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.