Cinnamon bug - a recent arrival in my garden

I first found one of these cinnamon bugs Corizus hyoscyami in the garden a couple of years ago. Now they are well established here. They overwinter as adults and this is the first that I've seen this year, feeding on garden mint leaves. A strikingly beautiful insect.

This is yet another species that's extending its range northwards, presumably in response to climate change, although I suppose that the wholesale and retail horticulture industry could be giving it a helping hand. Originally it was confined to coastal sand dune habitats in southern England, but now it seems to be on its way to Scotland. Our winters here in Durham have become much milder in recent years, which must make it easier for species adapted to a more southerly climate to become established here.

 

Jackdaw skull

 I found this bird's skull in Ashes quarry, Stanhope, Weardale a couple of days ago. I think it's a jackdaw's skull - it's about the right size (6.5 cm long), the beak is the right shape and it was under a site where jackdaws often nest. A beautiful object, light but strong, with a large brain case as befits such an intelligent bird species.

Conifer plantation ladybirds

 Three pictures of two ladybirds often associated with conifers, found on a fence post on the edge of a Sitka spruce plantation in the Deerness valley, County Durham. The eyed ladybird is our largest native species, while the larch ladybird, with yellow wing cases, is one of our smallest. 

Ladybirds seem to like climbing to the top of fence posts on sunny days - the lower pictures here, of another eyed ladybird, a 16-spot ladybird Halyzia 16-guttata and a harlequin ladybird, were all taken on fence posts in Teesdale earlier this week.

Chiffchaff

 I started hearing chiffchaffs locally in County Durham at the beginning of April - another welcome sign of spring when the weather didn't feel very spring-like.

This one was in scrubby woodland in the Deerness valley, preening, raising its leg over its left wing to have a good scratch with its claws

Bullfinches eating Amelanchier flower buds

 

At the end of March it looked as though we would have an exceptional display of Amelanchier flowers this spring - but then the bullfinches found them and thinned out the flower buds. A small price to pay for having these lovely birds in the garden, and it may have deflected their attention away from the damson and pear blossom buds.

Long-tailed tit collecting nest material

 Watched this little long-tailed tit collecting nest material - lichen and spiders' webs - in a patch of brambles beside the disused railway line at Brancepeth, County Durham.

Bramble leaf miner

Almost a work of abstract art - last year's leaf mines of the bramble leaf miner moth Stigmella aurella in an old bramble leaf. It looks like there were two miners in this one,  with their feeding tunnels becoming increasingly broad as the larvae grew.

 

Grey wagtail

Grey wagtails are balletic birds, never still for an instant, always twirling and darting here and there in search of insects. I photographed this beauty in the river Tees, downstream from Abbey bridge at Egglestone. The river is fast and turbulent there, rushing through a narrow rocky gorge, and its spray encourages luxurient growth of mosses and liverworts at the water's edge - a favourite feeding ground for wagtails in search of small insects that live in this riverbank vegetation.

 

Kingfisher on the river Wear in Durham city

 

The river Wear begins its great loop around Durham cathedral peninsula here, at Elvet bridge. It’s always a busy spot. Aside from the rowing crews and scullers training for regattas, there are tourists in hired rowing boats and a constant passage of joggers, cyclists and walkers along the riverbank footpath. Mostly busy people on their way to somewhere, but it’s often a good place to just stand and stare: there can be interesting birds here. In winter there were goosanders fishing. In early spring little grebes took up residence for a while: energetic divers that we timed submerged for twenty seconds, leaving us guessing where they might reappear, sometimes popping up just a few feet away from the bank.  

The footpath was busy today. As I reached a narrow, elevated section of the path I moved over against the wall to make way for a rowing coach, balanced precariously on his bike as he chased his novice crew and bellowed encouragement from the bank. While he passed I glanced over the wall, towards the river and there was a kingfisher, perched on an overhanging willow. A perfect spot for fishing, where the water is clear, where sunlight glints on silver scales of fish that congregate in the warm shallows.

We stared at each other for what can only have been a few seconds, but these birds seem to concentrate surrounding energy and release it in a mesmerising azure and orange spark, an electric shock of plumage that makes time stand still. Totally unexpected, completely captivating: a gift of a bird.

And then it was gone, streaking off upriver, skimming the water, streaking past the oarsman and disappearing under Elvet bridge. King of the river.

 

Early spring in the Derwent Walk Country Park, Gateshead

 Some pictures from a walk last week in the Derwent Walk Country Park, Winlaton Mill, Gateshead.

Silver birches and willows, seen from the top of the Nine Arches railway viaduct over the river Derwent. The buds of the birches take on a purplish hue at this time of year, as they begin to swell, while the willows have an orange tint.

Carrion crow. Handsome birds, with a hint of blue iridescence in their plumage.

A fine display of colt'sfoot

Dutch rush Equisetum hyemale spore cones beginning to disperse spores. An uncommon plant, but there are some fine patches of it beside the footpath.

Golden saxifrage in full flower in a ditch beside the old railway line.

A heron with some fine chest plumes, feeding in the river Derwent.

Beard lichen Usnea sp. Remarkable that this pollution-sensitive species is now established here, when you consider that this was formerly a location for coal mines, an ironworks and the Derwenthaugh coking plant that only closed down in 1986.

A magpie in one of the meadows

Primroses in flower

A soaring red kite

Toads coming out of hibernation in the woodland, heading for Clockburn lake, on the site of the old coking plant

Wood anemones in flower in woodland beside the river Derwent

Fence post lichen garden

Maybe it's time someone produce a survey of the flora of rotting fence posts. There are so many fascinating and often beautiful examples of these miniature gardens, colonised by mosses, lichens, fungi and flowering plants, where the water retentive end-grain of the wood provides just enough moisture for the organisms to survive throughout the year. 

Pixie-cup lichens Cladonia spp. are some of the commonest colonisers. I noticed this exquisite example on the site of the former Brancepeth colliery at Willington in County Durham.

 

Rusty groundsel

 To many gardeners it's a weed; to botanists it's a wild flower; to ecologists it's a ruderal - a primary coloniser of disturbed ground. Call it what you will, groundsel Senecio vulgaris is a remarkable plant. It flowers all-year-round, produces seeds by self-pollination without the aid of pollinators and can thrive in an extraordinary range of habitats. 

Tenacious two-inch-tall plants can grow in a crack in the pavement and produce a single flower. Bushy, lush plants growing in a nutrient-rich farmyard can produce hundreds of flowers and thousands of seeds, which are carried away on the wind but are also eaten by finches, though the seeds can also pass unharmed through a bird's gut and germinate successfully. The seeds also have a covering of microscopically small hairs that extend when wet and help the seed to stick to animals' feet. 

The generation time of a groundsel plant is often around three months, so in a single year,  in favourable conditions, a single seedling can give rise to a million descendants. 

A wild flower for all seasons, then, and a plant on a world tour, taken to North America and Australia by European migrants long ago.

 

The name groundsel comes from the Old English word grundeswilage, meaning ground swallower. I always imagined that the generic name, Senecio, derived from the Latin senex, meaning 'old man' referred to the greyish-white whiskery plumes of its airborne seeds, but the real explanation can be traced back to botanist William Turner in 1538, who wrote that 'when the wynde bloweth it away, then it appeareth like a bald headded man, therefore it is called Senecio' ..... and in the photo below you can see what he meant.

Groundsel has an Achilles heel, a rust fungus called Puccinia lagenophorae, which has an interesting history. It is an Australian fungus, that infected groundsel there and was imported into the UK on groundsel that accidentally made the return journey to the UK, most likely with imported horticultural plants, and was first noted here in 1961. It has since spread throughout Britain and somehow crossed the Atlantic, first being observed on groundsel plants there in 2001.

Groundsel rust, being an efficient parasite, doesn't kill its host outright but does weaken it and render it susceptible to other fungal pathogens, like mildews.

The spore cups of Puccinia lagenophorae are quite beautiful when you look at them like this, magnified under a low-power microscope, appearing like tiny sunbursts with sunbeams formed from radiating chains of spores.