The Winter Ball

The sun appeared shyly behind the clouds after a shower. It is milder than in the last few days today and I wandered out in the garden to try and get some shots of the Winter Gnats (Trichoceridae). These are dipterans which are active on the winter months. Males gather in swarms from a few to dozens of individuals in assembly points over prominent bushes or trees and fly bobbing up and down. If you can get close to the swarm they might take you as their 'assembly point' and dance over your head. Occasionally each individual alights on the bushes. That's how I got the still shot of one.

Females enter the swarm to chose a male and mate.
Other than the Winter Gnats there was little active buglife in the garden. Three 7 Spot Ladybirds are hibernating in between the leaves of the Monkey Puzzle.

Hibernating 7-Spot ladybirds

Giant garden spider

Some individual garden spiders, familiarly installed in strategic spots in the garden have disappeared in the last weeks, probably after laying their eggs and spinning a cocoon around them in a safe, dry corner. I came across this magnificent female, going on a walkabout. The largests I've seen (a 1 p coin for comparison).

Halloween peacock

It has been a very mild Autumn so far. Today, temperatures rose over 15 oC. A butterfly fluttered over my head. I thought it could be a Red Admiral. Fortunately, it settled to sunbathe on a white, south facing wall, and using my camera telephoto I was able to take a picture and identify it as a Peacock. It is the latest active Peacock I have seen since I started to record butterflies in 2003.

This is the usual phenology of Peacocks in my grid square (TA0830). A single brooded species, adults break hibernation in April, breed, and the next generation is on the wing in July. Butterflies usually start hibernation in early September.

Eyed Beauty

After their slow start this year, Harlequins are around with a vengeance. There are some railings near my local park literally covered on larvae, pupae and adults, presumably all need to emerge as adults before the winter sets. When my daughter came running to show me a ladybird I though it would be another harlequin. But it was instead a very nice surprise: an Eyed Ladybird, Anatis ocellata, the largest ladybird in the UK. This species is associated to conifers and there are not many in the park so it appeared a bit misplaced.

Eyed Ladybird

Window frame spider

Zygiella spinning its web on a garden railing

Suddenly, most of the summer bugs seem to have disappeared to leave your usual autumn suspects: wasps, a few Bombus pascuorum, garden spiders and plenty of flies. There is a common bug, though, that hangs on year round. It is the window frame spider, Zygiella x-notata. This species is an orb spider (related to the Garden Spider, Araneus diadematus) which spins its webs on gates, window frames, wheelie bins and other flat surfaces associated to human constructions. The web is quite recognisable, as it has a sector with no connecting threads in it, it is thought to be adapted to be built in such flat dimensions by keeping the signal thread free from getting tangled in the sticky connecting threads. The signal thread runs in the middle of this sector and allows the spider to detect any vibrations due to insects trapped in it. During the day, the spider hides in a silky tube on a corner, with the first pair of legs touching the signal thread that leads to its web. At night she is often seen either just outside the retreat or on the web, in a more similar way to garden spiders.

A Zygiella x-notata web on a garden gate. The spider's retreat is on the top right-hand corner. Note the signal thread and the 'empty' segment on the orb

This one used to live inside the kitchen window.

Eventually, she laid her eggs and spun a cocoon for them. She sat on the cocoon until she died.