More skippers!

The sun shone finally after a wet and cool week. We popped in the wildlife garden in the afternoon. The knapweed, a favourite feeding plant for the skippers is now flowering in the meadow. Both species were very active, a male Large Skipper fed on the flowers, showing its long tongue.

A male Small Skippers followed a female fluttering behind her, but then appeared to lose interest, quickly losing her and perching, maybe she was already mated? The female settle to feed almost next to him and I just managed to take a photo with both in the frame: the male is in the foreground.

 

 We watched possibly the same female later as she was searching for suitable oviposition sites, which in the case of Small Skippers is Yorkshire Fog grass.  She settled and started a curious dance on the long grass stems, her swollen abdomen curved and everted, its tip touching the stem, and she moved circling around and up like moonwalking. We didn't actually see any eggs (they must be tiny!), but this confirms that the garden has a breeding population.

This gif showis a short sequence of egg laying behaviour:

Small Skippers

There were many territorial male Small Skippers in a meadow area in the outskirts of town. The males look like little, golden triangles perched on grass tips or flower heads, which dart after passing butterflies hoping for a female skipper. Males and female skippers are easy to tell apart when perched, as males have a dark line parallel to the edge of their forewings, the 'sex brand'. The photo above shows a female, below, a male. Both sexes were enjoying the plentiful creeping thistle flowers.

Summery wildlife garden

A walk around the lush meadows of the wildlife garden yielded a number of invertebrate sightings. The day flying Six Spot Burnet moths, with their bright red-pink and dark metallic wings feasted on the knapweed (above).

A Meadow Brown feeds on the abundant oregano.

I caught a Small Skipper and a Six spot burnet on knapweed.

These are two shots of Small Skippers, one of my favourite butterflies. The way they carry their wings, held at different angles, instead of pressed together like other butterflies, is quite characteristic.

On the grass, there were many nursery webs of the nursery web spider Pisaura mirabilis. With a bit of patience, the guarding females could be spotted on or under the tents. She guards the eggs, and then the spiderlings which hatch inside the nursery web and remain in it for a few days.

A female Pisaura mirabilis.

My first summer generation Comma Butterfly.

And the first Gatekeepers. These two weren't wasting any time and were mating

Male Gatekeeper.

A Ringlet sat atop a ragwort inflorescence. Once I got closer, I realised the butterfly was dead, prey for a spider that often builds its web under flowers, Enophlognatha ovata.

This large hoverfly is one of my favourites, Chrysotoxum festivum. I often see a male hovering over the pond in the wildlife garden.

I took this shot on the 9th of July this year of the hovering male.

And in the oregano, a cuckoo bumblebee, Bombus ruderarius rupestris which parasitizes the similar looking Bombus lapidarius.

Darting Small skippers

A grassy area in the little wildlife garden near where I live is managed like a meadow, cut once a year. The grass is long and lush now, peppered with a range of wildfowers. One of the insects that benefits from this arrangement is the Small Skipper, Thymelicus sylvestris. The males of this golden brown, little butterfly dart around the meadow, stopping to feed or sunny themselves occassionally. The larval food plant of this species is Yorkshire Fog, a common rough grass. The adults emerge in mid June and fly in a single generation until August. They like to feed on clovers, bird's foot trefoil, restarrows, knapweeds, thistles, brambles and hawkbits. This is another butterfly species thought to have benefited from recent climate warming in the U.K. It now inhabits most of England and Wales, with its range having moved north about 100 km in the last 25 years.

A male, the same individual as above, resting on Bird's Foot trefoil. Male skippers can be distinguished from females by their "sex-brand", a dark like in the middle of their forewings.