Conditions were chilly but bright and the sunshine encouraged a few flies to bask on fence posts. This female was off before I could capture it but not before I had grabbed a photograph. It looks very much like Calliphora vicina, perhaps the commonest of our blowflies, and the wide space between the compound eyes shows that it is a female.
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Some flies seem surprisingly resistant to cold. A calliphorid basks
on a fence. Stefen Hill Pocket Park, 10 January, 2020
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One fly was a little less alert. This was Phaonia tuguriorum, my first fly of the year and one which is often among the earliest of the year. I also made an optimistic sweep of pine foliage and was rewarded with a Pine Ladybird, Exochomus quadripustulatus, a new record for the pocket park. It is a rather small, predominantly black ladybird with red spots, easily confused with some forms of the Harlequin Ladybird. I didn't expect to be coming up with new records this early in the year.
Ivy fruits were ripening steadily. Many were still green but others had ripened almost to a point where birds will be tempted.
Ivy fruits were ripening steadily. Many were still green but others had ripened almost to a point where birds will be tempted.
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| Many ivy fruits have yet to ripen... |
Is this succession of fruit a deliberate strategy that has evolved to ensure that only a percentage is available at any one time so that most are consumed?
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...but others are darkening nicely. Stefen Hill Pocket Park.
10 January, 2020
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As with Byfield, this pocket park has its patch of snowdrops. The scapes (see note) are a little taller and the flowers perhaps a little more advanced. As galanthophiles will point out (at some length), snowdrops are very variable.
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Snowdrop flowers are on the point of opening.
Stefen Hll Pocket Park 10 January, 2020
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To be brutally honest there was little to get worked up about but I was pleased to find, just about at the point where I had given up hope, a colony of the fungus Nectria peziza. It was growing in a typical situation - a rotting tree stump.
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Orange Spot growing on a rotting tree stump. Stefen Hill Pocket Park.
10 January, 2020
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It looks almost as though an insect has laid a batch of bright orange eggs. Predictably it is known as the Orange Spot Fungus. It is moderately common but less so than its relative, the Coral Spot Fungus, often found on wooden sheds and fences where the timber is damp.
So all was not lost and I went home to strawberries with lashings of cream happy.
Note A scape is a leafless flowering stem with all leaves around the base. Daffodils provide a good example.
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