![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wildlife
Ponds can be very theraputic.
Ours is still changing as things establish - I suspect it will be a year or more
before it fully stabilises. In the interim, the changes are interesting. The
hot weather hampered many of the plants getting established. The mosquito larve
nibbled some of them to shreds. (George has yet to put in an appearance -
missing presumed dead) The recent rough weather seems to have trimmed the
number of larvae (I'm guessing they don't like rough water on the surface as
they breath through a sort of snorkel). Instead, there's been a sudden
explosion in the population of daphnea (water fleas). I can see clouds of them
a few inches below the surface. I don't mind them - they're totally harmless
and make good food for all sorts of things (I used to buy them for my goldfish
in the days when I kept fish indoors). Got visited by a male broad-back chaser
- a heavy bodied dragonfly with a wonderful blue body colour. Also a damsel fly
- vivid electric blue body - can't tell exact species unless it rests on a twig
when I have the book to hand. There's a lot of similar species of damsel fly
which are basically told apart by the black bands across the body. Until I got
the book, I'd never even noticed that there were any bands...
I went down the local nature reserve (Corfe Mullen Meadow) two days ago.
There's lots of knapweed (a purple flower found in cornfields and the like).
Inside the flower heads, looking like part of the flower itself, are these tiny
(no more than a millimetre in length) irridescent beetles. They reflect the
colour of the flower and look a beautiful black/purple colour. Absolutely
beautiful.
I like the meadow. It has nothing large or spectacular, but the changing
pattern of flowers and insects throughout the year can be very relaxing to
watch. There's also lots of six spot Burnet moths there at present. Those
stumped me when I initially saw them last year; there were lots of them among
the flowers on a bright sunny day. I'd no idea what this insect with black
wings with bright red spots was. It looked too small to be a butterfly, but I
knew I liked them, whatever they were. I eventually saw a picture of one in a
nature reserves book when I was looking for something else entirely and went -
'that's my funny insect!'.
Ours is still changing as things establish - I suspect it will be a year or more
before it fully stabilises. In the interim, the changes are interesting. The
hot weather hampered many of the plants getting established. The mosquito larve
nibbled some of them to shreds. (George has yet to put in an appearance -
missing presumed dead) The recent rough weather seems to have trimmed the
number of larvae (I'm guessing they don't like rough water on the surface as
they breath through a sort of snorkel). Instead, there's been a sudden
explosion in the population of daphnea (water fleas). I can see clouds of them
a few inches below the surface. I don't mind them - they're totally harmless
and make good food for all sorts of things (I used to buy them for my goldfish
in the days when I kept fish indoors). Got visited by a male broad-back chaser
- a heavy bodied dragonfly with a wonderful blue body colour. Also a damsel fly
- vivid electric blue body - can't tell exact species unless it rests on a twig
when I have the book to hand. There's a lot of similar species of damsel fly
which are basically told apart by the black bands across the body. Until I got
the book, I'd never even noticed that there were any bands...
I went down the local nature reserve (Corfe Mullen Meadow) two days ago.
There's lots of knapweed (a purple flower found in cornfields and the like).
Inside the flower heads, looking like part of the flower itself, are these tiny
(no more than a millimetre in length) irridescent beetles. They reflect the
colour of the flower and look a beautiful black/purple colour. Absolutely
beautiful.
I like the meadow. It has nothing large or spectacular, but the changing
pattern of flowers and insects throughout the year can be very relaxing to
watch. There's also lots of six spot Burnet moths there at present. Those
stumped me when I initially saw them last year; there were lots of them among
the flowers on a bright sunny day. I'd no idea what this insect with black
wings with bright red spots was. It looked too small to be a butterfly, but I
knew I liked them, whatever they were. I eventually saw a picture of one in a
nature reserves book when I was looking for something else entirely and went -
'that's my funny insect!'.
no subject