A Wealden Wood in January

Since the current lockdown has been in place, I have only been doing my exercise walks directly from home and it has given me the opportunity to re-acquaint myself with a couple of very local woods that I have not wandered into for a few years.

I wont put the moth-trap out until we start getting several mild nights in succession but I do occasionally put up an early season moth as I walk through the woods. 

Spring Usher (Agriopis leucophaearia) (male)

As I paused to look closely at a fungus growing in a hedgerow, a Robin started trilling just a few feet away and carried on as I slowly got my camera out.

Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

The world of fungi in a January wood seems to be dominated by Brackets, Crusts and Jellies. 

Jelly Ear (Auricularia auricula-judae)

Witches' Butter (Exidia glandulosa)

A view of Old Heathfield, East Sussex, from one of my local walks.

Marsh, Glanville and Heath Fritillaries

 The Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia), Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) and Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia) are three of the most endangered butterfly species in the UK and have long since been lost to the Sussex landscape.

Historically, it is not clear whether the Glanville Fritillary was ever truly a Sussex native species but the Marsh and Heath Fritillaries certainly were. The latter two species were already in decline in Sussex by the late 19th century and became extinct during the early 20th century. Ever since then, the record books have been littered with introductions and illicit releases. 

(Ref: "A History of the Butterflies and Moths of Sussex" by Colin Pratt.)

It was my intention to revisit these species in 2020 but the pandemic restrictions rather scuppered that idea and I decided to stay very local in my pursuit of butterflies. Similarly, 2021 seems likely to delay this venture for another year.

Here are some images of these three species that I have taken over the years.

Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia) 

(images taken in Dorset in 2009)

Male 

Mating pair

Female

Glanville Fritillary (Melitaea cinxia)

(images taken on the Isle of Wight in 2012)

Males

Females

Mating pair with male interloper

Heath Fritillary (Melitaea athalia)

(images taken in Kent in 2012 & 2015)

Males

Females

Larva on common cow-wheat

Mating pair

A Wealden Wood in December and Peering into the Night Sky

 Although the woods have shut down for the winter, there are still things to be found. Small birds band together and move through the trees looking for food and I regularly put up a Woodcock as I walk through the understorey looking for fungi and slime moulds.

Artist's Fungus (Ganoderma applanatum)

Ochre Brittlegill (Russula ochroleuca)

Wood Blewit (Lepista nuda)

This is a species of Slime Mould, probably Reticularia lycoperdon.

I occasionally come across a winter casualty.

This shock of blue, laying in the leaf litter, is a dead Nuthatch (Sitta europaea)

One of the astronomical events of the year was the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. I started watching the converging orbits of these gas giants back in September, when they were easily visible in the south-eastern night sky. Conjunction (where Saturn passes behind Jupiter and they appear in the sky as one bright "star") was due to occur on 21st December in the south-western sky but alas, my attempts to observe it were thwarted by overcast skies. The skies cleared on 24th December and I managed to get some shots of the planets as they were moving away from each other.

This shot shows Jupiter on the left, with the more distant Saturn on the right. Even allowing for distortion, I fancy you can just make out the ovoid shape of the ringed Saturn.

I decided to take a rather Heath-Robinson approach to try and get a photograph of Jupiter.

Using my bird-watching telescope, with eyepiece on full zoom and taking the resulting view by holding my bridge camera against the eyepiece, I managed to get the following image.

 Sure, it's not up to Hubble standard but at its closest to Earth, Jupiter is over half a billion kilometres away!!