Small Skippers Close the Butterfly Gap

 We have now emerged from the June butterfly gap, with the cooler weather of most of the month so far replaced with this savagely hot weather of the last few days. 

For those weeks, there was barely a butterfly to be seen, but now we are seeing the high summer species like meadow brown and ringlet in the air, and in the library gardens, a very fresh and confiding small skipper feeding off a cultivated campion. 

I spend a lot of time in the library gardens, with a tea or a cold drink, and love to take in the vivid colours while photographing the myriad of insect species that populate it. I sit and read, or sketch, and just take it all in. 

When you have Tourette's, you have to enoy the peaceful and colourful moments. 

Si 

All text and images copyright 25.06.26 

Another Photographic Miscellania

 Well, what do I have from random small wanderings over the last few days, sometimes accompanied by tourettes tics and other weirdnesses, sometimes not.

On the wing and the fluttery department, we now have gatekeeper butterflies on the move, while in the more buzzy department, spined mason bees and masked bees. 

I hope you are all enjoying what you can see around you. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 26.06.25

Small Skippers are Fluttering

 Last week on our campus, the hot weather brought the emergence of the well named small skipper butterflies. 

These dinky orange butterflies with the wing arrangement that always makes them look like the flights of a dart were far too busy flying about to settle anywhere. 

Today, however, they were happy to feed off ragwort and pose for photographs. However, this was complicated by the fact there was a very strong wind blowing across the badlands, and so you had to find one sitting on a shorter plant that wasn't being blown almost flat to the ground. 

So I present to you this fine specimen. 

Also captured today was a new insect for me, albeit a common one. A red spotted parasite fly, so named for its sinister habit of paratising moth larvae. Of course, this was sitting on the stinky curry plant that seems to attract the underclass of the insect world!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 24.06.25

Life on the Curry Plant

 Many many years ago we tried to dig out and plant a wildflower herb garden for pollinators at the entrance to our work campus. 

It failed. The soil is terrible, we weren't given time to maintain it, and anything we have tried to plant in it recently has died, with two main exceptions. 

One is a rather nice smelling sage plant. The other is a rampant curry plant, that is currently in full flower with its little bright yellow flowers, and also smells - to my poor nose - awful, especially in hot weather. 

Plants are not supposed to smell like curry! It's just plain wrong. 

It does attract pollinators, but more flies, than bees and butterflies. However, today, it did have some very fast moving tiny bees that never settled, and I captured entirely by accident on the wing. A possible clover blunthorn bee, a species utterly unknown to me until today. I'm going on the pale patch on the face, and, er, what iNaturalist says. 

Most of the other denizens are beetles, hoverflies. flies and various less glamorous, but still important, little pollinators. 

They all have their uses. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 18.06.25

The Wildflower Meadows of the Library Nature Reserve

 The library meadows are near their peak, filling this small area with colour and the buzz of various bee and bumblebee species working their favoured blooms. 

Common blue damselflies are mating and laying eggs in the pond, while four spotted chaser dragonflies hawk for smaller prey along the hedgerows. 

It cost a lot of money for them to make it this way, probably way too much. It might be over landscaped. But it is still a beautiful place on a bright day. 

These pictures are from a few days ago, I've got a stinking cold - or something - and haven't been out around the town much. Grrrrr. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 12.06.25

Some Recent Photo Miscellania

 Let's see what nature has given me over the last few days! 

My cricket matches are normally an excellent place to find things, as we often play at some very beautiful grounds, and even the less glamorous public park grounds often have wildflower areas rich with treasures. The trouble is, I've been so busy at the games I'm not getting any time to do any of my wanderings and pokings around. 

So, work campus, and the local nature gardens have been where I've been spotting things, such as the scabious loving vestal cuckoo bumblebees, the glittering emerald swollen thighed flower beetles, and the various other buzzing things that our out and about. 

Also, not really photographed as my mobile phone isn't up to it, are the swifts that scythe around my home screaming, the whitethroats, blackcaps and chiff chaffs at work whose calls are now more recognisable to me, and the wren that sings so loudly at the library gardens. 

I hope too are finding lovely things to see. 

Si 

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.06.25

Those which Buzz and Flutter

 We've had a week of better weather, days where the heat has even been causing the Great British Public (TM) to moan. 

It usually takes two or three days for that to happen. 

This means there has been a lot of pollinators and other beasties on the wing, and I've been trundling about poking my camera into occasionally sharp and stingy things to try and find some beautiful things to show you. 

We are just coming out of the June gap, where the first flight butterflies of early spring are done, with the appearance of meadow browns and ringlets in decent numbers, far greater numbers than the early season flutterers. Among bees, a lot of the mining bee species no longer seem to be about, but there are plenty of honeybees and differing bumble types. 

Swifts scream above my flat daily, and in rural areas juvenile swallows are being fed on telegraph wires. House martins twitter too, with their stubby bodies and white rumps. A third of the Summer has gone.

And it has gone so fast.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 28.06.24

Feeling the Heat at Wellow Dam

 Sunday saw us take ourselves - an hour and half early in some cases which must be some kind of club record - to Wellow for a game of proper village cricket at their very rustic ground with its portaloo that not even the insanely brave would dare use. 

It's a lovely setting, a wicket barely distinguishable from the rest of the ground that slopes down a hill to a dam that separates the ground from a fishing lake, where bored men waving sticks at the water were taunted by effortlessly skimming swallows feeding their young of the telegraph wires. 

By the time arrived, our team, somehow an eleven, was more or less there, but the opposition weren't. The suspicion was that they were at the pub, and indeed some of them may have been until fifteen minutes before the game began, Their selection policy seemed to involve asking anyone to play who happened to be at the ground, including the grandfather of one of our juniors, but it worked as they managed to get eleven too.

Eleven v eleven games are a rarity on Sundays these days.

Sent in by my co-captain to contest the toss because he keeps losing it, I indeed won and announced we would bat without hesitation. On a very hot day, this is always a no-brainer, but after fifteen minutes, we all wished we hadn't.

The Keele captain was wiped out by a nasty swinging delivery by Wellow's guest Australian player from Sherwood in the Bassetlaw league 3 and thus better than any of us. Our young left hander was then torpedoed by a ball that rolled along the ground. Batting at four, I then survived one ball, before what seemed like a perfectly safe defensive shot was scooped off the ground by the bowler, a 6 foot 6 beanpole who somehow launched himself forward, downwards and sideways to make the catch.

I stood there absolutely stunned. Defeated by a giant ginger salmon, I pronounced myself cursed. Four ducks in a row. 

Luckily, our batting was heavily backloaded, and our big hitters, combined with wiser batting by our resident geographer, took us to what seemed like a highly competitive total of 157 in a thirty over game. I felt somewhat relieved, but not for long. 

Wellow always seem to turn out a couple of very good players among the young lads and beer enjoying social players, and it was the aforementioned affable Australian who put us to the sword straightaway with some mighty hitting, although he was dropped early on. We were playing "retire at 50" in this match, so when he was hooked off when he raised his half century after what seemed to be about fifteen minutes, we felt we were perhaps back in the game.

No. The new batsman at three was just as powerful. 

We did keep nicking wickets at the other end, I myself took two for 23, but we couldn't get the gun batter out, indeed he too got to 50 before retiring. Could this be another chance??? 

No, for two reasons. One, the Wellow captain who had got me out was equally capable of hitting a very long bowl, and two, the venerable geographer had hatched a plan to replace me with himself in order to bowl gentle lollipops for the Wellow captain to hit into the pond in order to get the game over and get us to what was admittedly a very nice pub all the quicker on what was by now a very hot afternoon. 

He was hit for twenty, and the job was done. So we had lost, but it was still an enjoyable afternoon. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 25.06.24

More Critter Hunting

 After the dismal cricket destroying weather of last week, we have had a few nicer days this week, enabling me to hunt for pretty little things in the library nature reserve and on the badlands of our work campus. 

It has been fruitful, finding new species like the tiny common furrow bee, five spotted club horned wasp and a thick legged hover fly. I found my first cinnabar moth of the year today, which led me on a merry dance as I tried to photograph the recalcitrant little insect, and have picked up some nice action shots of bees. 

The library gardens, rich with scabious, seems to be a favourite haunt of both vestal and bohemian cuckoo bumblebees. no doubt on the look out for a buff tailed bumblebee nest to parasitise. It seems to be a terrible year for butterflies however, there's been so few on the wing even on bright days.

I hope you are finding pretty things to look at. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 18.06.24