Beautiful Bee-Fly!

I had a call from my sister Tracey, who, knowing my obsession with insects, thought I might be able to enlighten her and identify a flying insect she'd seen in her garden. It hovered like a little Hummingbird and I guessed that it could be a Hummingbird Hawkmoth. I've never seen one, so was suitably jealous when she told me about it!

However, she sent me a photo and as I opened the text message I was delighted to see this little chap - a Bee-Fly, and what a beautiful photo!

They look just like bees with their furry little bodies, but a closer look reveals yellowy-brown hair on the body, long spindly legs and a rather menacing (but completely harmless) long, straight proboscis. 

How I'd love to have seen one in the flesh - well, as it happens, I didn't have to wait too long.

A week or so later I was with the family at Mum and Dad's house for a lazy afternoon eating gorgeous home-cooked food and catching up with everyone, when Bethany came running in from the garden to tell me that she'd seen one hovering by the flowers! I couldn't believe my luck & was thrilled to be able to watch a beautiful Bee-Fly hovering around the Grape Hyacinths along the garden wall.

It chose a flower, hovered ever more closely and inserted it's proboscis in the flower opening, hovering just like a tiny furry Hummingbird, oblivious to my presence.

Needless to say Bethany got extra ice-cream and cuddles after dinner! What a thrill!  

Blue-Tailed Damselfly Action

My finger has just been privileged to have been chosen to be a Blue-Tailed Damselfly's perch for over half an hour! Bethany found it on the floor. It's been a pretty dull day with a few bouts of sunshine - one of which was convincing enough for the Damselfly to believe it was going to be ideal flying time. I guess it must have been cold and needed to increase it's body heat before taking to the air again, because it was walking along the floor looking very sorry for itself. I held out my finger in front of it and it climbed on board and there it stayed. Fortunately for me the skies stayed pretty miserable and grey so it just sat and waited, with it's front feet clasped round the end of my fingernail.

Straight on it looked as though it was staring me out! It was truly stunning. A beautiful specimen, with a shimmery bronze and black abdomen ending in a bright blue patch at the end. The stripes along the thorax were a gorgeous bright green and it's perfection just blew me away.

In need of another Bug-Fix

The other day, as my children ate their breakfast at the dining room table and I stood at the window looking out onto a snow covered garden, I said out loud "oh I can't wait for Spring - I'm missing the bugs".

I spoke too soon... that morning as I combed through Holly's hair I found... a nit egg... and then we had a tummy bug. That was really not what I meant.

However, since then I have seen - a caterpillar and a Lacewing - that's more like it! I reckon the caterpillar came into the house courtesy of my gardener husband's work clothes. I first noticed it at around 9:30am, crawling across the ceiling from the corner of the room. I wasn't sure what to do. I couldn't put it outside - that was just a death sentence in the middle of winter, so I let it crawl aimlessly and it caught my eye every time I walked under it.

At around 5pm we sat down to eat dinner and I looked up and saw that it was heading straight for the smoke alarm. By the time we'd finished eating, it had disappeared, presumably into the smoke alarm! Not sure if that's a good thing or not...

Lacewings are beautiful creatures, like little fairies - their wings are so delicate, just like lace or net. The females have a very nifty way of protecting their eggs from being predated by crawling insects, such as ants. An egg laid directly on a leaf is asking for trouble, so a female lacewing produces a drop of silk which then hardens as it is stretched to make a long thin stalk. Then an individual egg is laid on the end, suspended in mid air, safely away from predators! Genius.

Roll on Summer!

Winter Bug Sports!

I was getting withdrawal symptoms - there are few bugs about in the depths of winter, but my daughters found a Snail Racing printout whilst we were having a January clear out, so we made it and had our very own Snail Race!

I really didn't think they'd manage to find any snails, but they came back into the house with no less than 32 little "snailets" (my children are well trained in bug hunting)!

Spikey (Orange), Sticky (purple) and Smelly (green) raced to the finish... and the winner was... Smelly!!!

You'll be pleased to hear that no snails were harmed during the making of this race and we released them all back into the wild, exactly where we found them!

Happy Days!

Lovely (?) Lily Beetles

The Lily Beetle is a bit of a love-hate-love critter for me. Beautiful and fascinating it's hard to dislike them until you try to grow your own Lilies...

This one here, along with all her posse has managed to all but destroy my beautiful white lily plant. Three years after receiving it as a gift from hubby for our Wedding Anniversary, it's a shadow of it's former self.

However, as insects go, they are pretty cool. Firstly, that scarlet red colour is very exotic and I love the way they drop from the leaves onto their backs the moment you touch them, skillfully disguising their bright colour and pretending to be dead. Apparently they squeak too, if you try to handle them, but I have surprised myself by not attempting to try it yet.

Their larvae are brilliant in that they disguise themselves as dollops of bird mess by covering themselves in their own poo!! Utterly gross, but wow, it'd put anything off!

I may have to try that squeaking thing... gently of course.

Autumn already?

I'm getting the idea that the wildliife around these parts have decided it's Autumn. It's only August!

Mainly it's the spiders. I've found two or three male house spiders in the last few days, all in the bathroom. Actually maybe it's the same one... I do chuck them out, but they try to get back in.

You can tell they are (or "it is") male because of the enlarged palps, the mouthparts.

Autumn is the House Spider's mating season and the males start moving out from their hiding places in search of females.

I would love to shrink to spider size and watch the hunts and scavenging that goes on in my house of a night! We have countless wolf spiders in our garden, around our patio. They like to sun themselves. A couple have found their way into the house and made little silk funnels in dark corners.

We had one that lived just outside the shoe cupboard and one that lived under the tumble dryer. I would see them quite regularly waiting for their dinner to step onto their territory.

Late at night I've seen Silverfish racing across the floors and found a Daddy Long Legs Spider carrying a dead one up a wall the other week! It made me think of a scavenging hyena. After all, Daddy Long Leg Spiders are scavengers too.

Can you imagine what it must be like at night, like a Kenyan desert plain, an epic of life and death! I'd love to see it.

Snail Sexy Time

Apologies for the use of the following irritating phrase, but there is no choice;


Oh.   My.   God.


I have just seen a snail's sex organs...


I should set the scene before I launch into a fascinating description.


Sultry August Sunday afternoon, cousin's beautiful Victorian cottage garden, impending summer BBQ, the girls are arguing over a snail...

And so it begins. To appease my rowing children and save a poor lowly snail from becoming an innocent bystander mutilated during a riot, I started to hunt for more snails and spotted two in an old pot behind the shed. They were stuck together and I presumed sheltering in a cool spot away from the heat of the sun... but I was wrong.

I pulled them apart and at first I thought they had parasites growing on them, before I twigged that actually I had just interrupted a passionate mollusc moment.

It was utterly fascinating. Each one had a white growth protruding from the side of its head (some sort of lady bits) and what looked to me to be a piece of fishing wire next to it (a snail penis!). It was one of those scenes that you can't help but keep looking at even though it makes you feel a bit queasy.

They had realised their sexual liaison was over, so I quickly called the girls over and we watched them sucking their own sex organs back inside their bodies and turn once again into a couple of innocent snails.

What can I say? It was a brilliant afternoon. The BBQ wasn't too bad either.