Bee hotel update and more Wasp Spiders

Bee activity has slowed down in the bee hotel but there are still a few bees preparing their nest chambers. Some bees like below, have closed the chamber with a strange saliva like substance that looks like bubbly plastic!

With all these pictures, it is much better to click on them to see them much sharper and clearer, not to mention larger.

Below were the first six nests of my yellow and black bee that I mentioned in a previous post - well I have now discovered that it is a Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium species), who don’t use leaves or mud to line their nests, but plant hairs! I don't have any obvious furry leaved plants but there is furry stuff on the spent flowers/seed pods of Perovskia, so it might have come from that. If you look at the two pictures below, you'll see one chamber in preparation, lined with cotton wool like stuff. The other five chambers below have been sealed off; I'm guessing from the colours that four are with some kind of chewed up plant material and the brown one with chewed woody stuff or soil.

This bee eventually made nine nest chambers! She was one busy bee. 😀 I have also seen one again in my herb bed, displaying a rather strange behaviour of buzzing and hovering around a couple of my herbs that are in bloom, occasionally stopping on a flower for a nano second only to buzz off again and continue this strange patrolling. The males of Anthidium manicatum display territorial behaviour,  patrolling around their favoured plants and chasing off other pollinators, whilst waiting for females to appear, so it's possible other Anthidium bees do the same. I have no idea how long their nesting season goes on for, so cross fingers there may be more nests in the bee hotel from this species!

There are 11 species of Anthidium in France whilst only A. manicatum in the UK, so I can't be sure which exact species is my bee, though I don't believe they all collect plant hairs. I really don't have the time right now to research this further.

Other solitary bees have chosen the cut pieces of bamboo for their nest chambers, although what has struck me since these chambers were sealed off, is that some of them have been broken into. I know there are parasitic wasps, and also other bees who lay their eggs in the nest chambers of other bees (they are known as Cuckoo Bees), but what has surprised me is that they haven't resealed the chamber. It's not just this one below (top right bamboo), but other different sized holes from other bees have also shown this breaking in....

.... like these tiny holes here - some on the bottom row have been broken into.

So you can see, so much to study and research and keep me occupied! It's all so fascinating and I look forward to seeing a whole year in the life of my bee hotel next year. And I must remember to take my camera out more often and take photos of the bees!

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Now back to my Wasp Spiders. Below is a young one.

And this is a freshly made web (when the spider wasn't around). The zigzag stabilimentum is quite clear here with a furry mass of web where the spider tends to hang around.

Here we have a very slightly older spider with a male very close to her. Males are very small in comparison to the adult spiders, which you'll see a bit further down. I saw many males this year though I never saw them doing the actual business nor being eaten! Note also in this photo is a moult, known as an exoskeleton. Like many insects, as they grow they shed their outer shell. I tried to take one to keep when the spider wasn't there any more, but it fell apart in my fingers, it was so delicate.

A more mature spider with its wrapped up dinner.

This is part of our ditch between us and the neighbours where many of the spiders could be found, especially around the Oregano which is abundant in the ditch area. This ditch is a passageway for butterflies and other insects, so a good place for spiders to find food.

Underside view of a male spider on its own - I found that after some of the females disappeared that the males would hang around alone for a few days until they presumably went off to find another female.

Now here's a mature female from the under side, with two males. Lucky lady - she had a choice!

You can really see the difference in size now.

This is part of my Nectar Bar and in this patch there were eventually seven mature Wasp Spiders!

The most I counted at one time was 23, but sadly, one by one they disappeared, whether they have been predated or what, I don't know. I'm very disappointed as I think I had some around until September last year, and I have only found one egg sac so far, in the Valerian. Hopefully there will be more in the ditch.

I read that Wasp Spiders can be predated by birds, praying mantises, lizards and wasps, that's not all wasps but probably one of the spider hunting wasps.

We are off in the Moho next week to Provence again, but further to the north of the region in some of the regional parks in the mountains that we haven't visited before, though we'll finish off at our favourite beachside campsite for a few days as usual!

I'll then write about some of our travels during the winter like I did last year. See you in a few weeks! 😀

I found some Wasp Spider egg sacs!

Hola from Spain!

We are at the beginning of a three week trip to Extremadura and Andalusia, mixing birding with Moorish architecture and Roman ruins and anything else we find of interest. So I will probably be rather quiet where posts are concerned. 

In the meantime, as I don’t have hundreds of photos to go through as we are just en route at the moment, I thought I’d do a quick post from my iPad showing you the egg sacs I found. I had been hoping to find some, but I hadn’t looked up what they look like, which helps. I was amazed - they are a real work of art. A Greek urn, is how I’ve seen them described. And they are big! I think the description of hen egg size might be a bit misleading but they are certainly a good 2cm - 2.5cms.

It took a while to find one, but after the first I found three more. They make them close to where their webs are. Not necessarily on vegetation either, as my friend Andrea in Germany also had a Wasp Spider in her garden. However when she finally found the egg sac, it was actually attached to the wall behind the shrub where the web had been. And - biggest surprise of all - there were two egg sacs! Now I hadn’t read that they can make two egg sacs, but I did then wonder about my ‘big girl’, who had disappeared for a few days earlier on, then came back with a fresh web looking a bit slimmer. And then it happened again. So after she was gone for good, I had another look through the Valerian, and sure enough, there was a second egg sac!

I will be having a good look through the ditch when we get home, as sadly all the spiders had gone by early October. I miss them!

It's a good year for the Wasp Spider

If you are receiving this via email, please accept my apologies for the lack of posts in recent months. Please read the end of this blog where I explain.

Our first summer here I found three Wasp Spiders (Argiope bruennichi) in the garden, but since then, nothing. Imagine my surprise when deadheading in the Nectar Bar to realise I was disturbing a huge Wasp Spider! I then discovered one in the herb garden that same day, and in the last few days have been finding more. 

In all I have counted 14 in our garden! Most are in the ditch between our property and the gardens on the hillside next to us. The ditch is for run off during heavy rainfall, but is a godsend for wildlife as it's full of wildflowers and is just a wild jungle really, so a good place for creatures to hide from predators. Unless you are a pollinating insect, and the whole ditch has become one big Wasp Spider hang out! 

This spider above has a stabilimentum (the zigzag decoration) on its web, but I noticed that most of them don't. It could be that the stabilimentum has been disturbed by the amount of wind we get. The first spider that I found had its stabilimentum disturbed by me and whilst the spider eventually respun a great new web, it didn't bother with this part of it. A bit puzzling! However it's not known what purpose the stabilimentum actually serves though there are several hypotheses. 

Below is the one I first found in my Valerian in the Nectar Bar. It's one of the biggest, though they really range in size even in a small area like my garden.

The following two are taken showing the underside of the spider.

This one has a juicy fly or bee wrapped up in silk, or, quite possibly, her mate! I have noticed in one photo I took of this spider, three males hanging around the outside of her web. What's wrapped up is stripy though, and the males are rather brown looking and much less decorative, not to mention a lot smaller. You can see a picture of a male and a female together here.

I'm now going to look for their egg sacs, as I have yet to see one. They are supposed to be hung in the vegetation near the web and resemble an upturned Greek urn. Fingers crossed!


Email Subscribers

I only noticed a month or so back that I wasn't receiving my own copy of my blog via Feedio. I have no idea what happened but they have disappeared off the face of the internet, so I have had to find another provider to send emails out to you. I have gone with follow.it and let's hope they stick around for longer!

You have missed quite a few posts - I don't know from when exactly but it was early on this year I think.

Here are links to the posts I've made (most recent first) that you may be interested in reading:

Pyrenean Escapade with Birding Languedoc Part 2 

Pyrenean Escapade with Birding Languedoc - Part 1 

Wildflowers and orchids on a hillside in Laurac 

Black Redstart nest and new butterflies in the garden 

Orchids at home and another trip with Birding Languedoc 

Orchids, butterflies and more in the Upper Aude Valley - Part 2

Orchids, butterflies and more in the Upper Aude Valley - Part 1 

I think I need to catch up a bit 

Look what the snow brought! 

I think that's about it. Hope you enjoy the posts and thank you for following Chateau Moorhen!

A day out in Spain and a local walk

Let's have a pause in the holiday photos and go to Spain for a change! After our return from holiday, we headed to Roses in Spain with Malcolm before he left. The last time we had been there was with him, on Xmas Eve 2019! We had been itching to go back, and also to go to a Spanish supermarket to get some things we can't get here in France.

The weather was lovely, not too hot so just perfect. We headed for a restaurant near the beach for tapas, of course!

Keith and I opted for seafood and Padron chillies and my brother who is allergic to anything that comes out of the sea, apart from fish, chose whatever else they had.

This was an amazing sandcastle!

We've seen some lovely sand sculptures on the Mediterranean beaches, but this castle was really cute. There were candles in all the windows so it must look beautiful in the dark.

We then went to a supermarket where we found Padron chillies, which are not hot by the way but are really delicious, huge peaches and sherry which you can't buy in France (yes really!!); other things which are cheaper are olive oil and shower gel. What we couldn't find there which was surprising are salted preserved anchovy fillets. We have on occasion found them in our local supermarkets here in France but they are not something that is regularly found, only anchovies that are cooked whole, like sardines. One wonders then, how one is supposed to make a Salade Niçoise without the anchovies? 😞 After that we headed up into Cap de Creus where luckily on the way up into the hills there was a place to pull over to look at the view. This is looking back at Roses and to the south.

We drove all the way to the lighthouse at the end as we wanted to make the most of being in the car. You can't do the last leg of the journey in a motorhome - the road gets narrower and they are banned beyond Cadaques anyway.

It must be idyllic being on a boat being able to stop in all these beautiful coves!

Looking up at the lighthouse - there is a cafe here too around the other side, and a restaurant to the right up the hill. From here it's about 2 3/4 hours to get home via the motorway, so we came back that way, as we have already done the more scenic but much slower Corniche route with Malcolm.

One day after Malcolm had left but before the very hot weather arrived, we went for a walk on the route called the Tramway, which goes around the village along the old railway route. At the beginning of the 20th century trains ran from Fanjeaux to our local town of Bram and beyond carrying people and agricultural produce all the way to the Montagne Noire, and in turn, bringing other kinds of produce back here. Fanjeaux station was situated below the old town, about halfway down the hill, and the route winds all around the village taking a less steep gradient this way.

This photo was taken before the sunflowers (field on right) started blooming, although they did flower quite early this year. Because it has been so dry in recent months the plants were a bit stunted and some fields have big gaps with no plants, but they all flowered eventually and looked fabulous as usual!

Scabious was still flowering at this time and at one point I noticed a bee hanging below a flower - now I know what that means. 😀 A crab spider! Poor bee had met its maker but the spider was happy.

Going back to sunflowers, we often see rogue sunflowers growing in other fields, most often in fallow fields, but sometimes, like below, in a field of crops. It always makes me smile.

Here they are closer up. There's something strange in this image though. One of the sunflowers is pointing in the opposite direction to all the others! Now sunflowers nearly always point in the direction of the sun, which is why they are called Tournesol in French, which means 'turn [towards the] sun'. I'm very happy this one decided to point in the direction of the camera. 💕

This is the same field but I wanted to show you something - where a road or farm track has been cut through the chalky rock you can see how white it is here. The rockface is where we find Mediterranean/garrigue plants growing in amongst the more northern flora which grows elsewhere here. On the chalk tracks and banks we have thyme, curry plants, sedums, sometimes rosemary and sometimes lavender, plus other plants which I don't know as yet.

I still have about three more holiday posts to go - maybe next trip I'll stick to one or two overview posts instead! 😂

More interesting discoveries at home

Have you ever heard of a Southern Gatekeeper? No, me neither! I only discovered recently that they exist. I knew there was a Spanish Gatekeeper, which I'd seen once before in the Pyrenees Orientales near to the Spanish border. I thought then that I was seeing this butterfly in my garden, but having a look through my butterfly book I realised that I had in fact been seeing the Southern Gatekeeper, along with the regular Gatekeeper. There isn't a huge difference in how they look, other than the male Southern Gatekeeper has sex brands on the topside of its forewing, and underneath they lack the small spots that the regular Gatekeeper has. There's also a bit more of a Y shape in the pale coloration underneath. There's a side by side picture on Wikipedia here showing the difference in the underwing pattern between the two species.

You can clearly see the sex brand markings on the forewing above.

The underwing showing a slight Y shape in a pale white colour, and no spots.

The next discovery was really exciting! We had seen Praying Mantises in Provence a few years ago, but I was very surprised to discover one when I was deadheading the geraniums. I'm really finding some goodies in the flower pots around the pool - a wasp spider, Geranium Bronze butterflies, and a praying mantis - you wouldn't expect so much interesting wildlife there, would you?!! Wonder what will be next.... 😀

The following photos were taken with Keith's phone, which was the nearest thing to hand....

European Mantis (Mantis religiosa)

You can really see how well camouflaged they are as they are identical in colour to the leaves! K was amazed that I had even found it, but it moved, which is how I noticed it. It's worth clicking on the individual images to view them a bit closer, as they have an extremely scary alien-like head and eyes, and terrifying front legs (imagine being their prey, or indeed, their mate!).

A few days ago K spotted this crab spider on the tiles in our covered patio area. When I went out with my camera, it of course started to walk, so there I was on my knees, bum in the air, crawling along with it trying to get some decent shots. 😀

It walked along to the drain that runs along the patio stones beside the pool area, and took shelter beneath one of the metal rails. I could still see it though!

It's Heriaeus hirtus, a member of the Thomisidae family of crab spiders. Hirtus means hairy in Latin!

Last but not least, a Hoopoe flew into our neighbour's garden, which was wonderful to see. K had seen a few before but I missed them, so this is the first one I have seen since moving here! I was hoping to see more. Never mind, we have seen Bee-eaters in the vicinity of our village several times, so I'm not too upset. It's bloody brilliant living here! 

(Credit for these photos goes to Keith, who took them through the kitchen window).

Talking of loving it here, we really do. I just love everything, love my new house, love the easy to manage garden, the pool (of course!) and the view. And love, love, LOVE living in the south of France! There is just SO much to explore here. It will take us years to explore just our own department, never mind the neighbouring depts. There's the Pyrenees, the Montagne Noir, the Haut Languedoc mountains, the Corbieres hills, the coastal area... and in normal times there is nearby Spain too! And of course the fauna and flora, so much of which is different. I feel so much better depression wise and feel joy again often. Life is good. 

Some interesting spiders and insects

One of the most prolific wildflowers flowering at the moment is scabious, which is growing in all the verges and fallow spaces. Of course this is great for me as it's a flower that attracts all sorts of pollinators, and in turn, predators! On a recent walk up to the highest hill in our area, which has an amazing 360 degree view of all the hill and mountain ranges in the Aude and the Ariege, I came across this interesting crab spider. I haven't seen one this shape before (I don't think!). It's Thomisus onustus, part of the family of Thomisidae spiders. This one is similar to the one I used to find in my last garden, Misumena vatia, which changes colour to yellow or white, with some pink markings, though this one can be bright pink all over. Like all crab spiders, they don't spin webs but sit on a flower and wait for prey to land to take nectar and pollen. This link at Wikipedia shows a number of pictures of the spider in its various colour forms.

Thomisus onustus

Last week we discovered another of my favourite spiders, the Wasp Spider, in our garden! Keith was pointing out a spider in a pot of geraniums, when I noticed another small spider nearby that I didn't recognise, but I certainly recognised the familiar zigzag pattern on the web, known as the stabilimentum, indicating the family of Argiope spiders. I had to take photos to see what the markings were of the spider as it was too small to tell, though within a week the spider had grown so much that it was easily ID'd with the naked eye!

Young Wasp Spider (Argiope bruennichi) living in a pot of geraniums

Argiope bruennichi

Amazingly I discovered another one in a photo! I was looking at some photos I had taken of the hibiscus out the front of the house, when I spotted a web in the corner of one of the photos, which when I zoomed in, yes, it also had a stabilimentum! I dashed outdoors and it was another Wasp spider about the same size as the first one. It could even be that one as the original one has disappeared from the geraniums. Look just below the centre of the photo and there's a vertical thick white line with a spidery blob in the centre - this is a very cropped in part of the original photo. It's always amazing what one discovers in the way of wildlife in photos! I just hope that the Wasp spiders stay around the garden until they get huge in the early autumn.

Now, onto insects. Keith spotted this next critter, but on the wall of the house near the garage, and at about 5cm/2 inches long, it wasn't hard not to notice! It's an antlion, something I've never seen before. It's related to lacewings, owlflies and mantidflies (would love to see one of them!!). All of these insects are very interesting looking but I know very little about them. Antlions have very predatorial larvae, some of which dig holes to trap passing insects. This particular species doesn't do that though. According to my Med. insect book, this is one of the most commonly photographed species of antlion in the Mediterranean. Most likely that means it's one of the most commonly seen! It's Distoleon tetragrammicus, and it's habitat is oak and pine woodlands where the larvae live in the leaf litter.

Antlion Distoleon tetragrammicus

Finally my favourite insect - the butterfly of course! I have been hoping to see one of these Geranium Bronzes, even though I know that technically they are a pest of geraniums/pelargoniums. They are not native, having been brought in to Europe by accident from their native South Africa; however there it has natural predators plus geraniums grow in the wild being also native to South Africa, so it's not a pest as its numbers are naturally controlled. 

It's a tiny little thing and I've seen them a lot fluttering around my pots of geraniums and also feeding on nearby scabious on the grassy bank at the edge of our property. It's certainly going to be interesting seeing what happens to my geraniums. The caterpillars bore into the stems of the plants and eat them, and the stems turn black, which harms the plants. I can live with some damaged stems, but obviously don't want to lose all my geraniums. If I do find this butterfly problematic, I'll have to plant out fewer geraniums and more different bedding plants in my decorative pots around the pool/house area. I already have bedding verbena mixed in with the geraniums, but the snails seem to love eating them, whilst leaving the geraniums alone - you can't win!

Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli)

Geranium Bronze (Cacyreus marshalli)

I haven't taken many macros of butterflies so far this year, just because most of the species I've seen have either been too flitty or weren't close enough. This following butterfly was happy enough feeding on the oregano growing in the ditch next to our garden, but wasn't easy to get too close to. Plus it's windy here - the Aude is the windiest department in France, and we live on top of a hill. So getting a macro in focus isn't the easiest thing here at times!

Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus malvae)

Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus malvae)

It's been a while since I did a post about insects or spiders! But it was not surprising that I would find some different species now that I live in an entirely new part of France, with a different climate. Sadly I no longer have my moth trap as it went up in the 'Great Barn Fire of 2018' because I might finally have found a Death's Head Hawk Moth! I'm just hoping to find some really groovy butterfly species, like the Nettle Tree butterfly or Spanish Festoon, when we are out and about closer to the coast. Cross your fingers for me!