Toadlet foraging down amongst mosses and dead autumn leaves

 Spot the tiny toadlet! 

Let's hope that its cryptic colour protects it from hungry predators.

My sharp-eyed eldest son spotted this tiny amphibian down amongst the moss and dead leaves when he was walking in the Derwent Walk Country Park near Gateshead this morning, and sent me these pictures. 

It's one of my life's great pleasures that all my children grew up sharing my delight at such close encounters in nature.

Another hop-dog, in the garden

 

My youngest son found this his exquisite little caterpillar of pale tussock moth Calliteara pudibunda while he was cutting down the rampant ornamental hops that festoon our garden hedge. Aside from its colour and spectacular hairiness, one of its features that fascinates me is the way it exposes bands of black skin between its segments as it walks. Its undulating progress reminds me of an accordion and I half-expect a tune to emanate from it as it hurries along.

If you disturb a pale tussock moth larva it immediately adopts a ‘curled-up hedgehog’ mode, becoming a defensive ball covered in rosettes of long, neon green whiskers, with a mane of bristles, with dense tufts like miniature shaving brushes on its back, and a menacing spike of rose-pink hairs at the tail. Everything about it warns “don’t touch me”

This caterpillar might present a challenge for most insectivorous birds, although cuckoos, with a gizzard that can cope with irritating hairs, sometimes eat them.

Those deterrents inflict discomfort on tender human flesh: finely barbed and filled with irritating fluid, they can cause dermatitis. Calliteara pudibunda was once a notorious pest of hop fields, which might explain the naturalist Gilbert White’s journal entry for 8 October 1781, noting that “several women and children have eruptions on their hands … after they have been employed in hop-picking”. More recently, families from London’s East End, travelling to Kent for traditional hop-picking work every autumn, would have been painfully familiar with these caterpillars, which they knew as “hop-dogs”.

Pale tussock larvae are not picky about food plants and defoliate at least a dozen broadleaved tree species, including beech, hawthorn, sycamore and lime. By early autumn they are fully fed and only interested in finding somewhere dry and secure, ambling off (to the tune of an imaginary accordion) among the leaf litter, where they’ll pupate inside a cocoon woven from recycled defensive bristles.

 

 

Reflexed stonecrop Sedum rupestre - a drought-adapted wall plant

 

Reflexed stonecrop Sedum rupestre, thriving amongst withered mosses on a drystone wall in Weardale.

A triple-whammy of heatwaves has frazzled plant life in parched earth everywhere, but few plant habitats suffer such a severe test of drought tolerance as a sun-drenched stone wall. Stonecrops take it in their stride, thanks to succulent leaves that can store water.

The commonest and most widespread native Sedum species is biting stonecrop Sedum acre, whose starry yellow flowers adorn walls and sand dunes. Its leaves are said to be edible, with a peppery ‘biting’ taste, which may be why reflexed stonecrop was introduced from mainland Europe in the 17th. century as a salad crop, eaten when its new leaves are fresh and succulent in spring. Reflexed sonecrop escaped from gardens soon after it arrived and was first recorded in the wild in 1660.

The plant in the photograph is growing on the garden wall of a Weardale farm that dates from the late 17th. century, so maybe the original occupants also grew it for food.