One my favourite sections of this year’s Springwatch were the Macro World lab visits. One the remits I try to give my wildlife photography is making the ordinary look extraordinary. There is one sure fire way of doing that, and that is getting a macro lens out. There is an entire world going on in your borders and on your plants.
I like to set myself little photographic challenges, and my latest one involves two plants just outside my patio doors. I have an Arum Lily and a dog rose bush. I happen to notice the large amount of different species of flies and insects that are visiting it. When I started this project I never expected to encounter such a life and death struggle that was going on upon one branch of one rose bush!
The rose bush has always been populated by those most common of garden pests, the aphid. These were being feasted on in early spring by the local House Sparrows, which were running their beaks along the stems to collect them for their chicks back in the nest. It was this fascination of watching one of nature’s own feeding stations proving food that inspired me to take a closer look at what was going on over the coming months.
The next insects to populate the rose bush were black ants. These herd aphids like cattle, and literally milk them for drops of “honeydew”. They will attempt to protect their aphids from predators. Something that was evident when the next species arrived. The aphids arch enemy is the ladybird. These were soon devouring as many aphids and plant lice as they could. I have about a dozen two spotted ladybirds currently on the dog rose. (Incidentally, whilst researching two spotted ladybirds for this blog I found out they can be confused with the ten spotted ladybird ... I know what you are thinking! Apparently the ten spotted ladybird has a two spotted variant. The quickest way to identify them is to have a look at their undersides. If it is black then you have a two spotted species, if it is yellow/ brown in colour then it is a ten spotted variant.)
The Arum Lily close by has been proving a staging post for various sawflies and gall wasps who also feed on the aphids. It is only when you see these flies close up that you really appreciate how alien their world really looks. The garden as whole has seen some welcome visitors in the shape of various bumblebees, small tortoiseshell and occasional red admiral and ringlet butterflies. Wasp numbers are clearly down as I have only seen one or two so far. I may have to go a bit further afield with my macro lens and return to this subject with a photo blog in the near future.
The final colonists that have arrived on the dog rose in the last couple of days are caterpillars. These have turned out to be the larvae of the Rose Sawfly. I was utterly unaware than anything other than moths and butterflies had caterpillars until I researched this for this blog. I enjoy the slide along the learning curve sometimes don’t you? These caterpillars are now providing food to the House Sparrows who have returned and clearly have a second brood of chicks, thus bringing this story full circle.
As a final aside, if you are feeling a little sorry for the poor old aphid at the bottom of the food chain in this blog here is some startling facts about this mini terror of many a poor gardener!
Aphids give birth to young that are already pregnant with the next generation. A single aphid can produce 80 young in a single week. It is estimated that if it were not for pest control and predatory behaviour the planet would be 150km deep in aphids within a year due their extraordinary ability of reproducing. Now that’s making the ordinary terrifying I think you would agree!
© All Images – Anthony Walton