Michael Peverett: Bug day

Monday, June 02, 2025

Bug day

It started the previous evening, outside the café, warm, still and humid. As soon as we sat down, things started to get on our wrists and into our hair and onto the rims of our takeaway cups. They were greenfly, floating in hundreds through the tarmac space. One would land on my finger and stay still, apparently doing nothing. Then after a minute or two it would fly off again.

The next morning Laura's garden had the flying greenfly too. It's a very bee- and insect-friendly garden; totally organic, an intuitive mixture of native plants and bee-friendly garden varieties. This year a huge variety of bees and hoverflies are browsing through it constantly, as if determined to make up for 2024 (a cloudy, cold, depressing year in the UK). A lot of flowers are ahead of schedule; I've seen Common Ragwort and Bindweed flowering -- in May, for heaven's sake...

I noticed this small butterfly in the garden too.

Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria). Frome, 30 May 2025.

It's a Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria), more commonly a butterfly of woodland edges. It's settled briefly on a Lungwort (Pulmonaria) leaf; the other leaves you can see are Common Dog-violet, Iberis, Sedum and Broad-leaved Willowherb.

Later we walked down to the dump with some recycling but we had to wait outside while they crunched down the contents of the skips and cleaned up the premises with a leaf blower. While hanging around we noticed a bramble with ladybirds at every stage of development.

Larva of Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis). Frome, 30 May 2025.

This is the larva of the Harlequin or Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis), a large ladybird introduced in 2004 from E. Asia in order to control greenfly, and now very common. (Who would have guessed: the greenfly are as common as ever, but the Harlequins are displacing other ladybird species.)

Larva of Seven-spot Ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) alongside pupa of Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis). Frome, 30 May 2025.

Larva of the native Seven-spot Ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) alongside a pupa of the Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis).

One of the many forms of the adult Harlequin (Harmonia axyridis). Frome, 10 June 2025.

After recycling we went back to the garden and opened the rarely-opened shed to retrieve a gas bottle that's been in there for years. Thus we uncovered Bert, a very big spider.

Giant House-Spider (Eratigena species). Frome, 31 May 2025.

Bert is in fact a female, I think. She's a Giant House Spider; for the purposes of this very non-expert post I'll go for Eratigena duellica but there are other similar species.

Giant House-Spider (Eratigena species). Frome, 31 May 2025.

Back in the garden the following day, intoxicated by the success of my cheap phone snaps... All spring I had failed to take a photo of the entrancing bee-flies (Bombylia species): I saw them every day but they are just too mobile, hovering for a second or two before zipping off to a distant flower. It's a heaven for them here, with Pulmonaria, Green Alkanet, primroses and cowslips among their favourites.

Today I did better with a somewhat similar creature, a Hummingbird Hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) that was visiting the Red Valerian, one of its favourite species. Compared to the bee-fly it's less flighty, more willing to spend time browsing round the same plant. In my photos the wings are just a blur, of course.