Spittle bugs - first survey

An initial drift around the garden, coaxing some of the nymphs out of their froth by wiping a bit of it away with a paper towel, was very easy. The nymphs weren't impressed, doing everything they could to hide or blow some more bubbles, so getting an in-focus photo was rather more challenging.

All the 'cuckoo spit' was on herbaceous or woody plants; Rosemary, Evening Primrose, Ribwort Plantain, Ragwort and Dock. The Pendulous Sedge had no cuckoo spit on it at all, and I couldn't see any on the Lilac or the Privet, or Grasses. Presumably we don't return records for plants where we haven't found something?

All the nymphs I found were green, so according to the BRIGIT Xylem-feeding insects website, (their ID section is great!) all are Philaenus spumarius, Meadow (Or Common) Froghopper. There were also some adults around, but they tended to ping off rather than sit for their photo. When I looked up the species to double-check identification, I was amazed at how variable the adults' colouration can be (so thank goodness the nymphs aren't!).

Philaenus spumarius Meadow Froghopper nymph on a paper towel rather than in foam

Philaenus spumarius Meadow Froghopper adult on Ragwort

Pretty cute! I hadn't realised, but the adults are covered in tiny hairs, so at certain angles, they appear to glisten.

By the time I'd wandered around getting some photos and generally getting distracted, the camera battery was dead, so I put it on charge and registered on iRecord, ready to edit a couple of photos and input the results the following day. Or sometime.

Ah, the joys of relational databases! This is where what I've noted collides with the way the records have been set up. In iRecord, it looks as though the records are numbers of insects at various stages (spit only, nymph, adult) for each host plant. Trouble is, there's a question about how long the survey took. I was out for about half an hour (probably more like 45 minutes, but I got a bit distracted by the blackbird chicks). Do I divide the survey time by the number of plant species? And an estimate of how many square metres. Well, the Rosemary is about one square metre, because it's huge, but I was drifting around in about 30 square metres of garden. Both time and area are mandatory questions. The Xylem-feeding insects website has a Survey Monkey driven survey (for those who don't want to tangle with iRecord), which doesn't contain the time and area questions and allows multiple plants to be listed, aggregating the total number of blobs of spit over all the plants. OK, surely I'm not expected to divide time and area surveyed per host plant, so same time of 30 minutes over 30 square metres it is. I can comment that they were all the same survey session if the database doesn't put the records together.

It took me a while to get used to what I was looking at. I found my way to instructions on the Xylem-feeding insects site on how to fill out the iRecord form and it looked simple enough, but it seems a bit glitchy.

The host plant is mandatory, and encourages users to look up the plant on the drop down list to enable the name to be spelled correctly for the database (data validation, very sensible!). Oh look, it doesn't recognise Rosemary, or Rosmarinus officinalis. Hmmm. Nor does it bring up a drop-down list for Evening Primrose, Oenothera. 'Other' it is then, to list the plants. Nope, a big red box appears saying 'unauthorised', and what I'd entered already was removed. Grrr! Oh well, if at first you don't succeed ... (go and hang out some washing, bring in the dry towels, coo at the blackbird chick in the Lilac, have a glass of water ...).

Having cleared the form, the drop down list for plants appeared. Strangely, it didn't recognise Other, (because it doesn't have Evening Primrose or Oenothera) and I had to scroll to the bottom of the list under O to find and select it, but otherwise it all went smoothly and the drag and drop for my few in-focus photos to be added against the record worked instantly.

It took me a while, but I was noticeably faster after my 8th record, finding that the less I typed into fields with drop-down boxes, the better.

Having entered my records, I decided to have a little explore and came across others complaining about how difficult the form was. I'm glad of my database knowledge and the time spent exploring the Xylem-feeding insects website, but I sympathise; not easy for someone new to iRecord and without knowledge of the spittle bug species.

Now I've got into this, I noticed some blobs on a patch of nettles, so I might go out to have a look at those.

There's a yellow warning for thunderstorms and heavy rain from Sunday (the day after tomorrow) to Tuesday. I wonder how resilient cuckoo-spit is to downpours?

A Creative Lull

I have been struggling a bit over the past few months; ill, stressed-out. Having got myself together a bit from mid-May, I did more work on the front garden, as the pressure to get that done was a source of stress which I could address. I could picture myself doing another create 365 post and adding the paths and beds of the front garden to my creations.

Just being out and working on it again felt good, even though I was low on energy. I soon found that I could only do so much weeding, wrangling the path edging into place and knocking in pegs before my hands started to ache. At first, I put it down to just being out of condition, unused to the work. Switching to the computer to do some typing and editing didn't help, something as simple as doing the washing up felt like hard work. Within the week, I found my finger joints were so painful I couldn't make a fist. Putting on hand cream felt wonderful, cool and smooth.

I had hoped that I'd be able to get the garden done, get crafting and generally catch up in all directions, but with burning, aching hands, it was hard to get anything done. I've always been good at opening jars, and now I'm struggling with them. I am so not impressed. [Expletives deleted - Ed.]

I fixed my washing line, where a line had worn against the hole in the arm and broken next to the fastener. It was easier than I thought it would be, as there was enough spare line in the fastener at the other end to rearrange it. Then I cleaned the line (although looking at it today, that's difficult to tell!) and it was ready for some of the dry weather we had in April. It's fixed, that counts!

I've just had a heavy cold and felt really under the weather for a fortnight, with sleep a welcome respite from the coughing and sinus headaches. At the beginning of the week, it felt like the lights were coming back on, and I've been madly trying to catch up ever since. I'm wary about getting frazzled out, but the sun is currently shining (which it hasn't done very much here so far this summer) and I do have lots to do. According to the weather forecast, we're due a few days of thunderstorms and heavy rain (yellow warning issued) from Sunday (the day after tomorrow), so I'm making the most of it and hopefully seeing a friend tomorrow for some downtime.

This batch of things: 1
Cumulative total: 22

Spittle-bugs and Cellar Slugs

There are a couple of 'citizen science' projects on my To Do list which are nagging at me.

The first is a study of xylem-feeding insects, that is, froghoppers and leafhoppers. Their nymphs (immature stages) are usually called spittle bugs, because they surround themselves with a froth of white foam, commonly called cuckoo spit, possibly because it starts to appear around the same time that cuckoos return in March or April.

Not that there are any cuckoos locally. Despite occasional sirens, traffic noise, screams and shouts from schoolchildren and the whine of power tools and bouts of banging from various neighbours, it's still quiet enough here that I would have heard the persistent cuc-koo call carried on the wind. They aren't unknown in Pembrokeshire, but they are on the UK Red List because of their declining numbers.

In recent years, the bacterial disease Xylella fastidiosa has been wreaking havoc in Europe, killing off olive and fruit trees amongst other plants. Many of our garden plants are imported from European growers, so Britain is on high alert, The plant pathogens are spread by sap-sucking (xylem-feeding) insects, yes, those spittle bugs!

As my garden is running wild, there's a lot of cuckoo spit about, plenty to study.

The second project is a study of Cellar Slugs. My view of slugs is that the ones helping break down my compost are fine, and the ones which are eating my plants should be banished, if not from the face of the earth, then to some other location where they cannot utterly destroy, for example, the pepper, aubergine and fennel plants to which I treated myself only a fortnight ago. Although, the plants could just as easily have been destroyed by snails, of which the garden also has a superfluity, despite the blackbirds' best efforts.

This study is going to involve some poking around with a torch, although my first port of call will be the compost bins.

It's stopped raining, so I'm off for a spot of spittle bug study.

The Unimaginable?

I read a lot of science fiction when I was in my teens and twenties, avidly immersing myself in the work of (in no particular order) Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein, Arthur C Clarke, Frank Herbert, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Brian Aldiss, Clifford D Simak, John Wyndham, Harry Harrison, Ursula LeGuin, J.G. Ballard, Douglas Adams, Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Iain M Banks, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, Philip K Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederick Pohl, ... the list goes on and on. I worked my way through library shelves. I had trouble getting to sleep unless I'd been reading.

There was a lot of dark, dystopian stuff. The novels also featured things which were unimaginable as a reality at the time (although presumably not by the author who imagined them). Satellites? Computers with AI which could react to verbal instructions? Communications equipment small enough to hold and without wires to tether it? Driverless cars? Humanoid robots? All here. Catastrophic climate change? Coming to a place near you soon, if not already here.

I've been listening to Forest 404, on the BBC. It's an immersive dystopian sci-fi eco thriller, with soundtracks including recordings of and mini-documentaries about the natural world, so it ticks a lot of boxes for me. The Rainforest Symphony reached deep into my memory of tropical places and jungle walks in Malaysia, nearly 50 years ago. I love the layers of calls; birds, tree-frogs, stridulating insects, rustling leaves, running water.

Take part in the Forest 404 experiment by clicking here to access the site. I didn't find the questions really matched what I thought - they seemed to be slightly angled towards a younger, urban demographic. Some of the sounds and questions produced a sort of bitter-sweet response in me, in that I loved them as part of the natural world, and awareness of their accelerating destruction makes me sad. I don't think my results will be accurately interpreted. [Apologies in advance in case the BBC links break.]

Whether inside or outdoors, I find I'm aware, however peripherally, of natural noises. The sound of water and waves, the rattle of poplar leaves. bird calls, wind in the branches, grasshoppers, I  listen.

What would it be like not to be able to hear them, because the natural world no longer existed?

Heartbreaking.

Unimaginable.