A grebe love triangle

It may not have had quite the celebrity status of George Harrison and Eric Clapton vying for Pattie Boyd’s heart [for that story, see here], but earlier this month, I had a very entertaining hour and a half watching a grebe love triangle. Two males were battling it out for conjugal rights to a female – and after several fights, the winning pair engaged in not one but two weed-dances.

The first scrap I saw started some distance away – notice the female fleeing the scene while the two males battle it out.

The next phase – equally aggressive – was a bit closer. It’s hard to do justice to the nature of the scrap, because only a few of the photos give a clear enough picture of what was happening. Notice the female lurking behind the male on the right.

I’d love to know who won the fight – whether the winner retained his partner, or whether the winner usurped the losing male’s partner. What was obvious was that the losing male didn’t want to give up easily, so that there were scuffles long after the two main battles were over. Was the persistence merely because the losing male fancied that particular female so much but he couldn’t overcome the resident male – or was it because he’d been jilted in favour of the intruding male, and the fire of jealousy wasn’t dying easily? If only we could know!

After the battles, romance ensued between the winning pair. There was lots of head-bobbing and shaking, in that mysterious and wonderful way of grebes – where there is probably more meaning in the moves than humans can fathom. Twice, these culminated in a full weed dance, which is intensely romantic and elaborate, and unique to grebes. The first weed dance led to better photos (see later) but the second one allowed me to document the sequence better.

Weed dances start with the head-shaking ritual, and then the pair dive away from each other (an important sign that I learned from a book by Dominic Couzens). Seeing one of the pair eagerly carrying weed in its beak raised my anticipation for what was to follow!

The pair then approached each other rapidly and rise up together – with a great deal of splashing!

My photos of the first weed dance are probably a bit better, because the Sun was out so that lighting was better.

One of the attractions of watching grebes is that you feel that you are watching their emotional world. We can’t read bird emotions from their facial expressions (they don’t have any), but it seems impossible to understand the way these grebes interacted with each other without recognising their emotional world. After my morning watching these three grebes interacting, I was more convinced than ever about the reality – and intensity – of their emotions.

Bug hunting in a Shapwick garden

It was the cardinal beetle that did it – although it was the cinnabar moth that got busy, and the soldier beetle that escaped.

We tend to let the front lawn grow wild during the spring and early summer to see what appears: the array of ox-eye daisies is rather spectactular! But one day I noticed a conspicuously red beetle, which I’d never seen before. It turned out to be a red-headed cardinal beetle… At this point I wondered: what’s the point of having a wild lawn if I don’t actually look to see what insects take advantage it?

Red-headed cardinal beetle: the insect that persuaded me to look more closely at garden wildlife!

I soon realised that there was one insect that was far and away the most obvious – the azure damselfly. Throughout May and early June, there were many of them flitting around, their metallic blue often catching the sunlight.

Azure damselfly: the most abundant insect

Last year on Shapwick Heath, I was thrilled to see my first thick-legged flower beetle. I didn’t realise at the time that it’s a rather common beetle – as I discovered when several turned up in the garden. Common it may be, but it’s still fairly exotic-looking, especially when their green wing cases catch the sun!

Thick-legged flower beetle on a buttercup – with a rove beetle shinning up a grass stem.

Thick-legged flower beetle – the females don’t have the thick legs. I thought the metallic effect of the green wing cases was rather fine!

A frequent, though slightly elusive, resident was a cinnabar moth – I did see two on one occasion. One of them was ever-present, but rarely stopped in a photogenic spot, still less one that offered good lighting. I later discovered that it was being Very Busy.

Cinnabar moth. It wasn’t very showy, but I realised later that it was very busy…

There were plenty of hoverflies – but many fewer bees than I was expecting. I probably should have paid more attention to them as they were frequent and often showy in a photographically helpful way! Unfortunately, other than ‘hoverfly’ the many species only have Latin names. The commonest was probably the one below: Eristalis arbustorum.

Hoverfly: Eristalis arbustorum

It wasn’t all a peaceful idyll on the lawn. This common crab spider was quietly murdering an insect (possibly an ant) that had ventured too close.

Common crab spider on an ox-eye daisy, consuming its prey.

There weren’t many butterflies around. Apparently those that normally emerge in spring have done particularly badly this year (mainly due to the weather last summer), but the later ones seem to be doing much better. The highlight was a meadow brown.

Meadow Brown butterfly

Joshua and I did some successful – and eventful – bug hunting there on two occasions. We saw a red-and-black froghopper the first time (a new one for me), and a soldier beetle the second time. Joshua has a bug viewer (a plastic pot with a magnifier at the top). The bug is meant to sit quietly at the bottom so we could view it – but the soldier beetle outwitted us. Firstly, by insisting on crawling up to the top as quickly as it could; and secondly by squeezing through one of the air holes and flying off.

Left: red and black froghopper; right: soldier beetle.

By mid-summer, there was one dominant creature all over the front lawn. Draped over every single ragwort flower (and a few grass stems) were some black-and-yellow caterpillars. Very spectacular they were too, and all of the cinnnabar moth. It shows how busy mum had been a few weeks previously!

Cinnabar moth caterpillars, adorning a ragwort plant. All the ragwort plants in the lawn carried a cargo of these caterpillars.

I was bemoaning the lack of bees one day – there were hardly any all summer on the lawn – when I noticed that the adjacent pyracantha was abuzz with them. It was teeming with bees and hoverflies! This made me think: how have I lived here seven years without noticing that this bush is a magnet for them?!

My attention was caught by a black-and-grey bee that I’d never seen before. I discovered that it’s the appropriately-named ashy mining bee. It’s a solitary bee, which excavates tunnels in the ground.

Ashy Mining bee

One of my most exciting discoveries was a rose chafer beetle – with its spectacular metallic green casing – on the pyracantha. As soon as I saw it I went to grab the camera – only to find it had submerged itself below the flowers.

Rose chafer beetle, submerged in pyracantha flowers.

I’d like to say that all these insects show the benefit of a re-wilded lawn. The reality is that it shows the benefits of actually looking for them in the first place.