Sunday's sojourn was to Cheshunt and the meadows and tracks by the River Lea Navigation. Being pretty much the first non-rainy weekend in a while, it took a bit of wandering before I got beyond the picnic crowds. Depressingly, a lot of the area’s been scalped in advance of the crowds around the Olympic games and so there aren’t as many big swathes of rough grassland as I’ve seen there in previous years.
The first small chunk of meadow was still reasonably interesting. I came across 5 different species of vetch(ling) in one spot –
Meadow Vetchling,
Common Vetch,
Grass Vetchling,
Hairy Tare and
Smooth Tare (another new species for me). Out of this marginal grassy habitat I also pulled out plenty of Thick-thighed Flower Beetle,
Oedemera nobilis; an
Orthotylus sp. mirid bug (such a difficult genus!); the soldier beetle,
Cantharis nigricans; a Mirid bug,
Grypocoris stysi; and a bright white common crab spider,
Misumena vatia.
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| Grypocoris stysi |
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| Misumena vatia waiting for lunch to come to her |
A distressed
Black-headed Gull brought my attention to a
Red Kite floating over the river. There was also a good number of
Willow Warblers singing in the area. They’re not the loudest, most variable or most complex of singers but they do my favourite UK birdsong.
I picked up another tick upon finding some
Cut-leaved Cranesbill and on a
Sweet Chestnut found a Red-headed Cardinal Beetle,
Pyrochroa serraticornis. I wandered about a fair bit, spent way too long confirming that rose identification is hard and that 99% of the time that Hawk’s-beard will turn out to be
Rough Hawk’s-beard. Up on some
Common Hogweed I also saw this very confiding large hoverfly,
Volucella pelluscens.
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| Volucella pelluscens |
Finally I walked back through the ill-planned disc golf area where lack of use has allowed the grasses and clover to grow higher. The odd-looking chain-and-basket goals poking clear of the vetch or hiding behind bramble and hawthorn shrubs say a lot about the council’s aspirations, the extra funding it’s presumably had and how out of touch it must be with the local population. In amongst this derelict recreation ground were a lot of Leptogaster sp. robberflies; far more than I’d found elsewhere. Showing red hind legs, I’m fairly sure these were
Leptogaster guttiventris. The final and most surprising find was a small bunch of
Bee Orchids! I could almost have stepped on these beauties and I’m really glad I didn’t. I know they’re fairly common but for me they were completely new, completely different and completely self-found. I took way too many photos. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed seeing a wildflower quite like that before.
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| Bee Orchid |
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| It doesn't look anything like a bee to me but then I don't view life in ultraviolet through hundreds of ommatidia
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