The flower’s velvety lip looks like a female bee. So this cleaver orchid fools a male Bee to fly in to try to mate with it, in doing so it will pollinate the flower. Sadly, the right bee species don’t live here, so this orchid is self-pollinated in the UK.
A freshly emerged male Golden-ringed Dragonfly in the New Forest today, her wings have unfolded but not yet dropped into the open flight position so it will be an hour or so before he will fly.
I put my hand down to pick up an empty dragonfly nymph exoskeleton which was on the ground and the dragonfly walked onto my finger.
A damselfly empty nymph exoskeleton.
Tetragnatha Montana is a species of long-jawed orb weaver spiders commonly known as the silver stretch spider. These spiders have a habit of extending their front legs into a stick like shape
Now the sun is out Dragonflies and Damselflies are starting to fly.
Four-Spotted Chaser.
Four-Spotted Chaser. This Dragonfly has emerged deformed and missing one wing.
The Chaser below is deformed and missing 1 wing.
Azure Damselfly pair mating.
Hairy Dragonfly.
Banded Demoiselle.
The adder is the UK’s only venomous snake. They are a shy and secretive reptile. They live in woodland, heathland and moorland habitats. Here are 2 that I photographed in the New Forest today.
Common Stinkhorn.
The appearance of a stinkhorn is very distinctive: they have a phallic, white, stem structure, with a brown, bell-shaped head.
You smell it before you see it – when you smell it you just follow your nose. The unmistakable and strong stench has been likened to rotting flesh from a dead carcass. The spores of this fungus are contained within the slime that covers its cap. Flies are attracted to the offensive- smell, and sticking to their feet the spores are spread.
A Few Fallow Deer.
It has been stated that the New Forest has some 2700 species of Fungi. Here are a few I spotted today.
Garden Spider (Araneus diadematus) with packed lunch and ready to go.
Four-spotted orb-weaver (Araneus quadratus).
Wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi).
The Stinkhorn is a fungus that can grow up to 25cm tall and resembles a phallus when they fully emerge from an egg-like structure which contains the immature fruiting body. The young cap oozes gleba a spore-bearing smelly sticky gel. The smell of rotting flesh fills the air which attracts the flies and other insects which then carry off the fungus’s spores.
It is said Victorians were so embarrassed by the look of a Stinkhorn that they would attack them with sticks to stop any impressionable young ladies from seeing such a thing.
Continued Reflections from my World. 