hovering at the botanics

 

The third of three sunny days last week. 19th Sept. And it was a lot of fun despite the lack of butterflies. In particular, red admirals. Iain, the butterfly guru who lives in the Borders had asked for a show of hands; did people think there were fewer RAs about than usual? I think the answer, sadly, is yes, it does seem that way. However there were some about so it wasn't as if they had been wiped from the face of the earth without trace. Of the three sunny days this week, there were none in Saltoun where I would have anticipated maybe a dozen. Then along the Tyne and Dunbar areas there were very few, but when I got to East Linton there were half a dozen in people's gardens, on some ivy and a late flowering buddleia. So it is not admiral armageddon. However there is usually a late surge of RAs and you can find spectacular gatherings of them (15 or more) on their favourite garden blooms like the backgarden asters in Gullane. Or the Cimicifuga (simplex and racemosa) at the Botanics.

And it has been far too long since I spent time in the Botanics. I was quite tired from the previous 2 days adventures and the thought of a quiet wander around the local (non-weekend) plants and trees seemed ideal. The sun was out and I plotted a route around the gardens via all flowers that attract butterflies at this time of the year. 

Spanish chestnuts

Nothing at the rock garden where the striking blue flowers of the Ceratostigma minus have been known to attract admirals. (And very weirdly a humming-bird hawk-moth that must have been hiding out in the warmth of the glasshouses to appear on the 10th October 2022.)

Nothing much at the Scabiosa japonica (above) where last year about now there was a red admiral and fairly decent comma on sunny days. There were a few speckled wood about the place often higher in the trees like the one below, sunning itself, away from public reach.

I crossed the Chinese hillside gardens checking out the pond for kingfisher, robins and squirrels, the latter couple often welcome a photo shoot in return for peanuts. Nope. Nothing. Nada.

Oh well, over to the tall beech hedge which at this time of year is bound to have an admiral or 2 on the purple torch or the white plumed version. (Cimicifugas.) Just hoverflies, drone flies and bees. I was a little floored, wondering if they had come and gone but no... the long blooms were perfectly in flower and it was sunny. Where are the admirals? This exact time last year (and every year) on sunny days there are half a dozen admirals on these long plumes. That's the rules!

empty of admirals 😢

Since it was so nice out I felt there was little mileage in complaining and along the lines of "when fate gives you lemons... " decided to make the most of what was there. Pretty flowers and loads of flies: bees and hoverflies in particular. Just through the beech hedge and between it and Botanic Cottage (I can find no other term for the pretty house the other side of the planted borders where apples and veg and wildflowers are being grown, running parallel to Inverleith Place. Anyway there, there is a trough of Phacelia. It seemed similar if not identical to that which is grown along crop field edges by Luffness Farm to attract the pollinators away from the crop and onto a swathe of flowers.

It is extremely popular with hoverflies. I can't really be bothered with bees. There are lots of sorts and virtually none of them look dynamic. They are fat and fuffy and formless. Hoverflies are far more sporty. They are often sleek and aerodynamic and built to cut through the air. They also hover: which means if you crank the ISO up to several thousand you can get the shutter-speed up to 1/4000 or higher and maybe freeze one motionless in the air in front of the stamen it is considering landing on. It is a good game (if you have good equipment) and one that is about as likely to fail as succeed. In fact the chances of failure are far higher than success but if there are no butterflies around it passes a sunny afternoon and in no time you are on your hands and knees making inadvertent grunting noises face pressed up against the viewfinder while members of the public wonder what is so fascinating you have to get down on all fours to photograph it.

there were all these wildflowers directly in front of the Botanic Cottage 
but they have since been dug out

Helophilus pendulus

So largey my method of identifying hoverflies has been google lens. It often gives you several options to choose from, and that has been as accurate as I have bothered to be, thus far. However with this recent interest gaining legs (spoiler alert, this will not be the last blog to feature hoverfly photos) I have ordered a book about Britain's Hoverflies. I'm sure we are all pretty excited about that and the way the accuracy of future identifications will improve leaps and bounds ahead of the curve. However I would (before we get too excited) remind you of the book Britain's Insects (Brock) otherwise referred to here as the big book of insects actually did more to muddy the waters rather than the reverse.

What I'd ideally like in a book is for it to say there are 32 types of hoverfly in Scotland and these are those. Picture of each next to its name, one per page. I have no doubt that what it will say is there is an enormous amount of scratchy detail meaning you can never actually be sure of anything with these particular markings on because unless you take it apart with a tiny scalpel under a microscope it is identical to 65 other subspecies that have an endlessly long number of Latin descriptions and terms going from species to taxon to genus to class to phylum to order to family to division to... Well I'm not playing that game and purposely avoid using anything to suggest I have ever studied biology. Not interested. However a book has been bought and will be delivered and if it misbehaves it will be put on the naughty step. Thanks Mairi for advice on books. (And of course, macro lenses!)

big bug looking at little bug

Syrphus ribesii or vitripennis

drone fly Eristalis this-or-that

buff-tailed bumble

tree bumble on left?

google lens now saying Eupeodes
for what looks identical to what it earlier called Syrphus

honey bee

drone fly

drone fly

echinacea

marigold - Calendula

tickseed - Coreopsis

Pearly Everlasting?
(if that is not a track by the Cocteau Twins)

Okay I am now exhausted from google lensing stuff and then either having to do further research to confirm or deny an ID. Given there will always be far more that I don't know, than I know it is generally an uphill struggle. And only slightly better than saying unknown type of hoverfly. Large black furry thing. Small slippery slow moving gloop. Feathery flier with boggly eyes. It is far more interesting to watch and photograph bugs and insects than to read about them or try to track them down on the internet.

I can happily spend and hour or 2 at a shrub with an endless amount of flying things, admiring the way they keep their drinking straws folded away until they are needed, then flipping them out onto pollenacious stamens. Also there is a lot of mileage taking macro shots of tiny plants and seeing them on the monitor MUCH larger. Especially if your eyes are old and dim. And can't see anything in great detail, smaller than a penny. Talking of which I recently bought some supermarket spectacles. One strength stronger than required, for doing small detailed work. More about that once once I get that project going, but I'm into the idea of crafting specs for days when I need more clarity than just reading glasses.

So there are a couple of places in the botanics where you can find this small white flowering plant. One is in the rock garden and another is in the herbaceous border next to the Cimicifuga simplex. It doesn't look much but if you zoom in close it has a mysterious beauty wrought out of 3 simple colours; white, brown and a light khaki green. It seems to exist as a dried flower and a growing plant at the same time and I like to take photos of the hovers on it. But actually it is very pleasing without flies too. It is difficult to put my finger on exactly where the joy of it is, but I like it very much. I think the warmth of the burnt sienna versus the cooler green, chimes in harmony like a third or a sixth, but you almost have to get down close to hear the clarity of the melody. And so much white. The white petals that surround the flowers are like tissue paper surrounding a precious ornament. And they give a large white background on which to write a simple melody. And no, I haven't been smoking it.

ahh now that is nearly perfection!

long distance view of Reg Butler sculpture near the cafe

I was in such an elevated mood on the way home that when I came across Ludo the dog with a squirrel in her mouth it struck me as wryly amusing rather than the atrocity it was. Her owner was a friendly and rather embarrassed dude in a wheelchair so he was unable to easily discourage Ludo's proclivities in the squrrel hunting dept. Or to retrieve the squirrel corpse. He was sad to say it was squirrel 34 in the last 4 years, (which also included 4 pigeons). Re the squirrels, Ludo is quite the hunter and stalks up on them "like a lion". She will carry them about for a while and then get bored and leave them. I removed this one from her and binned it. It was a large specimen and quite heavy. Not cool Ludo! But probably hard-wired and difficult-to-change behaviour. 😭