Butterfly and other news

Following my report on the high number of Small Tortoishell and Peacocks at the river wall at Herringfleet back in the late Spring I was at the same location yesterday and can report thousands of Small Tortoishell larvae and Hundreds of more developed Peacock larvae feeding there in just a couple of hundred metre stretch. Unless there is a drastic change in the weather I would expect very high numbers of Tortoishells late, possibly mid August. Peacocks mid August, to be seen widely.

My other observation was rather a good one and would have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for my Jack Russell, yapping and sniffing at a large beetle larva as we sat by my biggest pond a couple of weeks ago. Earlier in the day I had removed some clover and grass which was ‘wicking’ water out of the pond. I first thought it might be a Devil’s Coach Horse but put it in some shallow water where it seemed more comfortable and I could see two very fine short ‘tails’ indicating it breathed air at the rear. It was like a 2 inch blackish maggot with tiny legs and was A Great Silver Water Beetle Larva. It would have been in the discarded weeds from earlier. Nice to know they breed here,having seen a few adults a year on average in the area, and three times at home at mv. Not really a swimmer like the Great Diving Beetle Larva, it crawls about in dense weeds looking for aquatic snails, feeding on plants only when adult.

Keith

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