Sex Bombus

Sex, for bees, is famously terminal, at least for the male. Rather like the spider that eats its mate, the male bumble bee (Bombus spp) will die after it mates with the queen.

Bombus sex is having your end away, in every sense of the phrase...

The Big Wet

It's been wet. Very wet. We are now in December and there is a slight reprieve from the rain, but the Autumn was the wettest ever, and we had the equivalent of almost six months of rain in one month, October:

The Rain in Spain falls mainly...in October

The consequence has been a lot of mud especially on the track down to the village, fields that we cannot plough - which will delay our hay crop in 2019 - and a flourishing fungal population.

Torc of the Devil...

This first fungus I cannot identify, but the next is Ramaria aurea, known as Peu de Rata Groc, or Yellow Rat's Foot in Catalan. It's edible, if eaten young (it says here*. I'm not brave enough to try...)

Christmas Coral

 And finally, my favourite because it's so, so bad, Clathrus ruber, Gita de Bruixa (Witches' Net) in Catalan, the Latticed Stinkhorn in English. It looks scary, traps and eats insects, and stinks of dog poo. Yes, dog poo...

Stinks to Heaven (if you are a fly)

*Guia dels Bolets dels Països Catalans, 7th edition, R. Pascual,  Portic, Barcelona, 2007.

Wild Nightlife on the Croft

The camera trap that my daughter bought me has been capturing some interesting fauna.

I set it out near the garden. We have fig trees and I thought that might attract the wild boar. We also have rats, attracted by the chicken food. But the rats have been dissapearing, so I guessed that there was a predator around. The Barn and Tawny owls capture them at night (we hear the whoosh and squeak as they attack the rats in the garden), but there are ground predators too:

My brother is a tiger, really...

Pretty sleek, eh?

Mrs Brock returns

That's from just five nights with the camera trap. The cat is big, but I guess it's a large domestic cat, not a wild cat. The fox is completely fearless: she or he has been out at times when I know the dogs were around too.

It's pretty wild at night at the Croft...

Trap!

The fight-back against the Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, has started.

I built these traps using some stuff from the local household store, and baited them with Catalan white wine, my honey, organic brown sugar and locally-caught fish. Frankly, if the Asian hornets aren't attracted by that menu, and the low food-mile count, I will be amazed...

One way to the winery

The instructions for this type of trap are pretty widely available. The funnel has a 10mm hole, through which hornets and bees can pass, but the exit holes, just above the internal wire base, are just 6mm in diameter. Large enough for a honey bee to escape, but too small for the hornet. The inverted bowl above the trap keeps the rain out (and thus avoids diluting the bait - no-one wants watered-down wine...)

I'll check them in a week to see if they have captured anything useful.

Attack!

We are under attack. The dread Asian Hornet, Vespa velutina, has arrived at my hives.

I took a honey harvest a couple of weeks ago, but it was small - way too small for this time of year. I suspected that something might be bothering the bees. And today, when I went up to the hives, the bees were locked down in their hive entrances. 

She is out there, somewhere

And just a few centimetres away, the hovering menace:



I've told the rangers, and the bee association, but I'd welcome any advice or suggestions on how best to deal with this.

Double Bug

Two scenes of, er, bug intimacy this week.

The first is a pair of clegs (horse flies), Tabanidae. I have an admiration-hate relationship with clegs. Admiration for their extraordinary efficiency and accuracy - they can attack a horse's legs - or mine - fast and from a distance, but land with such precision that you feel nothing until the wee bu&&er has bitten a chunk out of you, at which they fly off, again at high speed but this time in a dodging, zigzag flight path that makes them impossible to swat. Hate, because they are a constant summer nuisance for the donkeys.

But the admiration part of the equation increased with this pair who managed to couple on an orange-tree leaf, and then fly off, still coupled in perfect coordination, when my camera got too close.

This is giving me a buzz

Clegs fight the stereotype; it is she that bites the donkeys, while he floats around our garden flowers eating only nectar.


And then there were these two. They were locked in a love scene at the entrance to a mouse burrow, like two sumo wrestlers. These two barely moved when I approached, and were clearly not going anywhere for anyone. 

It's boring but it works

Sticky End

I saw one in the woods a week ago, but there was not enough light to photograph it. This one, however, was easier to picture because - poor wee thing - it had drowned in a cupful of water in the water-feeders for the donkey stable.


Knifed in the back



This is possibly Leptynia hispanica, but it might be Pijnackeria hispanica, in which case I can make a Scottish connection because the latter feeds exclusively on, er, Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius)... 

Butterly Lovely

...and just because they are good photos, here are a couple of butterflies, photographed on the Croft today. They illustrate a point about butterfly diet - nectar, and rotting fruit... the butterfly equivalent of a land of wine and honey.

As yellow as butter

Cherry licker

A Tankful of Tadpoles

With the lovely wet Spring, our irrigation tank is brimming with tadpoles, with at least two varieties present. I have NO idea how to identify juvenile amphibians, and have already made a mistake in this area, so over to you to tell me what they are:

Heid that, Jimmy

Wet Spring

We have a beatiful wee spring here at the Croft. Opened up by the previous owners, it is marked on the Montseny map as running all year. For the last ten years - thanks to climate change here - the spring has been silent all summer.

But in the six months since December we have had 40% more rain than the average, the wettest spring since 2010. So the spring runs.

A Hungry Donkey Looks at the Thistle*

It's a tough life being a donkey on the Croft. I've put Arran and friends on a diet, and now there are only thistles to eat. It's a delicate process, getting past the prickles...

The straw diet is working well, and I think that the donkeys are beginning to lose weight. They are certainly tucking into their feed.

*With apologies to Hugh MacDiarmid, author of "A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle"

Bugged

When there are between six and ten million species of insect, it can be difficult to define which one you are dealing with. Here are three, of which only the first is reasonably likely to be what I claim it is. The second is possibly what I claim it to be, but the third is a complete mystery.

Marbled White, Melanargia galathea

I photographed the Marbled White - if that is what it is - on a rosemary bush today at the Croft. The second was shot this morning - we found it in the bathroom and popped it onto an oregano plant; I have no idea what its natural habitat is. The colours are spectacular, and the outer surface of the turquoise thorax is covered in tiny bumps. So is this Chrysis ignita, the Ruby Tailed Wasp?

Chrysis of identity

And the third, shot a couple of days ago on a nettle leaf. S/he has distinctive white socks, but here I am completely lost; I can't even identify the Family this chap is from.

I'm in a ... cul de sock

 All comments/ suggestions welcome!

Dumpy Donkeys

It's a cruel alliteration, but really, my donkeys are a wee bit too chubby. 

I have been aware of it for some time, but it took a visit from Amber to confirm my worst suspicions. They have been feasting on cream buns and fly cemetries, sweet drinks and ice creams, and it really has to stop. She gave me a very useful guide from the excellent Donkey Sanctuary, and told me it was time to change the diet.

So here is Marguerita on the new diet.

A life of roughage

It's a diet of mainly barley straw, with a wee bit of hay now and again. It's spring time here, so there is lots to eat - either in the fields, or in the areas of woodland that I enclose for them.

They will be slim for the summer. Or at least, slimmer...

Newt it's Not

I thought that we had spotted newts in the seasonal river ('riera' in Catalan) that flows from our spring. But I did not, of course, have my camera.

So I took the camera, and photographed what I thought was a cute young Marbled Newt, Triturus marmoratus, in our very clean spring water:

Newt to be missed

But I was wrong. My friends over at the Montseny Newt LIFE research programme have told me that it's a juvenile salamander, Salamandra salamandra...

Like the newts, the salamanders need the river while they grow - you can just see her external gills in the picture - but then disappear into the grass and woodland as the riera dries up in the summer.

 I'm still sure we have newts. So I'll keep dropping in to the river to see what I can photograph...