Francis Hickenbottom's Nature Notes: 5th January, 2012.

Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.

5th January 2012

Work gets in the way of the production of new journal pages but one positive aspect of work is that people report sightings to me and bring interesting findings. A few weeks ago, one student brought a dead hornet for me to look at.

I haven’t seen hornets many times and this is because their U.K. stronghold is in the south-east of England. The most northerly sighting that I have had was of one in the Lake District, outside the cafe at the Whinlatter Visitor Centre, when a hornet flew in and landed on a man’s shoulder. Fortunately, the European hornet (Vespa crabro) is said to be not particularly aggressive, despite its size.

Hornets are significantly bigger than the other species of wasp seen in Britain and the colours are brown and yellow, rather than the black and yellow of the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris).

One of the surprise sightings of 2010, following the snowy weather in November, was of a peacock butterly flying around on the cliff-tops at St. David,s Head on 30th December. I thought that this was a bit of a fluke but the sun came out on the 27th December 2011 and I saw a red admiral butterfly flying around in the back garden of my house.

The red admiral followed on the heels of a peacock butterfly which was roused by the Ackworth School end-of-term carol concert, on 9th December. The presence of several hundred people in the Meeting House must have raised the temperature sufficiently to encourage the butterfly to become active again, despite the sleet which was falling outside.

The watercolour shown on this page was made from a dead and rather faded specimen, which had obviously lived, for a red admiral, a long life.

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