O is for Other Books

When I showed the new additions to the collectables' library, I mentioned a few other books I'd bought recently, half in the Alton second-hand bookshop, most of the others in Waterststones, and a couple in TKMaxx, of all places, not toy soldiery, not toy'y at all, but it gives you a better idea about who I am, or what I'm about!

 

Old Shire Albums, but specifically, the Natural History sub-set, which have more colour images than most Shire's, certainly the older ones, and looking at a small field in some detail, snails perticularly tend to get passed-by, unless they are perticularly colourfull in the shell department.

 

Same Alton shop, different day, and they had these two, even more academic works (same author on the Ants), and Hoverflies are among my favourites, there is a wide number of them, and they can differ quite a bit, even within local populations, so photographing them never gets boring . . . like is does when, for instance, you find something covered in domestic honey bees - after a few good shots, you just stop shooting them!

 

I also grabbed this, it's a truism for a lot of reference works, even military ones, the text of the old ones is better, the illustrations of the new ones is superior, and with everything in storage, I picked-up this spiral bound work, going cheap, just so I'd have something here, the best feature of it being the open/closed artwork.

 

This was the Waterstones, not that pricey, and I've since been back to get the matching volume on wild flowers, as I always get confused by all the white umbel-flowered types, some of which are deadly poisonous (hemlock), others totally safe (cow parsley).

 

This book has a good range of insects, covered in some depth, with most of the European visitors included, as assumed summer finds. Not much on the North American visitors, and I've encountered two in recent years, both beetles (longhorn and pine), blown over by storms.

 

This was a bit of fun, I think I remember it from junior-school, and nostalgia is a powerful tug on the wallet sometimes, also you can find poses, colour-ways or now debunked physical features in these early works, which you can match to specific, contemporary toys, as the sculptors or art departments used the same books!

 

I bought a batch of raffle tickets at the BMSS's annual show in Reading and won these two. Both related to post '44 France, in World War Two, you can't go wrong with Ospray, and while I tend to collect the uniform works, these will be an interesting read, and once read, can always go in another raffle!

 

The first was an impulse buy, in the Basingrad TKMaxx, only for me to find the other at Farnborough Gate's store, a week or so later. They are supposedly academic 'fan' works, looking at an aspect of the Tolkien world, comparing it to the world Tolkien lived and wrote in, and tying all the loose ends together . . . kind of things?

 

I've only briefly dipped into them, but I think they will prove interesting, and anything which simplifies or explains in a shorter-form, or in a language I can follow, all the tediousness of the post-Silmarillion books, and the 'Tolkien Universe' stuff issued by the son, is a good thing, but the fact it appears there are still five to find, has curbed my enthusiasm somewhat!

 

What triggered the impulse of the first purchase, was the feel of them, they have a sort of faux-leather, which is almost micro- or nano-flocking, so they feel soft somehow, but colder than leather, so a treated polymer foil of some kind? They also look a bit like the ancient world library I built, from Folio Society books, years ago.

 

But anyway I have them now, and with a small sub-library of Tolkien books, including a few bestiaries, and fantasy art-books, they will add to the oeuvre, and enhance the eventual auction-lot, before I leave the room permanently!

P is for Potted Plant Problems and Phuqing Phungus Phlies

We haven't had as much garden or insect stuff as I'd imagined I'd post, but that may change at some point, as it's all piling up on the PC, but here's one I've been battling with which might be of some help to some of you.

 

One of the most depressing things of the last few years has been the loss of the garden, which will obviously go to the new owners of the house, and while I managed to get as much as I could to Mum's friends and neighbours, I've ended-up with 20-odd pot plants which are down the bottom of a neighbour's garden, but they need to sell now, too, so I may lose them, unless someone knows someone in North Hampshire/Surry with a quiet corner of a farm or estate where I could leave them for a few month 'till a year or so?

 

In addition, there were houseplants and cacti which wouldn't survive down the bottom of someone's garden, so I gave away as many as I could, and brought the rest to the flat, where I have one of each I think, with a few duplicates where the flowers or foliage are different, like the Geraniums which apparently aren't Geraniums (Pelargoniums), I think one of the Cacti has finally died, and the Amaryllis is looking poorly, but I think they always do at this time of year, and I should cut off the floppy old leaves and wait for it to go-again, later?

 

But in the biggest pot was this thing, I think it's some kind of Iris or Lily, but a non-hardy one, it may be perfectly happy outdoors though, I don't know, however it was in the 'summer-room' (a fancy kit of plastic panels and oversized Meccano I built for Mum, with Mimi's help, about 14-years ago), so it came here, and as you can see, a week ago it was not looking very happy.

 

Six months ago this pot was full of greenery, up to 8-inches tall in the middle, but shortly after I moved it here, one of the last to arrive, I started noticing these little flies, and took great delight in dealing with them every evening after work four, one night, eight, another, Ohh, more than ten, I've lost count!

 

However, I soon noticed that the plant was dying off slowly, and I'd water it, it would put out a few new shoots, but a dozen old ones would die-off! Google revealed the problem was these little fruit flies, called Fungus Gnats, and I re-started my efforts at eradication with more earnestness, getting dozens every night, and a bunch in the mornings before work (my PC table is next to the plant, so I was 'on site'), days-off were fly-carnage!

But still the plant ailed, as you only have to miss a couple of adults long enough for them to get together and do the jiggy-thang, get the eggs in the pot, and another batch of grubs has to be waited for, until they hatch, meantime they are eating the roots of the plant! So war was declared, more Googling done, and the little yellow thing above is part of the campaign.

The first purchase was these sticky pads, from the cheapie-hardware store up in town (Fleet Essentials, previously Ziggy's, but with one of the Ex-Baker's staff now helping them get in the right stuff), and this was the 'right stuff', look at it!

 

You have a single line of sticky on the back, which you peel to stick the sheet down, then you peel the backing sheet off the front (almost an oxymoron there?), and all the little flies go "Wha-hay a sunflower", and die, slowly, and quietly, producing little guilt as you can see what they and their kids have done/are doing to your precious plant!

Yet, it was a slow process, and I was still killing lots of flies by hand, every day (f'ousands of 'em since December Sah! F'ousands!), so after a return to Google I spent £4.50 on this at B&Q, chemical warfare had come to the flat!

Ladies and Gentlemen, two months later, and it hadn't killed a single fly, the plant was looking as it does in the first shot, and I was clearly losing the war . . . against phuqing flies! Indeed, the only use I will ever get from it is as a possible rocket-engine on a scratch-build!

The apparently non-toxic (and non-attractive to Fungus Gnats) liquid went down the drain, revealing seven glass beads? The magic ingredient in this complete rip-off of a fake solution (in both senses of the word) is the remains of some shot-blasting, sunk in snot? Somebody should go to jail for this scam!

Yeah! In the spares pile they go, they're not even the same size - so not much use for anything!

I then took the pot back to the old house, took it down to the bottom of the garden, and dug-out the remains of the plants with a desert-fork, carefully, as the greenery is very snappy. And with two bits of root (Holmes, Rhizomes?) and three plants, drowned them while I was at work, to kill any hidden larvae or eggs.

 

You wouldn't believe the pot-sized ball of dried, hollowed-out, root remains, that tumbled out, it had been fighting the grubs for years, and while looking OK on top, was being absolutely decimated underneath. Another couple of weeks and it would have been gone.

 

Heading off to Redfield's garden centre, which I discover has become not a garden centre, but a multi-function, high-end, leisure-destination/tourist-facility, mall, restaurant and day-care centre, for the young and old? 

 

Almost single-handedly responsible for the death of half the shops in the High Street, including the aforementioned Bakers (another post for another day), they even have a clothes section, not out-door or garden apparel, but chic, fashion and everyday-wear? A toy shop and grocery store, it's like the world's most expensive Trago Mills!

AND, you are forced by shelving, and displays, and phuqing little-phences, to go round 9/10th's of it! Fortunately, a fifth-columnist in the houseplant section let me go through her secret passage, direct to the tills, so I got a fresh-bag of compost, and saw a surface layer, expressly for Fungus Gnats!

This was all last week, and I re-potted last Thursday-night, after washing the pot (and crocks) with bleach, and drying thoroughly, before the remains of the plant drowned as well as the larvae/eggs, and after pay-day last weekend, I went back for the surface treatment, a crushed pumice, which I applied as above, about a centimetre deep (that's about half a banana stalk for our N. American readers), on Saturday last.

 

As you can see, three fresh shoots are already up/out, and I'm hoping the two little pieces will germinate in a few days, they are buried at 4 and 7 if you know what I mean; on the clock face as viewed. There will be a follow-up photo' if anything happens!

 

Now to maybe being of some help to you - 

• Don't buy the liquid traps, they are just another capitalist rip-off.
• Do buy the sticky-traps (there were four in the pack, about a fiver), the second is now on the window, just in case!
• Understand the sticky-pads won't cure the problem, but they'll hold it in check for a few weeks while you work-up the will for the serious bit of faffing!
• The pumice would make ideal model-railway ballast, and there's a lifetimes supply in one 9-quid bag, ten times cheaper than modeller's scatter, and probably the same stuff?
  

Over the next few days I killed another four flies, which were probably lone operators who'd meandered to other parts of the flat, and came back looking for a feed, or somewhere to lay their eggs, but since last Monday or Tuesday, it has been fly free!

R is for the Real Small Scale World!

I'm well behind with these, I've taken lots interesting stuff in June and July, but these are actually from May! I'll post soldiers (or cowboys!) later.

Sheild Bug - I love shield bugs, they're the best, like little alien knights in camouflaged armour! This is a Forest Shield I think?

Chafer - one of the lesser chaffers, common Garden Chaffer or something. And Insect porn! Oh baby, is that your wing-case or are you pleased to see me!

Caterpillar - There are so many caterpillars in green with a pale stripe down them I daren't try to ID it as a rank amateur, but it'll be one of the Whites . . . probably!

Weevil - or not? My absolute all time favourite insect might not be the weevil it appears to be at all, but rather a faux-weevil called the Aspen Beetle or Byctisus Populi, although given the size of most of these (common on our hazelnut) I think they may actually a weevil, the weevil the Aspen pretender is pretending to be - if you have an aspen rather than a hazel?

Bees - A selection of bees!

Mixed - an Ichueumon Fly (kind of parasitic wasp) or other wasp, possibly a Field Digger top left, a Hover-Fly below it; possibly one of the Sun Flies and two shots of a Cockchaffer or 'May Bug', they never come out - the flying shots - camera doesn't know what it's looking at, or where!

Lilly Beetles - invasive species, damaging, they both died, but they're pretty.

F is for the First Hornet of Spring . . .The First Hornet of Summer!

I like the hornets, they get a bad press, but are in fact less aggressive than wasps (who are - themselves - less aggressive than their press!) and have become regular visitors to the garden, always happy to pose and never having had a go at me!

Tuesday found all these (cropped and collaged to approximate scale with each other) sunning themselves on the fence panels, although two were also busy making wood-pulp for their paper nests.

The hornet (left) is a newbie, and not much bigger then a queen wasp; half the size of the big brutish-looking ones who will be getting drunk on wind-fall apples in five months time! The wasp is a worker, there has been a queen hovering round the back of the house looking for somewhere to start a nest, but this is the progeny of a sharper one, who's already got started elsewhere!

The bee seems to be a carder or mining bee of some sort, or maybe a rarer eucera? People tend to call them all bumble bees but most of them aren't! I shoot loads of fury bees through the year and one day I'll sit down with a good bee-book and sort all the pictures out - then I'll really bore you!

Earlier (last week particularly - but for most of a month now) we've had some lovely weather and a lot of butterflies have been out, I've seen holly blues, an over-wintered peacock (in March), lots of brimstones and various small whites (mostly female brimstones and female orange tips), these are speckled woods which were sunning themselves on the Spirea

At the same time I caught this ant dragging a fortnight's rations home to the nest! I have a little video I'll try and upload to Youtube, if successful a link will follow. I think the victim is a smaller beetle larva.

That worked! I'll have to do more video's? 

My favourite butterfly at this time of year (it used to be brimstones, but they are two-a-penny!) is the orange tip (or copper tip) and they can be fidgets; difficult to catch, but on cool mornings  they prove a little sluggish before they've topped-up the tan, and can be photogenic!

Something that's really hard to shoot is the bee fly, it never stops and so is never in focus as every (literally 'every') fibre of its being is vibrating like a humming bird! I love them, they seem to be a cross between teddy-bears and alien Starfighters - little pointed triangles of purposeful fur!

This is some kind of dwarf euphorbia I think, the flies and hoverflies love it at this time of year.

I also shot these commas at the end of March, the wing-edges are lacking the usually more uneven topography or crenellations distinctive of the species (particularly the left-hand example), probably due to them being over-wintered specimens who's wings have somewhat 'rounded off' with wear and tear!

It also has the darker colouration of the winter generation. The commas have two generations per year, which makes the instinctive behaviour of each all the more remarkable, as all the genetic coding has to jump a 'season' in order to get the child to act like the grandparent, not the parent!

We dumb, curious monkeys struggle to teach basic manners to our children with the aid of a compulsory schooling process, a police force and a judicial system - yet we're threatening most butterflies and most other life on earth!

M is for Macro

A bit of a test tonight, these are all taken with the new camera. My old Samsung, which had given sterling service for about two years to date died last week and with me having A) no money and B) a need for a camera last Wednesday, I couldn't get another Samsung, or whinge quickly enough to get a replacement from them. So having written Fuji Finepix off as being shite years ago after two of theirs failed me, I managed to find a cheepie on Wednesday.

These are taken with a Nikon compact - currently £49.99 in Argos. Like the previous three and following Moore's Law it is nearly twice the power of the old one and smaller, so from now on all (new) images will be around 16 Mpx. These also took a while to load but seem much clearer/sharper and the detail - when I get them in focus! - is in a different league.

Various Hover-flys, often mistaken by children for Wasps, they are mostly pretty harmless nectar eaters, with some of them having a rather horrid aquatic larval stage known as the 'long tailed maggot'. Other larvae feed on Aphids and look like shortened Caterpillars! Or; green hairy Leeches!!

More of the same, these are three standard House-fly sized larger ones and another (top left - Sun fly?) which was the biggest Hover-fly I've ever seen, it was the same size as a Hornet and that's what I thought it was as it buzzed my ear on the way into the Buddleia!

Little buff-beauties or whatever they are called, medium sized wild bees of the small colony type (50-odd to a few hundred individuals). The detail on some of these is fantastic and I'm wondering if they are worth anything to the image libraries? I take thousands of these types of shots and it would be nice if I could earn a bit of cash from them?

This is - I know - Bombus (probably 'lucorum' but with a buff tail?), our largest true Bumble-bee, and when it gets to it, it weighs the whole candelabra of flower-heads down, again the detail on these makes the thousands I have on disc from the last four or five years look poor!

This I am very pleased with, I have a vague memory of finding a red-tailed fly all dead, crumbled and dusty in an old web as a kid, but this is the first live one I've seen and I can't find it anywhere on the web ID pages? It's actually a crimson/vermilion colour changing to a more common green at the head end with a metallic sheen, the flash took some of its prettiness away! I don't even know which type of fly it is, I'm guessing on of the House/'Bottle', Flesh, Dung or Coffin flys, but several other groups have similar but less colourful members?

These were the first shots with the new camera and I was still getting used to it, the flash on macro is a bit too 'hot', but it takes better macro pictures without flash in good light so I may change the way I shoot figures...I've yet to try toy soldiers with it.

If you're thinking of a camera, or looking ahead to Christmas you can't beat this deal at Argos, 16 mega-pixels for 50-quid? Downsides so far - bright flash in macro, standard double-A batteries that may prove expensive over time and slow response on focusing compared to previous models. In a few years this type of 'compact-digital[ camera will probably have been replaced by smart-phone cameras of the same spec, so this may be one of the last?

I'm never sure of the rule re. names - common or Latin so have capitalised everything! I know it's a mess, it looks a mess, but I have Asperger's and it's only a Blog so I don't think anyone from Oxbridge will be harrumphing me down the phone first-thing tomorrow!

[Added 12-Sep.-2013] Turns out it's a North American Sweat Bee, and a less common one at that, must have stowed-away on a flying machine heading for Gatwick or Heathrow and flown along the M25 to Leatherhead! Or it might be one of these imports the tomato-growers are bringing-in to pollinate poly-tunnels?

H is for Hampshire Wildlife - August 2012

One or two of you may have noticed I have now imported all the old posts from the gardening and moaning blogs, so from time to time you'll have to put up with the odd bit of wildlife or plant life on this blog from now on. I will try to finish re-tagging the 'Index' (preferably before the final imposition of the 'New Style' blog layout - as it's much easier in the old version) and bring over the last of the links in the next few weeks.

I also have about 30 articles in preparation, some of which I've already mentioned, but there's a lot going on in 'real life' at the moment so they are not going on-line as quickly as I'd like. For now here's some of the visitors to my flat in Enham (Nr. Andover - an old stomping ground from my Army days!) and my mothers garden in North Hampshire.

This little chap - or chap'ess - came calling just after midnight on Thursday and I would have given it some milk but the caterers here had given us yoghurt disguised as milk (for our self-catered breakfast) which I figured would not go down well with a house guest, so I just took some pictures for the visitors book and saw it on it's snail-hunting way.

Creepy-crawlies are always a favourite of mine and these are all from the last 30 days, the slug was even longer, but he started to shorten as I focused, a phenomena I have noticed before with slugs and snails and I suspect they somehow detect the beam from the camera, as you can always approach them (with care) but the moment you press first pressure on the shutter button they freeze up/shrink.

I don't know what the ants were finding so interesting, I inspected the stick after I took the shot and it was a stick...just a stick! The snail was so small yet so beautifully constructed it would drive a simpler mind to religion!

Flyers - after a couple of really good years for butterflies, we have now had two bad ones and this year they have been so thin on the ground (and the Buddleia!) that I try to shoot them whenever I see one. While I continue to fall for moths, who are so much-more pretty than a quick glance ever betrays, their buffs and grays, browns and fawns being actually patterns and designs as complex as any butterfly.

These three little voles came out of a bank on Saturday afternoon and sat around on the grass together, so tame we could stroke them, although they did tend to rush back into their hole after a couple of touches!

It is one of life's undeniable pleasures to encounter wildlife close-up, commune with it (on any level) and let it carry-on with it's day. I'm not sure if a 'Greenie' wouldn't cry "foul" at the stroking of voles, but they were gentle little one-finger passes (these things are about 45mm nose-to-tail-base, and the animals were back out in minutes - so obviously weren't that bothered, I guess you'd be nervous if a 600 foot giant came and patted you gently on the head!

The last 8 days