Tags
crane fly, digger wasp, Dragonfly, Flesh Fly, garden, Grove snail, harvestman, hawthorn shield bug, ichneumen wasp, insects, moth, ruddy darter, Suffolk, The Suspected
Another collection of photos I took last year in my garden.
A Grove Snail (Cepaea nemoralis) also known as Dark-lipped Banded Snail. I saw this one on the leaves of a cherry tree sapling.
This is a digger wasp, probably (Ectemnius continuus) or one of several similar species! This insect nests in rotten wood and stocks its burrow with flies.
The Digger Wasp on the right and another unidentified wasp on the left
Another image of the large ichneumon wasp that visited the fennel flowers regularly
This moth came into the house one evening and landed on my notebook. I think it is called The Suspected (Parastichtis suspecta)
Looking at it from another angle
Flesh Fly (Sarcopharga carnaria)
Harvestman (Leiobunum rotundum)
These creatures are closely related to spiders. The second pair of legs, which are longer than the others, are used to feel its way about. Unlike spiders, the harvestman has the head and thorax attached to the abdomen without a dividing waist. There are about 26 species of harvestmen in Britain and their food ranges from small insects to decaying plant material and even bird droppings. They don’t use webs to trap their food but a few of the species use sticky hairs on their mouthparts to ensnare prey.
Another insect that came indoors was the Hawthorn Shield Bug (Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale)
This shield bug feeds on the fruits and leaves of the hawthorn and many other trees and shrubs. It is a ‘stinkbug’ too, because of the stinky fluid it exudes when it is alarmed.
Here it is again.
A Crane Fly – may be Tipula oleracea the Common Cranefly. This is a male.
Ruddy Darter (Sympetrum sanguineum)
Ruddy darter again.
I believe this may be a female Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum)
Hawthorn Shield bug nymph – 5th instar (Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale)
That’s it for now. I have enough photos for just one more post.
A Suffolk Lane 
I love that shot of the snail. What a strange place for it to be! Your photos took some of the chill off my mind. I can’t wait until we can see them all in person again!
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Thank-you Allen! I have been comforting myself through the winter looking through the shots I took last summer and thought I would make a few posts of the better ones I hadn’t published before. I was surprised to see the snail there too but you can see from the stem to the left of the picture that it had been doing snaily things before going to sleep. Your terrible weather can’t last for much longer! Keep safe and warm.
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Great photos, Clare! I love the snail photo. These photos give me hope that our spring is around the corner…even though it was 6 degrees this morning and never got out of the 20s. 😦
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Cold! Cold! It will get warmer eventually! Thank-you for visiting Jill.
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I sure hope so, Clare! 🙂
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I love this post, great photos of some interesting insects, and of course, the snail. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a live snail in the wild before, good eye to catch that one.
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In Britain it is not difficult to see snails. They are everywhere, probably because of the damp conditions we all live in and the fact we have milder winters and cooler summers than you do. They bury themselves in the soil during the coldest parts of the winter and find the shadiest dampest areas in the heat of the summer. When I was nine years old we moved house and I can remember my parents annoyance to find that my sister had brought a whole bucketful of snails with her and had hidden them in the car.
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What a lovely post Clare and the ichneumon wasp shot is really good. So much to look forward to in the Spring and Summer! We went to the talk on Macro moths on monday night, so much to learn and I am not really much further forward but I am determined to be better at identifying them.
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Thank-you, Julie. I find moths really difficult to identify and the tiny ones especially so as there are very few ID books/sites to go to.
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We were shown a couple of ident books but foolishly did not write them down, I’d like to make a light box though and try to study some.
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A light box would be a good idea. In past years when there seemed to be many more moths here than now I used to go outside and look at all the moths on the outside of the windows attracted to the light. I know there is a new micro moth book published by British Wildlife Publishing which I hope to get soon.
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So many visitors. I could do with fly eating wasps in my garden at the moment.
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A wasp’s saving grace as far as I am concerned. Last year was the first year in about a decade that I hadn’t been stung by one.
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Oh I have not had that unfortunate experience…..yet. Maybe not enough wasps about.
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Crane fly. Glad to know the true name, Clare. Thanks. I’ve always called them Gallagher flies, but I haven’t a clue as to why. 🙄
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😀
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