Fixing the stable roof for the building and for the bats

Work is just beginning on the stable block roof at Parke. It is leaking in places and is becoming structurally unsound so the National Trust (owner) and the Dartmoor National Park Authority (tenant) are running a joint £25,000 project to fix it. The roof space is also home to a colony of several hundred lesser horseshoe bats so we have called upon the expertise of George Bemmant the local / national bat expert to advise us on how and when to carry out the project to conserve the bats and stay within the law.

The stable block from the front of the house with the Walled Garden walls and the orchard in the background

Lots of scaffolding but not as complex (or expensive!) as that at Castle Drogo!

Scaffolding at the back of the stables next to my office

Will provide an update as the work progresses – a great project which will conserve both our cultural and natural heritage.

 

Parke’s apple day

Yesterday was Parke’s Apple Day which we ran in partnership with Dartmoor Pony Heritage Trust, Home Farm Cafe and Hunt’s Cider. Here are a few photos from the day (I didn’t stay long as I was thick with a cold ….)

Apples on the trees

Bagged and ready for scratting

Alternative way to transport apples – its thirsty work though

Scratting – breaking up the whole apples before they are pressed

The press containing the scripted apples – Fred, Phil and AJ on the case

Apple juice straight from the apple!

Tom – the chef from Home Farm Cafe serving the excellent pasties he made earlier

Hunt’s Cider – who we hope will be making cider from our apples this year!

Himalayan balsam – time to knock off the policeman’s helmet?

Many of our riverbanks on Dartmoor are lined with a pink flowering plant – the Himalyan balsam. The flowers give off a very strong scent and are very attractive to bees. There are however some problems …… Himalayan balsam was introduced in 1839 to the UK and it has subsequently escaped from formal gardens into the countryside.

It often forms dense stands along rivers and in wet meadows and does a pretty good job at smothering out the native plants beneath. Just take a walk at Parke along the River Bovey and you will see how much Himalayan balsam there is. It is one of our jobs over the coming years to reduce the amount of balsam in the wet meadows.

Himalayan balsam or policeman’s helmet!

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology have produced a fact sheet on the species and a list of ways you can go about getting rid of it – see here.

The last few days of sunshine

The weather is forecast to change over the weekend but before then are still quite a few ‘summer’ insects on the wing. Here are a few from Parke yesterday.

This is the green leafhopper Cicadella viridian which is a pretty common and attractive bug which lives in wet meadows

A small copper butterfly sunning itself – 3rd brood this year

A common darter dragonfly – these insects will keep going until the first frosts

A drone fly which is mimicking a honeybee. These insects get sustenance from ivy  which is coming into flower right now – an important autumn source of nectar

Cant imagine I’ll be taking many more insect pictures this year ….

 

Another rare spider at Parke and another mystery

Fred Hutt our Ranger at Parke told me about this colony of spiders which live in the bothy near the Walled Garden. They are called cave spiders or Meta menardi. As their name suggests these spiders live in caves and other perpetually dark places – they feed on creatures of the dark including hibernating moths and butterflies. The bothy at Parke is now no longer used a a ‘garden shed’ because it is now also home to some greater horseshoe bats – as a result the doors are locked and no light enters – the perfect place for cave spiders. And so it turned out to be – I had a very quick look yesterday and found two of the spider’s egg sacs hanging from the roof.

The egg sacs are around 15mm deep and are very characteristic

Just next to one of the egg sacs was a female cave spider – the body of this individual was around 15mm so with the legs it is three times that size. Note the legs – black and red bands – very characteristic.

As you can see from this map the species is not very common – perhaps it is under recorded as it lives in difficult inaccessible places.

The interesting question therefore for me is how did the cave spider get to our bothy in the first place – a few years ago it was the gardener’s shed – had light in it and was regularly used – so no good for cave spiders.

These spiders when they are tiny do something called ballooning – that is they get swept up into the air and blown along on the wind – this is how these disperse and colonise new areas. There are lots of old mines and adits on Dartmoor and some in the vicinity to I guess they have colonised from there. There is also one other possibility – ice house at Parke.

This is the ice house at Parke

It was built at the same time as the Georgian house and was used as a cold store – in cold winters ice from the lake would be brought up to keep everything cool. The one final question for Parke is -are there cave spiders in the ice house? I can’t answer this question at the moment as the padlock in the picture above is so rusted up it won’t open! The Dartmoor National Park Authority rent the ice house and the surrounding grounds (along with the house) from the National Trust – they have kindly agreed to replace the lock – so in the next few days I will hopefully get inside and have a look!

I have found cave spiders in the Lutyens hydro turbine house in the Teign Valley (one yet on the map above) and I would like at some point to have a look in the mine adios at Lydford Gorge for them too.

So now it is 1-1 between myself and Fred – I found the wasp spider and he found the cave spider – oh how we entertain ourselves at work!

 

Who ate the dock?

I like a mystery to solve! Yesterday at Parke I saw a dock leaf which had been almost completely eaten – only the veins on the leaf remained. I’ve seen such leaves before but had never given them much thought as to who the culprit might be. Yesterday I decided to investigate.

The leaf in question

A close up

I turned the leaf over and found this – initially I thought it was a caterpillar but upon closer inspection I concluded it was a beetle larvae

Then I spotted and few more larvae

And finally on an uneaten leaf I found lots and lots!

Google is a wonderful tool “Black beetle larvae on dock” provided the answer immediately. These are the larvae of a chrysomelid beetle known as the green dock beetle or Gastrophysa viridula – here is a link with more details of the beast. It is a small (4-7mm) metallic green beetle which totally relies on eating dock as a larvae to complete its life cycle.

Despite searching I couldn’t find any adult beetles – it would seem that they have long left the scene of the crime – see the earlier link  for photos of the adult.

It is a common species found throughout the British Isles – here is the map from the National Biodiversity Network

Always satisfying to solve a mystery.

 

Two more rarities from Parke – one new one not so new

A couple of days ago I found a wasp spider a Parke – a new record for the property. On the same day I also found this hoverfly which was also a new record.

This is Arctophila superbiens

You can see it is a hoverfly and not a bumblebee which it is mimicking because of its very large compound eyes.

This is the common carder bumblebee – Bombus pascuorum also photographed at Parke which it is mimicking (note the small eyes)

As you can see from the distribution map of Arctophila superbiens – it has a very western and northern distribution in the UK – not very common in the south west.

At the same time I also managed to photograph this bush cricket – the long winged cone head Conocephalus discolour – bush crickets have very long antennae which distinguishes them from grasshoppers

Here is the national distribution of the long winged cone head up to 1990 – not in Devon

Here is the distribution now in 2014 – it is clearly spreading north and west – probably as a result of the warming climate. It is a species of rough grasslands – that it why it likes the river meadows at Parke.

 

Incidentally I also recorded this species of butterfly – the clouded yellow – a vagrant that has flown over from the continent as a result of the recent warm weather.

 

Parke’s summer harvest

The Walled Garden at Parke is currently looking amazing – the fruits and many of the vegetables are coming up and are ready for harvest. Once ready all the fruit will be one sale at Parke (first come first served!) or will go to Parke’s Home Farm Cafe.

Grapes – both white and red varieties have done well this year. We will be juicing them on Apple Day later in the year – maybe wine in the future!
NB – these are the red grapes – the white ones on this bunch will turn red soon.

Don’t these apples look good?

Same goes for the pears

I just want to pick this loganberry straight off the page!

The figs are half way there – give them a month and they will be ready too

Tomatoes in the polytunnel

Hmmm – is this a marrow or a pumpkin? I suspect the latter.

Some sunshine and shower insects

Yesterday was a day of sunshine and showers at Parke. When the sun was out it was really hot and as a result we had a visit from this amazing hummingbird hawkmoth.

Look how long its proboscis is!

Incredibly fast wing beats

The animal darts from flower to flower very quickly. This is a migrant species and the recent warm weather has brought it over from the continent. Sometimes they stay and breed ….

On the other hand this bumblebee got a real soaking sat on top of this teasel. Fortunately once the sun came out it dried out and carried on as normal

Back in the sunshine this male white tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) is making the most of his limited feeding time

Black and yellow longhorns all over Parke

In the space of less than an hour I found (well bumped into really) 4 different black and yellow longhorn beetles (Rutpela maculata) in the wet meadows and woodland edge at Parke. Unusual to see so many individuals in such a short space of time and so close together. (Some sources give Rutpela maculata the common name of the spotted longhorn).

These are pretty distinctive beetles – I particularly like the black and yellow stripped antennae.

These adult beetles live for about 4 weeks but the larvae live for up to three years in damp rotting wood of various broad-leaved trees particularly birch.