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!

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!

Hydrangeas and micro climates

After living in a place for many years you do learn where the frost pockets are in your garden, and also the most sheltered spots. When I moved here I mistakenly planted my two new hydrangeas in a place where I thought they would be sheltered, at the bottom of my sloping garden near a thick Leylandii hedge for protection. Little did I know this would be the coldest part of the garden, particularly when the cold north or east winds blow down the slope in winter!

A look around where everyone else had situated their hydrangeas made me realise one thing - they were nearly all planted up against the walls of buildings. So I relocated mine up against a wall. They are now beginning to grow a bit bigger and whilst I don't always have many flowers (even after a mild winter where they don't appear to have been frosted), at least they are doing better than before.

However, talking of microclimates, there is a back street in my village where frost must be unheard of. I've passed this group of hydrangeas planted at the side and around the back of this house many a time. Even in late autumn they were still putting out new flowers! And here we are in January and they still have green leaves and have not been touched by frost at all. They look more like mine did about three months ago!

So armed with my compact camera one day last week I went to have a closer look and took some photos. In the first picture you can see leaves yellowing and dropping but this seems to be more from age than frost!

There were mixed pink and blue blooms on these plants and this faded blue bloom below is only just picking up a few autumnal brownish tinges!

Whereas this one looks almost like a new bloom!

Now compare with mine below - both are Mophead varieties. Mine lost all their leaves when we had minus 4C some time before Christmas, but the flowers were already faded and starting to skeletonise like you see below. I only had three flowers on this shrub last year whereas 2012 it was absolutely covered.

I also have a Lacecap variety which is easier to photograph and get in to take shots of the pretty petals.

Some are just pure lace now and so beautiful when you look at them up close.

Back to the village and a few fun photos not related to hydrangeas but why waste them. Just up the road from the hydrangeas I noticed this gate which had obviously seen better days (and paint jobs!) and had to have a closer inspection.

It wasn't hiding anything much behind except for grass and a few trees, but I was happy that I saw these dewy webs. I would have loved my dSLR and macro lens though with all the peeling paint, lichen and dewy webs - such photo ops! But overall I was pleased with my compact camera which only has autofocus so not always easy to focus on webs. Luckily I had the wood to focus on so that was close enough.

Nice to know there are still spiders about spinning away with the mild weather we are having!

Webby Wednesday

There I was yesterday morning, both marvelling at and cursing the 11 webs that had appeared on the outside of my large living room window just two days after cleaning it, when suddenly the sun broke through the light mist, lighting up webs galore amongst my Bronze Fennel, Verbena bonariensis and other plants. I just had to grab my camera and go outside and try to capture some of this.

I was ducking under silks galore running from one plant to another, and whilst it hadn't appeared to be particularly damp or dewy, it was amazing how many webs were suddenly visible - and even more amazing was that through my macro lens I could actually see moisture falling in the mist!

This first shot shows a pumpkin ripening on my living room windowsill. A bit Halloweeny - just a shame about the sofa in the background but I'm not going to rearrange my living room just for one shot! 

Here hidden in amongst the rose petals you can just see a little spider. I can't tell what it is so don't know if it is responsible for the web here.

No webs here but had to try to capture the rose with some dew on it. The little blob at the bottom is exuviae from an aphid - that is, the shed exoskeleton after a moult. 

Many of the orb webs here with a v-shaped missing section are built by a species known as the Missing Sector Orb Weaver (Zygiella x-notata), many of whom live around human habitation and build their webs around windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygiella_x-notata

This will be my last post this month as I'm away soon and no time for any more blogging. Potential burglars forget it because as usual, there will be housesitters here looking after the menagerie! 

Season of mists and mellow unfruitfulness

Unless you are a mushroom hunter! Apples - slim pickings this year. Walnuts - well there were tons on the trees but the squirrels have been working overtime and if I've managed to collect 100 I'll be lucky. Usually it's more like 1,000 plus, even shared with the squirrels. Chestnuts - haven't even bothered going up the road where the trees are as I've been told by several people that they are small and pathetic this year, which is a huge shame.

Unfortunately I don't know much about fungi and don't see anything here in the garden that looks immediately obviously edible, so I just enjoy looking at them, and with all the early rain this autumn, there are no shortage of them. The weather has been damp and truly dismal this last few days, too wet to do much outside even though I still have autumn jobs to complete. So I took a few photos of the fungi instead and started the job of tidying up, pruning and fungicide spraying my soggy, rust ridden pelargoniums as it's time to bring them indoors now before they rot completely.

This fungi is my favourite, growing on an old tree stump.

This next one I showed in my last posting but this time I've stuck my welly next to them to show up their size!

Sometimes there are whole lines of them, or semi circles.

Some have been munched!

Some of them are cute.

Some of them are really tiny.

The only time we actually did find some edible mushrooms here was our first year when a load of oyster mushrooms appeared on a bank which used to be part of an old field margin. 99% sure that our ID was correct, off we trotted with a few specimens to the Pharmacie, which we have always been told is THE place to go to get your fungi identified. Well I'm not so sure about that. First we had two ladies umming and ahhing over a book for ages, then they called in a third lady, who ummed and ahhed over the book for a bit longer. She then finally pronounced them oyster mushrooms. So off we went to pick some more only to find them full of maggots. That's enough to put me off wild mushroom hunting for life so I haven't bothered looking out for them anymore!

Here's an ancient photo of them from 2005 (how digital cameras have changed!).

As well as fungi there are spiders' webs everywhere in the grass. Whether they were there before or not I don't know, but the heavy dew is really showing them up beautifully. It's hard to know where to put your feet! There are hundreds of delicate little ones like the one below...

... and a few like this, which are like thick blankets. I did see some large-ish spiders scuttling off into the grass when they saw me bend down to have a look!

On Sunday I came across a really beautiful hairy caterpillar. I'd seen one before back in September but it was only a tiny version of it. This one is much bigger and was sitting on one of my cultivated blackberry leaves. It's the caterpillar of the Knot Grass Moth (Acronicta rumicis), which eats, amongst other things, bramble leaves. It hadn't munched much and I left it be. In fact it is a caterpillar which you shouldn't touch as those hairy bits can give you a nasty rash. I never touch hairy caterpillars anyway just to be on the safe side. Believe it or not though, the moth this will become is not some fancy red, black and white beauty, but quite an ordinary looking greyish thing!

It's hard to know sometimes isn't it? This is its back end!

And this is the front, even though that 'face' isn't actually
its face. The head/face is hidden under the lower hairy beard!

Sideways view gives a better idea of what I mean - the front end is on the right.

Looking down on it from its back end.
Yes there are self seeded cosmos in this area, not competing
with the blackberries, so why not?!

I realise that I haven't updated about my Swallowtail chrysalises. That's because nothing happened, and even the three that remained in the warmth of my kitchen for weeks did nothing at all, which really pleased me. Somehow these chrysalises seem to know that it is not the right time of year to eclose (hatch out) so they have gone into their winter hibernation. So I've put them out in their box into the duck shed where I put Teeny Guy. I don't expect anything to happen now before the spring, but I shall be watching the weather and if we are due for mild weather I'll bring them inside in March, if not then in early April, and we shall see what happens!