Bee Orchids and Green Hairstreaks at the London Wetland Centre

Today I was back at the London Wetland Centre showing Stella around on her first visit.

I'm starting to think Stella is my lucky charm what with the Kingfishers at Maple Lodge a couple of weeks ago and today she found me two great spots - my first ever Green Hairstreak butterfly and a Shield Bug laying eggs.

 

Where we met was at the toilets by the bike racks. There are several concrete nest cups on the wall, and a feral pigeon was making use of one of them.....

 

 

Last weekend none of the beautiful Bee Orchids were in flower. Today Stella and I found five flowering spikes....

 

with the one below conveniently flowering next to another orchid, the Marsh Orchid....

 

The really warm weather was great for spotting damselflies, and practising my macro photography....

 

female Common Blue

female Blue-tailed

 

female Blue-tailed Damselfly

 

Common Blues mating

 The new man made pond in the courtyard is finally attracting some life. This Large Red female was happily laying eggs amongst the weed.....

 

 

One thing I really wanted to show Stella were the Common Lizards. And I didn't fail her....

 

 

The caterpillar below was also spotted by Stella. It looks very exotic but is in fact quite common on water plants. Its name is Depressaria daucella. The adult moth is quite a drab brown. (Big thanks to Jan Charteris for help with the ID)

 

 

There were a few hoverflies around today, but I didn't want Stella to become bored whilst I spent hours trying to photograph them, so I settled for just one photo of the common beautiful Marmalade Fly....

 

A Soldier Beetle was doing its best to hide from us....

 

and we found several 'aphid farms' complete with guardian ants....

 

The aphids secrete a honeydew which the ants love. In return the ants protect the aphids from predators. Its a 'win win' situation.

 

Stella and I were watching ladybirds when she found the shield bug. On closer examination you could see she was still laying eggs. I've tentatively identified it as a Hawthorn Shield Bug but happy to be corrected.....

 

It wasn't just all about insects today.

The Sand Martin bank was very busy with over 80 nest holes in use.....

 

There was a distant Redshank viewable from the Wildside Hide...

 



 

and a stunning Lapwing...

 

Philip Giles even managed to get a scoped photo of a mating pair of Little Ringed Plovers which is on the London Wetland Centre facebook page (link here )

 

It was a nice day for butterflies. There was very little wind so the little darlings were quite settled. My 'bogey' butterfly this season has been the Brimstone. I keep seeing them in flight but not settled long enough to grab a photo. So I was quite chuffed when a female settled, but she was too far away for my macro lens.....

 

 

The female Common Blues were much more obliging....

 

We were fortunate enough a couple of times to get chatting to a guy who had a similar interest. On our second chance encounter he told us he had just seen a Green Hairstreak. These are fairly common butterflies, but I don't get them at Cranford Park and have never seen one. So after he showed us where he had seen it, we waited around for a while to see if it would show again.

 

I had given up and was walking away when Stella spotted it.

 

What a beauty ! And I do mean both Stella and the butterfly !

 

It was incredibly docile and allowed us to get some really close views.

The lovely iridescent sheen meant it looked different coloured according to how the wings caught the sun. All of my photos below have had no editing at all, except for cropping. The colours are exactly as we saw them......

 

 

and my favourite shot of the day......

 

 

A cracking day, and we beat the rain. Great finds today and great company. Stella, thank you so much for all of your finds today. It was also good to see the usual faces at the Centre - Philip, John, Therese, Rick aka Posh Boy, Joe, Martin, Andy, Kevin aka Spig and Sue.