Challenge on Nature Photography Part 6

One of the things that characterises the common or garden naturalist, is their obsession with what seems, on the face of it, trivial, small details that separate species or make them unique and interesting, it’s these details which give them a richer understanding of the natural world around them, and give its study its enormous depth and interest.

I am no different, and I’m particularly delighted by butterflies and moths, and their ecology and life cycles, but also, with that classic naturalist’s love of the trivial, their scientific names, having done a bit of Latin and Greek at school, ostensibly useless, dead subjects, it’s nice to find a purpose for all those ‘wasted’ hours in the classroom and tease out the meanings of the mighty binomial system that defines everything living on earth, combining this with photos is always a winner, and so this post will be the latest part of my flagging challenge on nature photography.

'The Beautiful eyebrow of the bramble.'

First up is a favourite spring species, Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi), flying on moorland, downland and light woodland across the UK from April to June, it is, like most hairstreaks highly territorial and males often engage in vicious dogfights from favoured perches along tree-lines. Callophrys means ‘beautiful eyebrow’ (kallos – beautiful, and phrys – eyebrow, spliced together), and rubi means ‘of the bramble’, a bit of a misnomer, since Green Hairstreaks are polyphagous and feed on foodplants from several plant families, not just bramble, but others, including Gorse, various legumes, and bilberry.

A close relative of the Green Hairstreak is the Purple (Neozephyrus quercus), which tends to be a bit more elusive, favouring the tops of oak trees during July and August  - check the crowns at about 6:00 on warm evenings, and you should see these silvery butterflies, like the Green Hairstreak, engaging in frequent territorial dogfights. A loose translation of Neozephyrus quercus is something like ‘young west wind of the oak’, where ‘Neos’ is greek for young or new, Zephyrus is the Greek god of the West wind, and quercus, of course, is oak. Interestingly, in Greek Mythology, Zephyrus was married to Iris (the god of the rainbow), who is commemorated in the Purple Emperor’s scientific name – Apatura iris, perhaps this hints at the way the two species share habitats, both having an affinity for oaks, the Hairstreak as a foodplant, and the Emperor as master trees where males congregate.


'The Young west wind of the oak' (on an oak, of course)

Another branch of the Lycaenidae is the blues, including the aptly named Small Blue, which, measuring in at just 20mm, is Britain’s smallest butterfly. Its scientific name (Cupido minimus) also picks up on its small stature (Small Blues could be forgiven for feeling downtrodden) with ‘minimus’ the Latin for very small, and cupid the tiny love god of Roman mythology.

Keeping with the small theme, Small Skippers get the label Thymelicus sylvestris, where Thymelicus was a dancer in ancient greek drama known for a strange, erratic dance, picking up on the Small Skipper’s bouncing flight style, whilst sylvestris means ‘inhabiting wild places’ – so we have the skipper of the wildlands!

The Large skipper (Ochlodes faunus) also receives a wild name tag, with ‘Faunus’ another name for the god of mysterious wild places – Pan/Bacchus, and ‘Ochlodes’ meaning turbulent, relating to the territorial behaviour of male Large Skippers, which often sit motionless, with their wings held at 45 degrees before attacking anything that dares to enter their territory, so this gives us ‘the angry wild thing’ in a rough translation.



Returning to the blues, the Large Blue’s Maculinea arion picks up on its life cycle (the story of the Greek musician arion provides a neat allegory for its adoption by ants as a larva – see this post for more: http://mothsandmusings.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/challenge-on-nature-photography-part-2.html ) and its colouring, maculinea means ‘many-spotted’, referring either to its underside, with the black spots on a silvery field, or its upperside, with the strong black forewing markings which make it so unique among British butterflies (I haven’t quite decided which). It’s smaller relative, the Silver-Studded Blue (Plebejus argus) again gets its underside examined, with argus a nod to the many-eyed giant of Greek mythology, and the spotting on this butterfly’s underwing, and ‘Plebejus’ meaning ‘plebeian’ – it sounds rather damning now, but it was the name given to ‘the common people’ in ancient Rome, and suggests that this exquisite heath-dweller is a pretty widespread species (if only!)

'The Angry wild thing' - sticking its tongue out at
passers by.

A common theme in these names, should, by now be making itself obvious, many of them refer to Greek mythology, they fete butterflies as god-like, ethereal beings, indeed, in ancient Greek, the same word is used for both soul, and butterfly (psyche), these creatures appealed to both the ancients, and more modern taxonomists on a very spiritual level. An interest in butterflies is not a strange delight in the trivial; it is more complex than that, as these 2000 year old roots will testify. They hint at the place of butterflies, and the natural world (at the risk of melodrama), at the centre of the way we live, and teach us a lesson, that now, more than ever, we should learn to live by. The modern, urban world, and the more primal, natural world are not mutually exclusive, the two are intertwined, nature governs our economies, be it through water purification, soil formation (or as we’ve seen, flood defence), and we must not by slow to embrace it and work with it, now, more than ever, an holistic approach is the future.

 

Challenge on Nature Photography Part 5

The interconnectedness of the natural world is one of the things that makes it so appealing to Naturalists down the ages, I for example, like butterflies, and since they have to feed on something, my interest in plants has grown, and since Orchids are impressive plants with weird names, and often, even weirder Biology, I’m interested in them.



Common Spotted Orchids in abundance in West Somerset



I’ve always thought that butterfly-watching can come across as a bit strange, but perhaps orchid-hunting is even more so, in this bizarre hobby, you enter a clandestine world of ‘top secret’ locations, ‘gen’, hybrids, homozygous recessives and ‘vars’, and in many cases, drive across the country to see a plant that won’t run away, and will no doubt be in exactly the same place next year. Yet its magic, the magic of the hunt for the new, rare plants, and the many strange places that they grow never fades, I’m hooked, and so, for the fifth part of my excruciatingly slow ‘Challenge on Nature Photography’, it’s time for these charismatic plants to take the stage!

Early Purple Orchids forming a dense clump through
vegetative reproduction.

First up, is the Early Purple Orchid, it’s a bit of a generalist, growing in woodlands across the UK,(often, but not always under Hazel), but also chalky grassland, and like many orchids, it exhibits a fair bit of variation in colour, from pure white, to quite a deep purple-pink. It’s fairly common on ‘the patch’ in Somerset, and, as its name suggests, flowers fairly early in the year (April-May).



A statuesque Common
Twayblade.

Another common species, is the aptly named Common Twayblade, (it’s common, and the tway-blade refers to its two opposing leaves from which the flower spike grows), a subtle beast which eluded me during my early days of Orchid-hunting, but once seen once, popped up pretty much everywhere, from my local Railway embankment, to a flower-rich local Common, to 1800m up a French mountainside.

So far, not so weird, the Bird’s Nest Orchid however, is a much more mysterious creature, lacking chlorophyll with which to carry out photosynthesis, it’s a rather insipid brown-yellow plant, and a saprophyte - totally dependent on a fungal ‘partner’ (perhaps not the best term, the fungus gets totally ripped off), from which it obtains the nutrients needed for growth. The fungus itself is then dependent on a tree (often Beech, sometimes others, such as Hazel) with which it swaps nutrients for carbohydrates. I had always suspected that this strange plant was lurking somewhere in the old beech woods near my home, and was delighted to find several hiding in plain sight in a search this spring.


3 Bird's Nest Orchids lurking on the patch.

At the other end of the specialisation spectrum, are the Dactylorhiza species, classic ‘spikes’ in a range of loud pink colours they often grow in large numbers in unimproved grassland of one sort or another, in my part of the world, Heath Spotted, Common Spotted, and Southern Marsh Orchids are the common species.



An impressive display of Heath Spotted Orchids

 

I could go on, with the stunning Bee Orchid, and the endless quirks and variations its self- pollination throws up, the Ghost Orchid, and its mysterious flowering every decade or so, or the Lady’s Slipper and the cloak and dagger intrigue that surrounds its last redoubt oop north, but there are 56 species of Orchid native to the UK (including one extinction, and another recent colonisation), as well as 8 others of dubious status, so I can’t really cover them all here without writing a book (there are several excellent ones out there, Harrap’s ‘Orchids of Britain and Ireland’, and locally, Chris Gladman’s Orchids of Somerset), I also haven’t seen very many of them, further turning such an endeavour into a dull, photo-less desert of a blog post. In short though, there’s a lot to be said for these stunning plants, they’re not just frivolous natural quirks, and their parasitic relationships, mysterious patterns, pollination, and indeed rarity, can tell us a lot about evolution, genetics, and habitat and climate change in the UK. If you fancy learning more about them, the books I’ve mentioned are a great starting point, and the Natural History Museum’s Orchid Observers project is a great way to get involved in their conservation and study….

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/take-part/citizen-science/orchid-observers.html



A Bee Orchid looming majestically
in Large Blue country at Collard
Hill

Challenge on Nature Photography Part 4

 My fourth photo for my slow (but I assure you, fully intended to be completed) ‘challenge on nature photography’, is of two roosting male Orange Tips (Anthocharis cardamines), it's a particular favourite of mine, taken this Spring, and was highly commended in this year's British Wildlife Photography Awards (http://www.bwpawards.org/static/2015/young-winner-2015.html). For birdwatchers, the first sign of spring might be a singing Chiffchaff, or the first Swallows on the wires, for Botanists, the first bulbs, maybe Snowdrops or Daffodils, but for butterfly-watchers, this tangerine – tipped icon, is the undisputed harbinger of the changing seasons.




A close up of the combination of yellow and black scales that give
the Orange Tip underside its mottled green colouring.

Generally, it’s the males that emerge first with the eponymous orange wing tips, followed by the females with black ones. Interestingly, the markings of male Orange Tips give them a double-barrelled approach to preventing predation, the bright wing tips are an example of aposematic colouring – that warns predators of the foul taste of the butterfly (thanks to toxins it absorbs from its foodplant as a caterpillar), thus persuading them to go elsewhere for a quick bite, whilst the underside of the hindwings exhibit ‘crypsis’, with their mottled green (actually a mixture of yellow and black scales) markings giving Orange Tips brilliant camouflage when at rest (particularly when on cow parsley, which is all they seem to roost on in the garden), allowing them to escape detection and predation.

Females are a more retiring butterfly than the brilliantly-coloured males, and are generally only seen when being harassed by a male, and giving the distinctive raised-abdomen butterfly equivalent of the middle finger, or when flitting from foodplant to foodplant on an egg-laying run. Eggs are laid on crucifers, most often Garlic Mustard and Cuckoo Flower but Orange Tips are fairly Catholic in their tastes, and I’ve seen them laying on that famous super food: Kale (does it work wonders for Caterpillars too?), and even Oilseed Rape. 



Neonicotinoid pesticides that are regularly applied to the latter as a seed dressing have recently been linked to hefty declines in many British butterfly species, particularly grass-feeders, and some of the Orange Tip’s close pierid relatives, which will also lay on crucifers and Oilseed Rape. So far, Orange Tips seem to have escaped unscathed, but it’s vital that more research is done into the effects of a group of chemicals increasingly seen as a silent killer in our countryside, if you fancy helping with this, you can donate here: http://butterfly-conservation.org/48-10581/neonicotinoid-pesticides-linked-to-butterfly-declines.html.


For now, anyway, Orange Tips remain relatively easy to find in our gardens, parks, and boggy meadows – long may it last!


Spot the Orange Tips! - There are 7 in this photo, and there was another just out of shot!



As you've probably realised, I'm an absolute sucker for backlit Orange Tips at roost,
they just look soooo nice.