Pond Dip - August 2010

Dad and I had fun dipping the pond last Sunday. I was very pleased to find around 20 southern hawker larvae - the most dragonfly larvae we've ever found at one time.

This one had recently shedded its skin - as the skin is normally hard they have to shed their skin to enable them to grow:


As usual we also found pond skaters, water slaters, leeches, newtpoles and a few tadpoles. It looks as though all the damselfly and mayfly larvae have now emerged.

August

Late summer at Frog End has brought an abundance of wildlife and the insect lists for the garden are growing rapidly. Unfortunately, even longer is the list of species I've yet to identify.

Speckled woods are only absent at night and when it rains:

We had a wall brown a couple of weeks ago, taking the butterfly species count up to 18, of which we've seen 17 in 2010:

After a poor mid-summer the dragonflies are about again and so far this last week we've had a golden-ringed dragonfly (that refused to be photographed), a common darter:

and a migrant hawker:


This large hoverfly Volucella inanis seems to like the buddleia flowers:

and the goldenrod is covered with green shield bugs of all sizes and stages of development: