Another warm and sunny day on Friday 25th was ideal weather for many of the insects to be on the wing. This eye-catching dragonfly pictured above with the bright red body is the male ruddy darter. It's quite a common dragonfly along the seawalls - this one was seen resting on top of the Strood seawall. 
Some of the ragwort plants have several cinnabar moth caterpillars with the distinctive yellow and black markings, stripping the plants of their leaves. Also on some of the ragwort flowers were half a dozen six-spot burnet moths, with their colourful red and black wings. The other day-flying moth seen was a single silver Y, amongst the long grass.
There are lots of clumps of the golden samphire in flower along the seaward slope of the seawalls. The flowers are often popular with some of the regular seawall butterflies.
A weasel scuttled across the path on the top of the seawall, quickly disappearing into the long grass.
Called into the East Mersea Pick Your Own field where there were several peacock butterflies feeding on some of the flowers.
8 comments:
Hi Dougal
Love the colourful insects and thanks for the flowers that are still looking fabulous but constantly thirsty
In all this heat, it's not just the flowers that are thirsty!
-D.
Dougal, this is a superb website. Which design layout did you use (eg which template). Just love it. Check out my blogs eg Birdingtringreservoirs
Keep up the brilliant work
Lee G R Evans
Hi Lee, the template I think is "Rounders 4" with colours and text personalised. Pleased to hear you've enjoyed looking at it. Can't compete with your birding photos on your blog, using just my Sony compact camera. As you're an ex-Essex lad, hopefully you'll find this coastal theme of interest, in your land-locked Bucks.
Cheers Dougal
Ragwort has been portrayed by some as the evil horse killer which we should all try to completely exterminate but many caterpillars and butterflies seem to like it. Do you only remove it where animals graze. I am a gardener by trade and would be interested to hear your thoughts.
Thank you
As I've had local farmers who have their own grazing pastures for cattle and horses nearby, point out the ragwort in the park, I have a legal duty to remove it. Pulling it every year keeps the number of plants down. Even after many years of ragwort pulling, there always seems to be plenty of cinnabar caterpillars on them every summer.
If you don't have any pastures in close proximity to your garden / gardens, then your ragwort should be a low risk. Consider the wind can carry the seeds some distance. Otherwise you can sit back and admire the rich variety of insects feeding on the flowers.
-Dougal
Thank you for your answer. As most of my gardens are in town I think it's o k to leave a few plants here and there for the butterflies to enjoy. Do we have the right to get rid of a plant species just because it suits us when other animals or insects may depend on it? That's a tricky dilemma. Everyone wants to save cute furry things but insects are probably more important to the food chain. I say a weed is a plant you haven't learnt to appreciate yet!
Luckily for some of the insects, despite my annual pulling of the ragwort, there are always plenty of ragwort plants that appear the following year!
Enjoy your town ragworts!
-Dougal
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