A Year in the Valley

Many times I have been out and not spotted anything new, but over the last couple of weeks, this has changed and there seems to have been a bug or a biennial that I didn’t see last summer.  This evening I went for an evening walk round the watermeadow and spotted a white crane fly.  I believe it’s an Erioptera flavata but I can’t find any information about habitat or lifeline, other than “damp forest”.  It has a tiny head with beady black eyes, a cone-shaped thorax, and an orange-tinted abdomen underneath sheer wings, which are kept closed when resting.  This is unusual for most crane-flies but note that it only has one pair of wings.  The hind wings are reduced to little pin-shaped stubs called halteres, and you can just see the little pinheads sticking out at the sides.  all  It was flying across the watermeadow and landing on the pendulous sedge, which is pretty much growing into a damp forest!

Three of our alder saplings have died, just at budding.  They are in different places in the watermeadow – one over the opposite side of the stream, one halfway down ‘Weasel Walk’ and another at the foot of the decking.  I checked out the symptoms of Alder dieback, which is mainly bleeding and red scars on the bark and none of them have that.  They were all tall and strong-looking compared to their peers – and in good health until their buds failed to open.  I’ve been checking them regularly hoping they will sprout leaves.  I spotted this little brown beetle on the one in Weasel Walk.  A Galerucella, like the black-margined loosestrife beetle, it is brown and amber with a slightly different shape and dark brown markings.  The best indicator of species is the host plant.  However, the brown willow beetle can be found in the damp grassland of alder carr as well as willow.  Here, it has both as mature willows overhang the path.