Orange-sided comb-horn - a colourful daddy-long-legs

 The two commonest craneflies - Tipula oleracea and T. paludosa - are dull-coloured insects but this female orange-sided comb-horn Ctenophora pectinicornis has an orange and black colour scheme that gives it a hint of menace. We found it in old deciduous woodland on the bank of the river Wear in Durham city. The larvae (leatherjackets) of the two commonest craneflies feed on grass roots in pastures but the larvae of this woodland species feed on decaying fallen timber. 

As is so often the case, this specimen has lost a limb. Easily shed limbs might well be a last resort escape strategy, from the beak of a bird or the web of a spider.

The daughter of the winds

The name anemone, which is derived from Greek, literally means 'the daughter of the winds' and the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder believed that spring winds were essential to bring anemones into flower. You certainly need a still, windless day to photograph these  delightful spring flowers, that shiver on their slender stalks if there is the slightest breeze. 

Wood anemones are grow very slowly, spreading via creeping rhizomes, so woodlands with large patches of this flower are likely to be very old. It sets few viable seeds and spreads at a rate of about six feet in one hundred years, according to Richard Mabey in his Flora Britannica. It's plants like this that highlight the foolishness of the government's proposed practice of allowing developers to 'offset' destruction of  old-established woodlands by planting new ones on open fields.  Assuming it was possible, it would take centuries to replicate the drifts of wood anemones that are one of the defining features of ancient woodlands.

This seems to have been an exceptionally good spring for wood anemone, with some wonderful displays in woodlands in Weardale and Teesdale.