Snakes Alive!

 

A little over two and a half years ago, in October 2020, I took you down to look at the Dunescape of Drigg. We were, as you may recall, looking for Tiger beetles and Adders. There was plenty to look at, but unfortunately not those two creatures. Anyhow, I thought we'd go back there at the weekend, and see if we have any better luck in the warmer weather.

You may also recall that I had a new found friend with me on that trip. The fact that she is with me once again, this time in a campervan, speaks volumes. The dunes are a marvellous place for bird watching, and we are joined by Stonechats, Meadow Pipits and Goldfinches on every available perch. A pair of Linnets are also wandering about and, first thing in the morning, a Skylark comes down to take a dust bath.

Behind the dunes, where small streams run, we are accompanied by Common Blue and Wall Brown butterflies, as well as the diminutive Small Heaths, which are only about half the size of the other two. We also have four new flowers to add to our May collection: with Bloody Crane's Bill, Burnet Rose (which is a bit of a dune specialist), Yellow Iris, and Marsh Marigold. This makes 64 species for the year so far, if anyone's counting.

There are still no Tiger Beetles about, but we do have another little fellow that is associated with sand dunes. This  is a Marram Weevil. The antennae coming out of his snout like that, shows that he's a weevil of some kind. The snout is also short and broad, which means that he's one of the 14,000 or so broad nosed weevils, and we found him near Marram grass, so he's in the correct habitat for a Marram Weevil.

Adders, on the other hand, we do have. There are two things along this coast that frighten the beejabers out of people; Adders and Sellafield. Both are pretty overrated in terms of danger to the public. Adders bite about 100 people a year, but the last fatal bite was almost fifty years ago. They are not aggressive, but like most of us, they don't like being downtrodden. Sellafield hasn't bitten anybody since 1957, when it was Windscale Nuclear Power Station. A radioactive leak is believed to have been responsible for a couple of hundred fatal cancers. Nowadays, it primarily stores low to medium radioactive waste.

We'll walk back along the beach and see what the tide has washed up. A somewhat ferocious looking jellyfish for a start. Although the Dustbin-lid Jelly is one of the largest jellyfish to drift around UK shores, it's a bit of a gentle giant. Don't get me wrong, it will sting you, even when dead, but there are much smaller jellyfish with much worse stings. Also, they're big enough to see and avoid in the water, and they don't have metres of stinging tentacles trailing behind them.

Steve's Vintage Collectables. (click to visit)

Father's Day is coming up next month. We've plenty of gift ideas at SVCwithEtsy.

Tip: type fathers day into the search items bar in the left panel to see the Father's Day Ideas Collection

Steve's Books (click to visit)

Follow me on Steve's Nature Plus and also on Twitter (@Steve's Nature), Facebook (Steve Daniels),and Instagram (Steve Daniels Cumbria)

Or why not join the 2.5k members of our Naturalists group?

All the best,

Steve

Hanging on to Summer

 

Quite a lot of people suffer from SAD, Seasonal Affected Disorder. It's 8.30 in the morning as I write, it's tipping it down outside, it barely got light an hour ago, but there's something warming and comforting about viewing the outside world from my study window, all snug inside (even if the current energy crisis makes it injudicious to put the heating on!). Astronomically speaking, it is still Summer, at least until tomorrow (Friday 23^rd September). The equinox is a late one this year. The date varies because the calendar year is 365 days but the Earth actually takes 365 and a quarter days to travel around the Sun. But although the clocks go back at the end of next week, let us embrace the Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness as Keats put it, get out and about when we can and snuggle down when we can't.

Autumn is a great time for foraging. The brambles are laden with blackberries, hazelnuts are ripening nicely and the woods are full of delicious fungi. For those of you with gardens, it's harvest time, and one of my favourite places at this time of year is the kitchen. Stuffed marrow is on the menu tonight. Recipe in Steve's Wild Kitchen plus Stuffed Halloween Pumpkins.

Autumn is also a lovely time of year for bird watching. Taking Mattie for a walk, down on Parton beach earlier in the week, turned up a couple of Gull species, a Little Egret, a Redshank and a Curlew, plus a Northern Wheatear. This bird holds the record for the longest migration of any songbird at 9,000 miles each way from Alaska to sub-Saharan Africa and back.

Insects are still about too. In the past week I've seen grasshoppers, leafhoppers, beetles and butterflies and quite a number of the large, furry Fox Moth caterpillars. They are out and about looking for leaf litter in which to hibernate over winter. They will emerge in the Spring as fairly large moths, reddish brown in the case of the male and greyish brown in the female. Both sexes have two creamy lines across their wings.

Tips From Yesteryear

I try to live life simply, here at The Old Corn Mill, and often think back to how my grandparents used to do things (and I'm old enough to be a grandparent myself, so we're going back a bit). They didn't live in the throwaway age and nothing was ever wasted. Potatoes that had sprouted too much for the pot were returned to the earth where one potato produced a handful. The roots cut off spring onions were placed in a pot on the kitchen windowsill to produce another spring onion. It wasn't called recycling then, it was just what people did.

Talking of yesteryear, I'm pleased to say that my little on-line antiques shop, that I started at the beginning of the year, is doing rather well. This is in no small part due to the series of blogs I've been writing called 'Steve's History of Things', which gives some fascinating insights into the history of everyday objects. Here's a list of the series so far, and feel free to browse around the shop: Steve's Vintage Collectables

Steve's History of Things 1 Introduction		Steve's History of Things 2 5 Good Reasons to Buy EPNS
Steve's History of Things 3 Fielding's Musical Tankards		Steve's Hstory of Things 4 Jasperware
Steve's History of Things 5 Blood Pressure Monitors		Steve's History of Things 6 Chodov Porcelain
Steve's History of Things 7 The Pottery Detective			Next week: Royal memorabilia

Happy Equinox,

Steve

Beetles and Butterflies; spiders and scorpions; woodlice and worms. How do you tell them all apart? To say nothing of crane flies, dragonflies, bee flies and yet more butterflies. Are they all flies? If not, why call them so? If you're fascinated but confused by the beautiful world of the very small, then this is the book for you. 82 pages of information on all aspects of the world of minibeasts, with over 100 photographs and illustrations, this book will help you track down and identify any arthropod, in its adult or juvenile state, anywhere in the world. See all of my books at author.to/SteveDaniels

Follow me on Steve's Nature Plus

and also on

Steve's Nature

Steve Daniels Naturalists

Steve Daniels Cumbria

Arran Special 4 - Up North

 

We're off up 't north today. Arran isn't a big island, only 20 miles by 9, but it is definitely an island of two halves. The highland boundary fault which separates mainland Scotland's highlands from its lowlands cracked Arran in two as well. It was a huge tectonic event called the Arcadian Orogeny that started about 375 million years ago and lasted for about 50 million years. This is a good point to introduce you to James Hutton, an 18^th century Scottish geologist who worked out that the earth could not be 6,000 years old as The Bible suggests. Brilliant geologist but a hopeless writer, only about half a dozen people understood what he was on about when he published his theory of Uniformitarianism in 1788. For those of you Creationists out there, it is important to remember that God did not write The Bible, scholars did, and whilst God may be infallible and ineffable, scholars aren't.

Hutton spent some time here, developing his ideas, particularly at this point where we're stopping off. This is Glen Sannox and it's stunningly beautiful.

Here's a little fellow that's a bit of a late spring/early summer specialist, the common garden chafer. These beetles only live for about eight weeks. Live fast and die young is their motto.

Ey oop, what have we got flying above us? (Northern dialects have begun to creep in to me, but apparently haven't settled in Cumbria yet). Is it the second of Arran's Big 5, a Golden Eagle? Nah, wrong wing outline. It's a buzzard. Morning, Mr. Buzzard.

Here's a pretty little thing, it's a little geometer moth, a Common Heath. Their caterpillars feed on heather and clover so he's in the perfect spot here. You generally see them in May and June here in the UK but further south in Europe they have a second brood and you can find them as late as September.

Sorry, but this is short and sweet this morning. I'm still battling against covid but a bit of positive mental attitude should sort it. See you tomorrow.

Steve

Arran 1 – Arrival

Arran 2 – In Search of Seals

Arran 3 – The Queen's Secret Bolt Hole

Crosscanonby and Isel

 

The intention was to take Mattie for her first walk along the beach at Flimby, but with a force five gusting up the Solway Firth, she resembled not so much a dog on a lead, but a helium balloon on a string. We headed inland to the village of Crosscanonby to show her the delights of the countryside instead. Pheasants appeared and disappeared into the fields of waving wheat, their raucous cries startling her at every turn. Along the uncut field margins, Carder Bees were busy pollinating the clover.

As you know, I'm always on the hunt for plants to forage, but I was surprised to find this large stand of Fennel in the Cumbrian countryside. Fennel is indigenous to the Mediterranean, and it grew like a weed around my home in Crete. It has spread northwards throughout Europe and is not uncommon down south, here in England. This far north it's a rare find. I helped myself to a fair few fronds. It is also a traditional medicinal plant, good for digestive discomfort and as an eyewash. There were other old medicinals about as well: Herb Robert (liver and gall bladder) and Crosswort (rupture and rheumatism) also Cowslips and Sweet Woodruff, if you prefer your medicine fermented and poured into a glass,

Stinging nettles used to be used to treat rheumatism too (well, it took your mind off it at any rate) and makes good wine. Here though, it is being enjoyed by a whole host of Small Nettle Weevils.

The larvae of these beetles live underground and feed on nettle roots. As adults they come up and eat the leaves. It's not easy being a stinging nettle.

From Crosscanonby we travelled a little further inland to Isel for a walk by the Derwent. The Swifts were feeding above the river which brings me to the age old question: how do you tell the difference between a swift, a swallow and a martin, especially when they're high in the sky? It's all in the wings and tail. Wings first; if the wings are curved, it's a swift – if you lined them up wing tip to wing tip, they'd form a circle. With the other two, it's all in the tail; the swallow has two long tail feathers, streaming out behind and the martin has a short, forked tail.

And what did Mattie think of her first walk in the wild? Find out on Mattie'sPage!

I mentioned my home on Crete earlier. Christina and I spent 16 happy years there, before she succumbed to cancer in 2018. South east Crete is a beautiful place to live and the house is up for sale. Details are with the estate agent in nearby MakryGialos and can be viewed on line at Real Professionals Crete.

Hardback £10.14

Hardback £25.99 Paperback £21.99 Kindle £9.99

Medicinal Seed Herb Growing Kit £12.99

Build Your Own Nature Library

All the best,

Steve

Sponsored by Steve's Vintage Collectables

Join the growing trend of giving retro/vintage/antique gifts and slow down the modern planet destroying manufacturing techniques. 

#builttolast #weddingpresents #retirementgifts #birthdaypresents

Follow me on Steve's Nature Plus

and also on

 Steve's Nature

 Steve Daniels Naturalists

 Steve Daniels Cumbria

Minibeast Monday - Getting to Know Your Beetles

COLEOPTERA (Beetles)

About a quarter of all species of animal life on Earth are beetles, and there are getting on for half a million described species of them. That's a lot of beetles to sort out, so how is it done? Basically, by dividing them into smaller and smaller groups. Beetles form the order COLEOPTERA, a name coined by Aristotle about 2,350 years ago, meaning 'sheathed wing'. This refers to the fore wings of beetles which are hardened to protect the hind wings. These hard fore wings are called elytra, and distinguishes beetles from all other insects. The order COLEOPTERA is broken down into five suborders, one of which, PROTOCOLEOPTERA contains very old beetles, all of which are now extinct and there are two very small suborders: ARCHOSTEMATA which contains 45 species, and MYXOPHAGA which contains 65 species. The majority of the beetles that you meet, however, will either be in the suborder ADEPHAGA or the suborder POLYPHAGA, so let's have a look at those in more detail.

ADEPHAGA

The ADEPHAGA is the smaller of the two suborders containing some 40,000 species of Ground and Water Beetles, which, as their name suggests, you'll either find running along the ground or swimming in water. (The technical difference between an Adephagan and a Polyphagan is in the way that its hind legs attach to its body.) The eleven extant families within the ADEPHAGA are:

Amphizoidae (troutstream beetles)

Aspidytidae (cliff water beetles)

Carabidae (ground beetles)

Dytiscidae (predaceous diving beetles)

Gyrinidae (whirligig beetles)

Haliplidae (crawling water beetles)

Hygrobiidae (squeak beetles)

Meruidae (Venezuelan waterfall beetle)

Noteridae (burrowing water beetles)

Rhysodidae (wrinkled bark beetles)

Trachypachidae (false ground beetles)

POLYPHAGA

The POLYPHAGA contains all the other beetle species, and as there are over 350,000 other beetle species, the order is broken down into five infraorders:

Bostrichiformia (includes furniture beetles and skin beetles)

Cucujiformia (includes lady beetles, longhorn beetles, weevils, checkered beetles and leaf beetles)

Elateriformia (includes click beetles and fireflies)

Scarabaeiformia (includes scarab beetles, stag beetles, and dung beetles)

Staphyliniformia (includes rove beetles and water scavenger beetles)

The hyperlinks above have been collated from Wikipedia and will take you to the relevant beetle type. Last month, in Minibeast Monday, we looked at weevils. As you can see from the above, weevils are polyphagan beetles in the infraorder CUCUJIFORMA. As we continue to find more beetles on our Minibeast Monday safaris, I'll link back to this page so that you can see how they all fit together. These are the beetle books that are currently in the Build Your Own Nature Library

Build Your Own Nature Library

All the best,

Steve

Follow me on Steve's Nature Plus

and also on

Steve's Nature

Steve Daniels Naturalists

Steve Daniels Cumbria