Butterfly Hot-Spot

A visit to Hawthorn Hive on the Durham coast at the weekend coincided with the recent emergence of several butterfly species, including this pristine male common blue and .....

.... and its rather more muted female consort.

The raised beach at Hawthorn Hive - a legacy of past colliery waste dumping - is covered with large patches of bird's foot trefoil, food for common blue and dingy skipper caterpillars, so this sheltered bay is a great spot to find both species - and also several others. The cliffs provide shelter from the wind, unless it's blowing from the East - and the prevailing wind is mostly south-westerley. Paradoxically, it's only the raised beach - produced by past industral activity - that protects this wonderful site for flowers and insects from being inundated by the waves. It's slowly being eroded and once it has gone the waves will be able to reach the base of the cliffs where.....

..... this green-veined whire was collecting nectar from bloody crane'sbill flowers...

...... while this large skipper basked on the same plant's foliage....

... and another .... amongst the grasses.

On the cliff tops above small heaths were flying in the grassland. They have a very distinctive way of sunbathing. Most butterflies orientate themselves with their back to the sun and open their wings to absorb the heat - like the common blues and large skipper above. Small heaths keep their wings folded but turn their whole body at 90 degrees to the sun's rays, so the underside of the wings on one side of the body only faces the sun.

Bird's Eye View

Over the years I've spent a lot of time staring up into the sky to watch kestrels, but a walk along the cliffs south of Dawdon on the Durham coast at the weekend provided a wonderful opportunity to look down on one for a change.

We were standing almost directly behind it, on the edge of the cliff, and it was so intent at hunting something in the grass on a ledge on the cliff face that it ignored us, so we could watch every minute adjustment of its feathers as to effortlessly held position in a stiff north-easterly breeze.

Eventually it lowered its talons and stooped on its prey, carrying it off to its nest site further along the coast.

Wolf's Lair

This menacing little wolf spider Pardosa amentata, less than a centimetre long, lives in a crevice beside a wall in our garden. Wolf spiders chase down their prey, rather than spinning a web and can show an impressive turn of speed. Earlier in the year they were engaged in their elaborate courtship ritual, where the smaller male faces the female and signals to her with a pair of palps which he used like semaphore flags. If she gets the message they'll mate, if not she may well eat him. It's a very delicate process, performed by the male with great caution, and can go on for hours but, if all goes well ...

... the female produces eggs which are carried around in a silken cocoon attached to the underside of her abdomen.

Then she takes every opportunity to bask in the sun, to speed up the development of the embryos in her eggs. When they hatch, she'll carry all the minute spiderlings around, clinging to her abdomen, until they're large enough to fend for themselves.