Saturday, 1 August 2020

Insects in a Charente-Maritime Garden


Roddy Hays is an enthusiastic photographer of all the little creatures in his large coastal hinterland garden. When we stayed in his family's holiday cottage there back in June I did the same. [Link to Susan's Instagram page where you can find details of the cottage.] Here are some of the photos I took.

Male European Wool Carder Bee Anthidium manicatum (Fr. Abeille cotonnière).
European Wool Carder Bee Anthidium manicatum. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Male European Wool Carder Bee Anthidium manicatum. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Female Lestica clypeata wasp. This was rather a challenge to identify, as it was female. 
The males are really weird looking and quite distinctive.
Female Lestica clypeata. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

The longhorn beetle Paracorymbia fulva (Fr. Lepture sauvage).
Stictoleptura fulva. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Teneral (juvenile) male Common Darter dragonfly Sypetrum striolatum (Fr. le Sympétrum fascié).
Teneral male Common Darter Sympetrum striolatum. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Thick-legged Hover Fly Syritta pipiens.
Syritta pipiens. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Male Tetralonia malvae (Fr. Eucère de la mauve).
Tetralonia malvae. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Thanks to Roddy for whipping out a little torch to provide more light to take this photo.
Tetralonia malvae. Charente-Maritime. France. Photo by Loire Valley Time Travel.

Many thanks to the various experts in specialist Hymenoptera groups on Facebook who provided helped with identifying the bees and wasp.


************************************************

For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

4 comments:

chm said...

Interesting post. I can - or at least I think - identify some flowers, but not all.

Susan said...

Lavender, fennel, hibiscus.

chm said...

Shame on me, I didn't recognize lavender! And I thought that the sixth photo was ivy. I have never seen fennel in bloom. Thank you for the information.

Susan said...

I think Roddy grows the fennel especially for the insects. It's his favourite stalking spot.

Post a Comment