30 June 2017

We visited Apedale in the morning – it was a greyish morning, quite murky and muggy, and it had been raining in the night.

View over Newcastle towards St Margaret’s Church

View towards Chesterton (with Danny)

We saw quite a few bees and hoverflies, and some other bugs too.

This is a buff-tailed bee on some cow parsley:

Dad has identified this hoverfly as a volucella inflata – or the Cossus hoverfly – he’s enjoying some brambles:

We think this is a tapered drone fly – Eristalis pertinax – another hoverfly:

An easy way to tell the difference between a hoverfly and a bee is hoverflies have very big eyes.

We think this is a tapered drone fly again – this time on some thistles:

We spotted another scorpion fly on the brambles:

Here’s another hoverfly – this time we think it looks a bit like a wasp. We think it might be a migrant hoverfly – eupeodes corollae: It is flying into the trumpet of  some greater bindweed or white convolvulus:

Another hoverfly -two pics of the same insect:

This is Epistrophe grossulariae:

This little beetle is some kind of Altica beetle – maybe Altica lythri or Altica palustris (which apparently are almost indistinguishable).

There were lots of ringlets and meadow browns fluttering around, but it is very hard to get a photo of a meadow brown, they don’t stay still for long. Here’s a ringlet:

And two ringlets mating:

We uncovered a nest of yellow meadow ants. They were running around to collect their eggs, after we accidentally picked up the snail shell on the top of the nest:

There were lovely patches of rosebay willowherb (Chamaenerion angustifolium):

And the bees were flocking round the common self-heal (prunella vulgaris):

Danny did some climbing, and found it very hard to get back down the tree because the branches were so slippy, but he got down safely eventually.

A willow tree – photographed by Danny

We met a lovely labrador-type dog called Pepe (who was named after a clown) and then two other big dogs (one a Weimaraner), and Tom gave one of them a little dog biscuit, but we can’t remember what they were called. We must remember to make a note of the names when we get home!