Egg laying Southern Hawker

On the way back from work I popped in my local wildlife garden. I was looking for dragonfly exuviae in the small pond when I gasped: A female Southern Hawker had materialised like out of nowhere and was hovering inches from my face. This is a large and inquisitive dragonfly, with a striking apple green, yellow and black pattern, which often approaches humans when they walk on their flight path. She took no notice of me and landed just by my feet, on the side of the pond-dipping platform. She was egg laying! I watched, mesmerised, how the tip of her abdomen appeared to direct proceedings, making searching movements on the pond lining, in a caterpillar-like fashion. After a few moments she flew low across the rushes growing in the pond, her wings clashing with the leaves. She landed nearby on the shore and started egg laying again. Taking her time, her abdomen appeared to 'look' for crevices amongst the mosses and litter, just a few centimetres over the pond surface.
 There was no male about. Hawkers oviposit on their own. 

Oviposition sites
Hawkers often lay their eggs endophytically, which means inserted into plants, mud or debris or wood on the pond margin, as opposed to exophytically, meaning dispersed on water. However this species appears to often chose odd places as substrate, and indeed, in the space of 10 minutes the female today had probed or laid in several places in the pond:

Probing on pond liner...

on mosses at the pond margin...

...on the decaying leaves of aquatic plants.

on the wooden panels of the pond-dipping platform.

 Having recently read the New Naturalist volume on Dragonflies, I wasn't too surprised. Philip Corbet and Stephen Brooks compiled a list of totally bizarre substrates chosen by Southern Hawker females to lay eggs. These included:
-A brown woolly jumper
-A wellington boot
-Someones ankle
-A dog's rump
-The skin of a Yellow-bellied toad

Corbet and Brooks remarked that in some of these cases the female might be just investigating the suitability of the particular substrate chosen, as opposed to ovipositing.

The Southern Hawker female hovered a few times by the pond and then moved on, hawking low along the garden path by the hedge a few times and exploring the bushes in the typical fashion of the Southern Hawker. This low flight is a behaviour that unfortunately, makes this species a frequent prey of cats.

More information
Klaas-Douwe B Dijkstra. 2006. Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Europe. Illustrated by Richard Lewington. British Wildlife Publishing. 320 pp.

Philip Corbet and Stephen Brooks. 2008. Dragonflies.  The New Naturalist Series. harper Collins Publishers, London. 454 pp.

Another Vapourer encounter

This sunny morning I had to stay at home, as my 7 year old daughter was unwell. On our trip to the doctor I noticed a flying insect I couldn't decide if it was butterfly or moth, it looked like it wanted to settle, so we waited until it did. If finally settled on some railings, flew again and resettled on another part of the railings, and then I realised it was a male Vapourer. This most wonderful of moths! Where there is a male Vapourer settling a female can't be far. Females don't look like moths, they are flightless, their wings reduced to little more than stumps, and they have bulging bodies full of eggs. Females actually move very little in their adult lives, as they just sit on top of their cocoon - which they made as a caterpillar and later emerged - waiting for males to home in their pheromones. Males are a wonderful chestnut colour, a bright moon-shaped white dot on each wing, with feathery antennae, and they fly often during the day.
The male had actually found a female on a corner of the railing and, almost immediately, they mated. I took a few photos with my phone and we carried on.
 On our way back a little later, we checked the railing. The male was gone, but the female wasn't wasting any time, and was busy laying eggs on the remains of her hairy cocoon.

Early Thorn moth

While watering the garden earlier, I disturbed a large moth, an Early Thorn, Selenia dentaria. It settled adopting an unusual posture for a moth: wings up together, like a butterfly dangling from a leaf. Its scalloped wings, general tone and pale crescent mark underneath its wings was very reminiscent of a Comma Butterfly. Both species are very cryptic when resting, resembling a brown, shrivelled up leaf. The moth had a turgid abdomen, a female full of eggs. When I tried to pick it up it played dead, or should I say, it played leaf? It clung sideways to the side of the bug pot, occasionally twitching its legs, and then laid on its side at the bottom of the white bowl. I touched it gently and again twitched its legs, refusing to stand up or fly. After half an hour, it hadn't moved. After 45 min, I went to check again. The moth had climbed to the bug pot and had started to lay eggs! I promptly moved it back to the ivy, from where I had originally disturbed it, but I am the proud owner of 10 Early Thorn eggs. I'll give it a go to rear them when they hatch, as they are generalist feeders. There are two generations of Early Thorn, this moth belongs to the second. The larvae look like dead twigs, the adults like dead leaves. There seems to be a logic to it.

Playing dead

Early thorn laying

My bug pot eggs (note to self: I need a new bug pot!)

I left the moth to lay the rest of her eggs outside.

Marmalade fly ovipositing

Aphids are everywhere now, under tree leaves, on herb stems and on tender bush shoots. But they have many enemies. Amongst them, many hoverfly species are busy egg laying, carefully choosing their oviposition sites to be next to rows of fat aphids. This is my first photo of the year of a Marmalade Fly, Episyrphus balteatus: a female laying on a Wood Avens stem full of aphids. It was the only shot I took before she flew away. Soon their voracious larvae will be munching aphids away.

Egg laying Footballer hoverfly

Footballer hoverflies are commonly seen near water: ditches, ponds and drains, their genus name Helophilus, actually means 'lover of marshes' in Greek. On a little twig over a puddle on the pavement by a busy road, two Helophilus pendulus females - their abdomens large and turgid with eggs - laid. While one of them was busy actually laying under the twig, the other seemed to be 'feeling' the twig with the ovipositor, probably selecting the best site to lay her shiny white eggs. Note the ovipositor stretched out. Helophilus lay their eggs on clumps - like bluebottles - unlike other hoveflies which lay individual eggs singly. This might well be due to their different feeding habits. Many hoverfly larvae are predatory, and being born away from hungry siblings might give them a better chance to find food (like aphids). Helophilus are related to Droneflies, and their larvae, called rat-tailed maggots, are aquatic, and develop on very wet manure or submerged rotting organic material often in large numbers, so they are less likely to compete for food. Their 'tails' are actually long telescopic breathing tubes, that they can retract into their bodies.

 For a great series of shots of Helophilus egg laying and larvae development check BugGuide.

Another shot of the laying female

I turned the twig to reveal the egg clutch after the female lad left. As they lay under the twig, the eggs are not readily visible.