Warming up
April 15th 2010
The weather suddenly warmed at the weekend and Saturday saw the garden and countryside transformed from its winter stillness into a humming, thrumming , buzzing venue for all the bugs that had been tucked up in the cold to come out and party in the sun.
I saw several peacock butterflies including two that appeared to be mating – one sitting still with its wings closed, the other perched on its tail end, using its wings to balance there. This went on for a good fifteen minutes. Is this usual for butterflies, or was this chap a real Casanova? Or maybe he was just not very efficient… Any insect buffs reading this, do enlighten me!
This other Peacock feeding on the heather flowers looked like it had been in the wars with its raggedy wings.
But the big insect event of the weekend was a swarm of beetles that appeared out of nowhere on Saturday afternoon and filled the air. We had to close all the house windows and clear a few dozen out of the kitchen. They appear to have been Heather Beetles (see pic above), which can do a lot of harm to heather moorland in large numbers: bad news for hungry peacock butterflies, honey bees and young grouse. Thanks to the good folk at Wild About Britain who helped me identify the bugs.