Dordogne: Solitary Wasps and other Insects

Potter Wasp side view on Fennel
Potter/Mason Wasp with very long yellow waist, side view on Fennel, taking nectar
Ammophila pubescens, a small sandwasp
Ammophila pubescens, the smaller sandwasp
An all-black spider-hunting wasp
An all-black spider-hunting wasp, also taking Fennel nectar

Today the morning sun blazed from a clear blue sky and the air around the tall handsome Fennel outside the kitchen swarmed with insects of all shapes and sizes, hastening to benefit from the plant’s abundant nectar. Among the visitors were the large black-and-yellow potter wasp, a small sand-wasp (Ammophila pubescens) – still a largish wasp, and a handsome species with its red and black abdomen – and an all-black spider-hunting wasp, like an Anoplius (and maybe of that genus) but without the red bands on the abdomen. Also enjoying the feast were many tiny solitary bees and a good number of flies of different species, including one with a long bristly red cylindrical abdomen, as well as what look very much like ordinary social wasps. A single red-and-black striped Trichodes alvearius beetle joined in.

Strangalia maculata on Mint
Strangalia maculata, stingless but with colours mimicking those of wasps, on Mint
Sooty Copper on Mint
Sooty Copper on Mint

The garden Mint, now coming into full bloom, had an almost entirely different set of insects on and around it, including large flies (preyed on by Crab Spiders), a Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle, and a Sooty Copper. Half a dozen Gatekeeper butterflies chased about; a Wall Lizard scurried down the wall on the lookout for insect prey. A Large Skipper perched for nectar.

 Immature male Common Darter on Cherry twig
Immature male Common Darter on Cherry twig

In the evening, two dragonflies hunted over the lawn. A Small Pincertail hawked up and down, its abdomen showing a roughly striped yellow and black appearance as it flashed past, wheeling up and turning aerobatically like a military helicopter over the box hedge. A Common Darter chose a perch at the end of any of three bare twigs on the Cherry, darting up like a Flycatcher, hovering, and landing again, often on the same perch. It was hard to see its markings against the light, even with binoculars, but by stalking it with the camera and adjusting the brightness and contrast it was possible to see its orange coloration and rather plain markings, as well as clear wings, excluding Yellow-Winged and Ruddy Darters, both of which I’ve seen here.

A distinctly battered Silver-Washed Fritillary, warming itself after feeding in the shade
A distinctly battered Silver-Washed Fritillary, warming itself on a rock after feeding in the shade
A small brown Mantis, unknown species
A small brown Mantis, unknown species

This rather beautiful small Mantis with a ‘millefiore bead’ pattern on its eye was resting on the kitchen shutters. I’ve never seen the species before: it is much shorter than the common green Praying Mantis of Europe that we get here (mainly on chalk, but also in sandy clay meadows), and it is probably well camouflaged in brownish grass or vegetation. The wings are surprisingly clear, so there is no startling ‘deimatic’ flash of bright colour available from the forewings. There seems no doubt, though, about the ‘praying’ front legs (I almost said ‘arms’).

Other insect visitors include Southern White Admiral and Scarce Swallowtail (actually commoner here than the ‘Common’ Swallowtail, a fast flier which we sometimes see).

Dordogne: Crab spiders, male and female (Misumena vatia)

 

Crab Spider: male on female on mint flowerhead
Crab Spider: male on female on mint flowerhead

A spidery surprise. The garden mint is now in full flower, attracting a wide range of flies, bees, and other insects. Lying in wait are three Crab Spiders, which look mainly white to us, but are seemingly invisible to other insects. One of them was this morning visited by a small black-and-gold spider, apparently of quite a different kind judging by its body shape, coloration and large chelicerae; it hung onto her large globular abdomen for an hour or so, not seeming to do any harm, and certainly not appearing to mate. The male, for such it is, is far smaller than the conspicuous female. Whether he often ends up as a meal or not, he is impressively different from the female of the species Misumena vatia.

Dordogne: From Ticklist to Friends (26 July 2014)

When I first acquired a macro lens for my camera, I raced about the meadows, photographing every insect I could: and many of them were species new to me, though I must have seen them flying past (or away) many times. For the close-up lens and detailed images gave me something I had never had: the ability to study shy insects as if I had caught them and pinned them to a Victorian collector’s card. Suddenly those speckled orange butterflies resolved themselves into Spotted Fritillaries, or for that matter Glanville, Queen of Spain, Silver-Washed, Small Pearl-Bordered and High Brown Fritillaries. It was a revelation, and a delight.

It was also sobering: in all my journeys around the British Isles, the only Fritillary I ever saw was a Small Pearl-Bordered, and that was on the north coast of Cornwall, only a few miles from Land’s End, as if almost the whole of Britain had been scrubbed clean of butterflies, but a few remote corners with the last few surviving individuals had somehow been overlooked.

But as far as rural France was concerned, once up in the wooded hills with their mosaic of old coppiced woodland, little meadows, fruit trees and ponds around old tumbledown farms and barns, or out on such steep chalk grassland hillsides as remain, the butterflies, beetles and wild flowers remained much as they must have been a century ago. I clicked away and framed a postcard-sized print of each species, 8 to a clipframe, and returned each day to the meadows to photograph more.

 

Lady Orchid in Dordogne
Lady Orchid in Dordogne

It was the same with the flowers, especially on the chalk, as soon as I finally managed to get down here in springtime to see the orchids, rather than in high summer to see dry brown grass (and perhaps burnt-out orchid seed-heads, the colour of well-cooked toast). Everywhere there were Pyramidal Orchids and Chalk Fragrant Orchids, so numerous as to have a wealth of variation in size, shape and height, evidently frequently hybridizing. In damper places were Early Purple Orchids; and here and there were species I had never seen in Britain – Lizard, Military, Lady, Green-Winged, Fly, and Butterfly Orchids. They all went on the wall, printed as close-ups.

A green longhorn beetle with black spots
A green longhorn beetle with black spots: I’m delighted to learn from the Romanian Longhorn Project that it’s Saperda punctata (Linnaeus, 1767)

As for the beetles, the only really large species that I’d seen at all frequently in England was the Stag Beetle. Here, I photographed at least 8 species of Longhorn, from the mighty Tanner to two kinds of wasp-coloured beetle (Clytus and Strangalia) and a magnificent green kind with black spots, Saperda punctata. The Romanian Longhorn Project kindly identified it from the photo, saying that it is protected in Central Europe: such splendid insects are becoming rare, and not only in England.

Waspish beetle: Strangalia maculata on Mint
Waspish beetle: Strangalia maculata on Mint

Yet perhaps it was really the wasps that caught my eye and stole my heart. Yes, wasps. As well as ordinary-sized social wasps, the area was home to great spherical nests of the European (Red) Hornet and the new, darker, slimmer and far more aggressive Asiatic Hornet. And besides those were Sphecid or Digger Wasps of many kinds, all solitary and often handsome; Ichneumons with narrow waists and enormously long ovipositors like overgrown stings (though wasp stings are actually modified ovipositors, so only females have them); and marvellously beautiful and imposing Potter Wasps with black and yellow legs and long slender yellow waists. These are shy and wary of large animals, so photographing them was always a challenge: but eventually I managed it.

Now, as the years go by, I find I recognize these insects not only by their size and shape and patterns, but by their habits of flight, the kind of weather that brings them out, which plants they like to visit, where they nest. In short, they have become familiar: and with familiarity has come a comfortable feeling of friendship and of being at home, of things being in their right places. The excitement of the new has been replaced by the appreciation of this particular ecosystem, where ‘eco’ means what its Greek etymology implies: οικος (oikos), house: this is my and their home, the place where we live together.

 

Roofing in Harmony with Nature

One of the constant difficulties with talking about nature is deciding whether man is part of it or not. People constantly talk about liking nature, or working with nature, or conserving nature, as if it were a separate thing like clay or copper that one could consider objectively, and might interact with or not according to taste and profession. And when people choose to watch a nature film instead of a Nordic detective series, they are exactly choosing to reflect on some aspect of nature when they otherwise would not do so.

But if we instead appreciate that nature is all-encompassing: that the environment begins at the end of my nose and continues to the end of the universe (as some wag of an ecologist had it in the 1960s), then we have no choice but to interact with it, for good or ill. And if we observe that, like other animals, we eat other organisms – animals, plants and fungi, and occasionally bacteria and algae too – then we are clearly part of the global ecosystem. Further, the insects that bite us, the worms, flukes, parasitic amoebae and bacteria that cause us disease, and the bacteria that break down our bodies after death show that we play many roles in that ecosystem, not simply that of consumer or top predator.

In short, man is in many ways a part of nature, and one could say that the main problem with the natural vs artificial distinction is the idea that anything is outside nature. Bees make honeycombs; potter and mason wasps make houses of mud; chimpanzees and crows make tools; man makes spears and hand-axes and wheels and computers and nuclear weapons: it’s all part of nature.

From that point of view, everything we make is natural, and any judgement on a thing must be on grounds of taste (aesthetics) or efficiency (how well does it do its job, at what cost). It isn’t possible to do anything that isn’t part of nature, part of the world, but things can be done well and attractively, or not. The question of what ‘cost’ means is a large one, but one cost on a planet of fixed size is the use of non-renewable materials. We may, for example, use as much paper as we like, as long as we plant as many trees as we cut down, and the processing does not poison the rest of the ecosystem. Similarly, we may use as much glass as we like, as long as we recycle it after use, preferably efficiently (by washing it out and refilling it, rather than smashing it up and re-melting it, though melting and reusing is better than nothing).

Ceramics, on the other hand, are more problematic. Like glass, they are made from quarried materials; but once fired, they can generally not be re-melted, so they are hard to recycle. We should have very good reasons to use such materials; and we should find ways to recycle them.

Rooves across much of the south of Europe are traditionally made of moulded terracotta, an Italian word that descriptively means ‘cooked earth’, ‘fired earth’. The traditional variety comes in many colours and varying shapes. The colours range through whitish buff; pale or deep ochre; reddish brown; brownish purple, and combinations and intergradations of these basic tones. The shapes vary from quite sharply cambered to rather flat, specially at the broader end; and both size and weight vary rather considerably. The effect on a roof – still better, on a whole town of such rooves – is of diversity of colour and line, with overall harmony of tone and style. The speckled and dithered appearance of such a roof is reminiscent of the ‘abrash’ that makes a traditional, hand-made, vegetable-dyed Turkish carpet such a lovely and valuable thing. Nothing is exactly uniform or mechanical; but the whole is a skilfully-crafted work of art, strong, colourful and useful, and to many people’s eyes much finer than anything that can be made in a factory in imitation of it.

Modern clay roof-tiles are made in identical moulds, filled by machine with a fixed amount of evenly-mixed and coloured clay, and fired for an identical period in an oven of exactly-controlled temperature. All the resulting tiles are the same orangey-red, and you might expect them to be stronger and more durable than traditional tiles, in compensation for their deficiency in colour and abrash.

But they’re not. The new tiles are many times more vulnerable to frost damage than traditional terracotta. Why this should be is a matter of speculation: perhaps the factory uses any clay it can get, with no regard to frost resistance; perhaps indeed it uses the cheapest clay on the market, who knows. Or perhaps it tests a sample of its tiles for a short period – say, 5 years – and is happy to sell its products certified as having passed such a test, knowing they are of that specific quality. The traditional tiles carried no such certificate: their badge of quality was that the maker, like his father before him, was known and trusted to produce strong, durable tiles that could last a lifetime, and they did. Perhaps ‘harmony with nature’ means having a long-term, personal business relationship with your roof supplier.

Factory-made roof tiles flaked by frost
Factory-made roof tiles flaked by frost

The tiles shown in this photo have worn thin as frost has successively split flakes from their surfaces. Once the initial surface has flaked off, water penetrates more easily, and frost breaks more and more of the tile until it shatters in wind, rain and especially hail. To be sure, a severe (50-year) hailstorm can smash strong new tiles, but it will do far more damage to an already weakened roof.

On the recycling front, I found the split and broken tiles ideal for filling in holes in a track. It’s quite a humble form of reuse, but reuse it certainly is.

The rest of a traditional house, too, was made of local materials – stone, lime rather than cement (perfect for allowing lizards and solitary bees to nest in the walls), timber from the forest. When anything needed replacing, further materials were close to hand, and the old materials hardly needed recycling: they simply returned whence they came.

Maybe modern construction has something to learn from traditional methods. And maybe true sustainability is rather harder than glib talk of ‘sustainable development’ would suggest.

Tourbières de Vendoire and Plateau d’Argentine (24 July 2014)

Dryad on Smooth Sow-Thistle
Dryad on Smooth Sow-Thistle

There were Dryad butterflies all over beside the paths on the fen peat of the Tourbières, the old peat workings (the French word Tourbe is cognate with our ‘turf’, a block of peat for the fire).

Turtle Doves cooed peacefully as we arrived, and continued the whole time.

Vendoire is one of the best wet meadow areas in all of Aquitaine, with its shallow fen pools and alkaline peat making it a wonderful place for dragonflies. Today, there were Keeled Skimmers all over, making local dashes low over the water; Blacktailed Skimmers here and there, dashing about widely; a pair of Emperors; Scarlet Darters fiercely territorial; White-legged damselflies; Common Bluetail damselflies; Banded Demoiselles; some Small Pincertails on the chalky entrance path.

Marsh Frogs, Rana ridibunda, lived up to their Latin name (‘laughing frog’) with hilarious, loud laughing song (“what’s that bird?”) during our picnic. Around the peat-ponds are woods and Carr of Ash, Alder, Willow, Sallow, Alder Buckthorn, and wet meadow with long grass rich in flowers.

A single Hobby came overhead, its slender Swift-like wings scything, presumably hawking for dragonflies. A Rose Chafer whirred heavily into the air from the scented Meadowsweet and Purple Loosestrife.

Purple Loosestrife at Tourbieres de Vendoire
Purple Loosestrife at Tourbieres de Vendoire
Alder Buckthorn
Alder Buckthorn

Among the butterflies, Large Skipper, Dryad, Gatekeeper, Mallow Skipper, Meadow Brown, Speckled Wood, Common Blue, Holly Blue. The attractive and common micro-moth Pyrausta purpuralis too.

Pyrausta purpuralis, a handsome micro-moth in the Pyralid family
Pyrausta purpuralis, a handsome micro-moth in the Pyralid family
Mallow Skipper, a rewarding insect to find
Mallow Skipper, a rewarding insect to find

Plateau d’Argentine

Glanville Fritillary
One of the delights of France is that species like Glanville Fritillary, almost gone from Britain, are still fairly common

This wonderful reserve, if such it is – it’s still used to launch aircraft, not military any more but hang-gliders – is a flat bare plateau of hard limestone, topped with dry calcareous grassland and scrubby trees, rich in flowers like Viper’s Bugloss, Horseshoe Vetch, Knapweed, Autumn Squill, Eyebright and Devilsbit Scabious, as well as Orchids in springtime, and alive with butterflies. The temperature reached 33 degrees on this sunny afternoon, the Common Blue and Glanville Fritillary butterflies seemingly unaffected by the heat.

Common Blue on Autumn Squill at Plateau d'Argentine
Common Blue on Autumn Squill, a delicate-looking blue flower of calcareous grassland at Plateau d’Argentine

Back at base, a hairy black-and-red striped beetle, Trichodes alvearius visited the Fennel, remaining wary of approach. The very large, black-and-yellow-legged Sand Wasp did the same; it’s tricky to observe as its eyesight is so good.

Dordogne: Inhabitants of this house (23 July 2014)

Humans are the most obvious inhabitants, but definitely not the most numerous. The others include:

House Mice (frequently, in loft and whenever food is provided in the kitchen)

Stone Martens (occasionally, in the loft)

Potter and Mason Wasps (making nest pots in the walls)

Wall Lizards (visible any warm day)

Spiders, the ones with very long thin legs, that shake their bodies to warn off predators (we chase them out but there are always more)

Woodworm (never quite eliminated, despite best efforts)

Hornets (just a few, trying to nest in a hole much too small for a proper Hornets’ Nest, unless they’ve found a way right through into the loft, let’s hope not).

Common wasps, too, much as above.

Black Redstarts (well, they stalk the roofline at dusk, as owners of the place; they nest in a hedge nearby)

Meal moths (still living on 50-year-old cereal dust remaining from when the house was a working farm)

Today a White Admiral, a Brimstone female, and a Silver-Washed Fritillary paid visits.

Dordogne: Betony (22 July 2014)

Betony, Stachys officinalis
Betony, Stachys officinalis

Betony, Stachys officinalis, is as its ‘official’ specific name indicates, a medicinal herb used, without scientific proof, “to treat anxiety, gallstones, heartburn, high blood pressure, migraine and neuralgia, and to prevent sweating. It can also be used as an ointment for cuts and sores” (according to Wikipedia). It is widespread across Europe, but unobtrusive, though its handsomely crenellated leaves with their long stalks, and the largish flower with a tube longer than the calyx, make it a rewarding find. Once you know it, you’ll see it everywhere.

Lower leaf of Betony
Lower leaf of Betony

Lower leaf of Betony: the stalk is longer than the leaf-blade, and the basal leaves form a persistent rosette.

Dordogne: Thunderstorms and Parachutes (20 July 2014)

The day dawned bright but unsettled after a stormy night that brought down many small branches, with the news that an outdoor concert in the local market town was disrupted by lightning, sending several people to hospital. One may imagine that once a paid-for concert is under way, a few rumbles of thunder and a little rain do not necessarily cause instant abandonment of the event: a direct hit is of course another matter.

I made use of the cool weather to cut a low branch from the Yew tree, giving shady space to walk and sit on the lawn. The Yew is next to a (very good) Fig, but the two could not be more different. The Fig rapidly sends out a cluster of long flexible shoots that quickly flop over and block the way; they are soft but brittle, and are easily sliced off. In a hard winter, all the above-ground parts of the tree died back, but it soon shot up again; none of the branches are specially long-lived, even the thickest of them. The Yew grows around a single vertical axis, where the seedling grew half a century ago. It is still, as Yews go, a young tree: some live a thousand years or more. The wood is tinged with a rich deep winy red, and is hard, tough, and springy. It was the perfect choice for making longbows: durable, water-resistant, practically impossible to break. Sawing through it is a challenge. Below the cut branch, I saw after felling it, was a little clump of Collared Parachute mushrooms, which Sterry and Hughes record as ‘very rarely under conifers’. I suppose Yew is not a typical conifer.

Collared Parachute mushroom
Collared Parachute mushroom

Collared Parachute mushroom, Marasmius rotula, showing off its elegant ‘parachute’, collar, and wheel effect (Latin rotula = little wheel). The stem is perhaps a millimetre thick, but quite strong and flexible.

Collared Parachutes under Yew
Collared Parachutes under Yew

I carted the cut pieces to the compost heap. The trees began to rustle and shake, the sky darkened abruptly, thunder rumbled and the rain lashed down again. Parachuting to safety seemed an appropriate metaphor.

Dordogne: Sunflowers above the riding-stables (17 July 2014)

 

Young Swallows in barn
Young Swallows in barn

The riding stables swarmed with young Swallows, perhaps 15 of them growing strong for the flight down to Africa, twittering, swooping, perching on lofty cables.

Sunflower
Sunflower

On the hill, maize and sunflowers grew in glorious profusion, the bees drunk on nectar and coated with yellow pollen.

Pollen-dusted Bee on Sunflower
Pollen-dusted Bee on Sunflower

Along the chalk path, Common Blue butterflies skipped and perched on chicory flowers, delicate blue. In the bushy hedge, masses of darkly glossy plums blooming with pale blue yeast dangled from the trees. Above, a Stonechat rasped out his scraping call. I picked up two stones and made the exact same call by scratching them together, as if lighting a stony match: scritch, scratch. House Sparrows cheeped from the bushes; more anxiously, a yellowish leaf warbler, probably a Melodious Warbler, churred continually and flew about semi-conspicuously to perch repeatedly in the long grass to distract me from its nest – its young continually piping from deep in the hedge. I retreated gracefully.

A Turtle Dove cooed softly from high on a power line. At the stables, a Scarce Swallowtail (actually reasonably common here) drifted past; a White Wagtail hawked for flies beside the manège.

At 4pm the temperature reached 34.5 degrees: such a heatwave is called the Canicule or Dog Days, as Sirius, the Dog Star, is high in the midnight sky at this time of year.

Dordogne – Parasitic Wasp, Fiery Clearwing (16 July 2014)

Parasitic Wasp on Fennel
Parasitic Wasp taking nectar from Fennel

When you see a parasitic wasp, she – it’s always a she, as the males lack the long ‘sting’, which is an ovipositor – is generally flying about searching for caterpillars or other insect larvae. She can detect them deep inside plant stems, drills down to them with her extraordinary sting, and lays one egg in the body of the luckless grub.

Fiery Clearwing moth
Another fantastic insect: Fiery Clearwing moth

Clearwing moth larvae just eat plants, including currants, but the adults are spectacular. The clear patches on the wings are where the wing scales are programmed to fall off, leaving a bare membrane. Happily the wings and tail are gloriously coloured.

Bee-Fly half-hovering on Lavender
Bee-Fly half-hovering on Lavender

Proof that Bee-Flies cheat: those legs are resting on those flowers, however much those buzzing wings are hovering!

And to cap it all, a large, brilliant Green Lizard ran into the kitchen.

In the afternoon the temperature reached 31 degrees. We boldly went out onto the steep Chalk grassland hillside north of St Sulpice, where the Pyramidal and Chalk Fragrant Orchids flower in quantities in the springtime.

Praying Mantis on a steep chalk hillside
Praying Mantis on a steep chalk hillside

At least five Praying Mantises on the chalk grassland: they are widely distributed on flowery meadows (chalk or sandy clay doesn’t seem to matter) but appear never to be numerous, so this was a good haul.

Attractive blue figwort on chalk
Attractive blue figwort (?) on chalk
Zygaena fausta on knapweed
Zygaena fausta on Knapweed

Zygaena fausta, a boldly marked and presumably aposematic Burnet Moth without any English name that I know of (we could call it the Devil’s Burnet), on Knapweed.

An obliging grasshopper
An obliging grasshopper

The sound of summer: a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets in the heat. This grasshopper was unusually large and obliging.

Handsome blue Scabious
Handsome deep blue Scabious
The chalk was thinly carpeted by this white starflower
The chalk was thinly carpeted by this white starflower

The hillside was carpeted thinly and gracefully by these slender white flowers; behind it are Juniper bushes and loose Chalk scree, a scene repeated all across the hill, interspersed with bright flowers (Milkwort, Scabious, Knapweed, as well as Eryngo and various yellow composites) and the dried-out fruiting stalks of Orchids of different species.

Brilliantly coloured bug
Brilliantly coloured bug

A brilliantly-coloured bug on a grass stem. Perhaps it is an early instar of the Sloe Bug, or a similar species.

At 11 pm, our headlights revealed a Roe hind and fawn on the grassy track. The hind looked at the car and decided reluctantly to move off to the right, into the long grass of the meadow. The fawn ran away down the track before branching off to the left, its usual haunt with the cover at woodland edge where it hides up during the day.

A pair of slim, brightly striped orange-yellow and black Hoverflies mating ... on a car door
A pair of slim, brightly striped orange-yellow and black Hoverflies with chocolate-brown eyes, mating … on a car door
Mason Wasp carrying mud on house wall
Mason Wasp carrying mud on house wall

This large, long-waisted and rather dark wasp is quite a shy visitor to the Fennel. She buzzes noisily into cracks in the wall, and just this once (hence the fuzzy photo) I caught her carrying a lump of mud to do her building, so I assume she’s a Mason Wasp, species not known to me (help welcomed). She is about 20 mm long and stocks her mud nests with luckless grubs to feed her own larvae.  There is a similar wasp of the same size and shape with yellow legs: not clear if this is a colour variant or another species.

Mason Wasp A (yellow legs) on Fennel
Mason Wasp A (yellow legs) on Fennel