Wildlife May 2011

[angie]

I think this chap should have found a better hairdresser.
Angie 

[Maggi Young]

Super photo, Angela.... of  whatever that is    I see what you mean about his hairdo but I have no idea what he is.   Can't say I like the look of him!

[angie]

I don't like the look of him either. To many creepy crawlies going about 

Angie

[Lesley Cox]

That hairdo cut in stripes is quite trendy Angie, several of our rugby players have something similar. I enjoy looking at cricket grounds where the groundsman and his staff have cut it in various stripes and sometimes in a tartan pattern.

[Anthony Darby]

Here in New Zealand they sell a spray for spiders - Miss Muffet's Revenge! (http://www.wetandforget.co.nz/missmuffetsrevenge.htm) It take it no one has told them that if you kill spiders you get more flies. The total mass of flies eaten by spiders in the UK annually outweighs the total UK human population!

I certainly didn't know that. I don't deliberately kill spiders, my main battle is against woodlice that come in the bathroom window (a flatworm also slithered in during the last heavy rain), but this info, if correct, should be plastered across the doors of every hardware or garden shop that sells spider repellants. Flies, especially blowflies are infinitely more disgusting (and disease carrying) than spiders.

..............then what you need is "Bugga Off", which is also available on that website. Mind you, if you look at the ingredients it is the same as Miss Muffet's Revenge regardless of what they say about targeting specific beasties.

I think this chap should have found a better hairdresser.
Angie 

Difficult to pin point Angie, but could be a robber fly such as Empis tessellata?

[angie]

Lesley we only have trendy flies here 

Anthony you have so much knowledge in that head of yours.    Has your wining programme been on yet over there, you will be so famous. 

Angie

[Anthony Darby]

Crumbs Angie, forgot to check!

[Maggi Young]

Walking in the New forest today I came across this dramatic looking Dragonfly....(libellula depressa)...never seen it before....thought it was a hornet at first!

Erika has pictured the same creature today in Hungary... http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=5426.msg201969#msg201969   
I never saw it before and now it appears twice in a few days, in England and Hungary. Wonderful things to learn here!

[Lesley Cox]

Here are two pictures of some more or less domesticated wildlife, being Charles, a tuatara, part of a permanent exhibition at Southland Museum in Invercargill. If I remember correctly, they were taken in year 2000. There were a number of tuatara present, some small babies of just a year or two and at least one well over 100. Charles is over 70 now. In one pic he is on my arm and the other, on his curator's. (Mine is not the hairy arm. )

Tuatara are literally living dinosaurs, having been on earth since the time of their larger, more famous relatives, the only dinosaurs still alive so far as I know.

Charles looks armour-plated and spiky but his skin felt more like soft rubber and the spikes along his back were pliable and bendy, quite soft to touch. Tuatara are protected of course and there are many on some of the off-shore islands.

[Anthony Darby]

I just love those. I saw some in Auckland Zoo. I hope to see them on one of the islands in the gulf when I get the chance.

[Roma]

Found this chap in a pot of not too healthy snowdrop bulbs.  I thought by the colour it was a wireworm but it semed too fat and soft.  I didn't see the millipede till I had the camera lined up.  It then ran over the other beastie looking for a place to hide.

[Anthony Darby]

I think that may account for the health of your snowdrop bulbs Roma? It's possibly the wrong colour for a beetle grub, but could be a caterpillar?

[Maggi Young]

Last Sunday someone emailed the Beechgrove Potting Shed with a question about yellow/orange grubs he had found around some daffodil bulbs he'd lifted from his lawn. The panel decided they were chafer grubs and spoke about that.... I wasn't at all convince but didn't know what they might be... but this photo of just such a yellow/orange grub makes me think they were wide of the mark with their chafer grub diagnosis 

Have you got a close-up , Roma that could show what it's got in the way of legs.... cos I think that might help? 

[mark smyth]

chafer grubs are white with brown heads and C shaped when at rest

[Maggi Young]

Exactly my point! I think a lot of people know what chafer grubs look like.  I thought that it was obvious when the beasts were a yellow orange colour that they couldn't possibly be chafer grubs.... but the "experts" just heard "lawn" and leapt to conclusions!
If they listen properly to the question, there's often a clue... but getting them to listen is not always easy!