Haylage Meadows - Habitat Gone

It is the time of the year ... July is THE month for all the haylage making nearby. While this is great news for the farmers and their livestock as well as all horse owners, it is quite bad news for all the insects that have taken up residence in the long grasses.

Indeed one of my favrouite hunting patches has fallen victim to haylage making. Early this week, near midnight even, the tractors were out, cutting down all the fields that had been left untouched for nearly 2 years.

I woke up and when I saw it I was close to running out and to lie down in front of the tractor!  All the caterpillars that I had watched up there, all the little spots for various bugs that I had found and repeatedly visited, all gone.

The weather since hasn't been good enough to go and visit the fields again, at least along the stonewalls some of the long grasses are still there and of course all those insects that took up residence in the brambles are fine. No machine messes with brambles!

The most unfortunate part of it is this one cocoon (below) that I had been watching for weeks - the cocoon of a burnett moth caterpillar. I saw it make it and went to visit it every week. It would have been time just about now for the moth to emerge but it won't have survived the tractor wheels and the cutting. Just a day before they were cutting I went to visit it and it looked as though it was just about ready ... A great shame really as I was hoping to photograph it's last stages before emerging.

But alas, the world keeps turning and life goes on in other places. Below the larvae of a thistle tortoise beetle. They are so hard to spot! Tiny specks of  moving 'dirt' at first and only by closer observation can you see the spikey larvae. The thistles are full with them at the moment.

And this below rather unusual and fairly rare being is a Slender Striped Robber Fly. At first it looked like a cranefly and it flies in a similar manner but its somewhat long body remained me of a damselfly. Close up from the front, its eyes are blue and it has a little 'moustache'. Unfortunately the portrait shot is not sharp enough, it was a breezy day.