Monthly Archives: August 2019

Natural History

Insects on Thursley Common

Common Blue butterfly on Bell Heather
Don’t eat me!
Emperor moth caterpillar being eaten by ants

Thursley Common scene looking across bog with dead Pines, open lake with Canada geese, encroaching Birch scrub and Pine forest in the distance
Goldfinch atop Pine tree
Tailless Lizard on boardwalk
Honey-scented banks of Bell Heather, Gorse, Birch on Thursley Common
Bee-Wolf with Bee prey
Small Ammophila Sand-wasp, scurrying about in the heather searching for prey
Thursley Common: managing the heather by mowing irregular strips
Black-Tailed Skimmer

Keeled Skimmer
Black Darter, a tiny dragonfly
Common Darter
Thursley Common – the sandy paths full of sand-wasps and bee-wolves, the heather full of bees and grasshoppers

Also saw Common Blue Damselfly, Southern Hawker, Emperor Dragonfly.

Natural History

Grasshoppers up close!

Meadow Grasshopper in Gunnersbury Triangle’s Anthill Meadow
Field Grasshopper, on a refugium
Common Darter female on dried bramble in Picnic Meadow
Jersey Tiger by pond boardwalk with red underwing; yellow underwing specimens are also visible around the reserve. The underwing colour appears as a startling flash when the insect takes off, but unlike many other moths, grasshoppers and so on which have such deimatic coloration, the Jersey Tiger is conspicuous when it rests. There must be a reason for the polymorphism; perhaps the startle effect works better when a predator has not seen too many insects with a particular underwing colour.