Padfield

[Vince Massimo]

Hi Guy,

They look a lot like these, which I was led to believe were Shield Bug eggs, but I would welcome confirmation as well.

Shield Bug eggs?

Have been greatly enjoying your photos and am pleased to see that you often include a few images of habitats and landscapes in your wonderful location.

Vince

[Padfield]

I think you've got it, Vince! Searching the web I find a lot of pictures of shield bug eggs, all showing that neat, circular, removable cap; and many of them are green like yours.

Not necessarily a good mix with hairstreaks, though... Need I remind UK Butts members of this drama from last year, when shieldbugs killed the WLH pupa I was watching?



Guy

[Piers]

Kwality het bug action.

[Padfield]

Well, that's probably it for kwality het bug action for the time being, out here, at least. Over to you now for some piccies from sunny Britain.



Guy

[Lee Hurrell]

I'm glad I'm not just boring you all.

Guy, I think you're keeping most of us going!

It's still just under 3 weeks to the time of my first butterflies of last year (2 Red Admirals and a Comma on 15th March). I had that week off work last year and will have again this year, dog/house sitting in Worcestershire.

Cheers

Lee

[Padfield]

It's on days like this I'm glad I live up the mountain, not down in the valley:



Butterflies are quite off the menu now. Here is precisely the view that Jack asked me to show at different times of the year:



No small tortoiseshells on those meadows now.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

I'm wearing my retired glider pilot's hat:

That's a nice mountain wave cloud (the long one). Which way was the wind AT HEIGHT blowing? (Surface wind is little guide to what happens above the mountain tops).

Jack

[Padfield]

I don't know, Jack. From here: http://www.sat24.com/ I gather the clouds were moving roughly north-south over my region, but I didn't notice the patterns of movement myself.

You are right - the Rhône Valley in particular channels the low-level winds quite differently from what can be seen moving high above the mountains.

Guy

[Matsukaze]

Do the tortoiseshells survive the snowfall and reappear once it has melted?

[Lee Hurrell]

And the freshly emerged Queens also?

Cheers

Lee

[Padfield]

My own observations suggest that once roused from hibernation, small tortoiseshells don't re-enter it when it turns cold but simply go torpid, ready to fly again as soon as it turns warm. The difference between hibernation and torpor (as I understand it, which may be wrong) is that the former involves a drastic metabolic shutdown while the latter is more of a slowdown, limited by the temperature. An insect can survive months of hibernation but a shorter period of ordinary torpor, as respiratory and other processes continue. Please, someone, do correct me if I'm wrong about that.

I would therefore expect the tortoiseshells that were flying a week or two ago to fly again if the weather turns warm soon (the cold itself is not a killer). But if we now enter another month of winter I think they will have flown their last.

I have already seen pregnant small tortoiseshells this year, though I haven't seen any nettles. Here is one, from 18th Feb:



Will she go into torpor egg-laden and lay on nettles when the warm weather returns, or must she have tried to lay her eggs immediately on their ripening? I don't know.

I think the same kinds of thing are true for the Queens, except I'm not convinced the adults have such a deep hibernation state as the small tortoiseshells do. The Queens were on the wing until well into November, like red admirals. Their foodplants have been flowering in the valley since January and so their reproductive activity should have resulted in laid eggs. Providing the weather does not turn too cold (March in the valley is often quite clement) I don't see why the caterpillars shouldn't be able to feed and grow. Queens don't seem to have seasons or generations - they are just on the wing pretty well all year (though I've never seen one in December).

That's not authoritative. One of the scientists might know a lot more than I do about all this.

Guy

[Piers]

My own observations suggest that once roused from hibernation, small tortoiseshells don't re-enter it when it turns cold but simply go torpid, ready to fly again as soon as it turns warm. The difference between hibernation and torpor (as I understand it, which may be wrong) is that the former involves a drastic metabolic shutdown while the latter is more of a slowdown, limited by the temperature. An insect can survive months of hibernation but a shorter period of ordinary torpor, as respiratory and other processes continue. Please, someone, do correct me if I'm wrong about that.

As usual you're quite correct..!

Temperature induced torpor is fairly high risk, and a late prolonged cold snap can be fatal for butterflies that have already been roused from hibernation as their metabolism has returned to 'normal'.

Felix.

[Padfield]

After all this talk of temperature, I spent the morning in close proximity to the coldest large spaces in the known universe, at the CERN particle accelerator, straddling the Swiss-French border.

Inside this accelerator module (in the testing room), the temperature is -271.25°C, or just 1.9°K. The temperature of intergalactic space is about 3°K. The insulation is so good you can happily put your hand on the outside casing:



The two tubes sticking out of the end are where protons will pass at close to the speed of light in opposite directions if/when this module is incorporated into the accelerator.



When particles are accelerated in the tubes they reach energies equivalent to the highest temperatures in the known universe, simulating the conditions of the Big Bang.

An amazing place to take school kids. But no butterflies.

Guy

[Jack Harrison]

I'm very impressed that you are allowed inside the CERN building. I wouldn't begin to understand what goes on there but I do know it's impressive and bound to produced some unforeseen benefits.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling with "Why Does E=mc2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw" and have to keep re-reading various passages. But I'm getting there slowly and at the moment am about one-third of the way through (and have understood so far).

Jack

[Zonda]

When particles are accelerated in the tubes they reach energies equivalent to the highest temperatures in the known universe

So these temperatures are just beyond the temperature in my cheeks, when i'm thinking about Gibsters girlfriend's butterfly run. Is that right? .... Sorry,,,, but it's a weight on the mind, and you all know how i take a subject and run with it.

[Padfield]

While they were still building the LHC, Jack, I did go down into the actual acceleration tunnel, but now it's up and running it's quite out of bounds. Visitors (with a guide from CERN) can see the control rooms of some of the experiments (we went to the ATLAS experiment today) and also the testing room I illustrated above. You'd like the place, as there are absolutely no secrets - it's all public and all discoveries are publicised so they become shared, not proprietary, knowledge.

Zonda, take a cold shower and read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Guy

[Zonda]

Zonda, take a cold shower and read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Guy

I shall, at once, but i'm more into Dawkins than Hawking

[Padfield]

Guy

[Lee Hurrell]

Brrrr.....no words needed really!

Cheers

Lee

[Padfield]

In the valley, the Queens are now in full swing. At a conservative estimate, I saw 100 today - but I might easily have seen twice that. First broods of early fritillaries often show varying amounts of melanism and/or enlargement or confluence of the dark spots. This is most noticeable in violet fritillary, which isn't on the wing yet, but there was striking variation in the Queens flying today:





This is a more typical individual (also today):



And finally, this one might well be a hibernator, with rather faded colours and widely separated spots:



Small tortoiseshells are now past their peak but were still common today, and I saw three large tortoiseshells at three different locations. These were all highly mobile, as I didn't find them until the afternoon, and only one touched down briefly in my field of vision, allowing a distant proof shot:



I had the impression they were scouting for mates, having probably spent the morning basking in the sun and setting up territories.

A single green-veined white drifted by at one point, heading up a steep hill but stopping just long enough on some speedwell for another record shot:



No grizzled skippers were flying but their Potentilla patches on steep, rough banks are now quite ready for them and they could be on the wing any day now.



In 2008 they flew from the beginning of March (2nd) but end March is more typical.

Finally, Easter may be late this year but the Pasque flowers are blooming early. Here are a couple of bees collecting flavourings for Pasque-flower honey:



Guy