liking for laying its eggs on bacon, cooked hams, sausages and fish. It used to be very common in houses in the days before domestic refrigerators were available, but is no longer such a familiar pest.

Those romantic ‘cottage-core’ photographs, of hams and game hanging from wooden beams in country cottage kitchens, belie the constant battle with pest infestations that came with traditional methods of food storage. Neither of my grandparents, who stored their food in a cool larder and their meat in a meat safe, protected from insects by a fine wire mesh, had refrigerators and probably had cause to curse larder beetles.

They also turn up in old wasp nests, feeding on the remains of dead wasp larvae. This one landed on my window ledge and I suspect that it came from an old wasp nest in the loft.