Time to Harvest

The wheat and barley are both now ready for harvest in the fields around Toft, Cambridgeshire. 

The sky was changing all the time - perfect for some monochrome harvest images from my favourite walk today.

Close-up in Gamlingay Woods

This HorseFly landed on Sue's arm so too good an opportunity to snap it - before the circular saw on its mouthparts got to work! Amazing multicoloured compound eyes and what I think are cone-shaped single eyes. I was using the 50mm Touit Zeiss lens at very close range so depth of field a problem - of course fine if the head is sharp and the rest OOF but in many cases missed critical sharpness on the eyes. Here are the more successful ones

Addenbrooke's Rocks

As part of their 250th Anniversary Celebration, Addenbrooke's Charitable Trust (ACT) held a fund-raising concert as a prelude to the Cambridge Rock Festival on Wednesday evening. Pedants may question the apostrophe  but it is part of the title of the hospital name even though it changes the meaning of the phrase to those not in the know. 

Oxborough Hall Norfolk

As Tuesday was forecast rain on and off, we decided to visit Oxborough Hall on our way to our B&B near Thetford. Oxburgh Hall is a moated country house owned by the National Trust. Built around 1482, Oxburgh has always been a family home, not a fortress.The light was pretty dull so interiors were difficult with all the dark carved wood and brickwork. A brick spiral staircase leads to the roof with good views down onto the property.

More Digger Wasps and Friends

Another visit to the sandbank produced a few more species including the Red-banded Sand Wasp with its prey - a moth caterpillar, the splendidly named Astata boops both male and female (with its prey - green shieldbug) and a Red-legged Spider Wasp (without its prey!). Great sightings of the beautiful little cuckoo wasp - identified on-line as Hedychrum nobile or H.niemalai but still no Cerceris wasps as hosts seen. A few more Bee-wolf flight shots and a single hoverfly reflecting the relative absence of hoverflies at the moment

Tourists in Cambridge

There have been several articles concerned about the numbers of tourists visiting Cambridge this summer though others see it as very good for business. It can be a problem for the tour guides who even resort to carrying steps to be heard by their group. Kings College attracts the largest numbers even though part is closed for organ rennovation. There are still quiet places to be found as in Clare College.

Strange Interactions in the Insect World

We spent the morning photographing  on a sandy hillside in Bedfordshire photographing the Beewolf Wasp, Philanthus triangulum, which preys on honey bees and various other insects. The Beewolf wasps sting their prey in a membranous location on the ventral surface and the venom quickly paralyzes major voluntary muscles, yet does not kill the prey. The Beewolf carries the prey back to a tunnel, which can be as much as 1 m long. Up to 34 lateral tunnels each ending in a brood chamber branch off from the main tunnel. Each brood chamber is stocked with one to six honeybees and the female lays an egg in each.

Minute red and green Cuckoo Wasps, either Hedychrum nobile or H.niemalai, which can only be separated by looking at a specimen, were flying around the tunnel mouths. It is reported that they use species of Cerceris wasp as hosts but we only observed Philanthus so will have to look more carefully at all the black and yellow wasps next time.

There were also Pantaloon Bees (a newly invented name apparently) Dasypoda hirtipes.They have the nickname from the large back-leg baskets which when full of pollen look like pantaloos. They are parasitised by the Miltogramma fly, which I also recorded.

Finally I photographed  the black and white Common Spiny Digger Wasp Oxybelus uniglumis, which carries its prey impaled  on the sting. This no doubt has a parasite of its own

So in the words originally of Jonathan Swift

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.