Off the beaten track

Something like 90% of Foxhill Farm is sheep pasture but there is a significant amount of woodland and a small but interesting area of shrubs. It was this latter area I visited earlier today.


I made my approach via a flowery meadow with many buttercups. Being mildly poisonous buttercups do not make good grazing but they are certainly colourful and I noticed that many bore leaf-mines. These mines are the work of Phytomyza ranunculivora and under a lens it could be seen that the frass (poo) is distributed along the mine in well-spaced granules.

Several organisms create mines on buttercups but that of Phytomyza

ranunculivora is reasonably distinctive. Foxhill Farm, 19 May, 2020

This species is common and was not a new record for the farm.

And so on along a largely disused path into the area of scrub. It is an area of what I presume consisted of natural shrubs but it has been heavily augmented by thoughtful planting. I say thoughtful because the shrubs chosen are native to Northants, and include Guelder Rose, Viburnum opulus. Incidentally this plant is not a rose and is not even in the rose family. It is a member of the Adoxaceae, and as for the name Guelder - it is apparently so-called because an early cultivar came to this country from Gelderland, in Holland.

The Guelder Rose is one of the most attractive of our native shrubs.

Foxhill Farm, Badby, Northants. 19 May, 2020

Another shrub present in large quantities is Spindle, Euonymus europaeus. Some of the Spindle twigs were encrusted with a smut-type fungus. It could be Puccinia striiformis but I am by no means sure.


Spindle is pollinated by various small insects, but what is it that lures them? The flowers are hardly colourful and nor, as far as I am able to detect, is there any significant scent. But insects may well be attracted by something to which humans are oblivious. Who knows? Certainly Euonymus is attractive and the generic epithet means 'of good name'.

A puzzling species of smut was encrusting some twigs of Spindle.

Foxhill Farm, 19 May, 2020

From grass nearby I swept a fine specimen of the spider Tibellus oblongus. Its striping allows it to blend into dried grass stems extremely effectively and I would probably have overlooked it without sweeping. 




Tibellus oblongus at Foxhill Farm. 19 May, 2020

The spider had already been recorded from the farm and overall the visit was a little disappointing in terms of wildlife, but I have a number of specimens to place under the microscope so...who knows?



Spindle was flowering profusely. Foxhill Farm, Badby, Northants.

19 May, 2020