I’m just back from a fabulous week in the Isles of Scilly. I went with my long-suffering sister and her partner and their two dogs. I say long-suffering as they had to spend a week with my constant exclamations of  “ooh look at that beetle” and “wow a bee” and “can we go and see puffins” again and again! All I can say is that they’re very tolerant people.

The Isles of Scilly are a small group of islands off the Cornish coast. They may only be about 28 miles from mainland England, but they feel like they’re somewhere far more exotic. With a mild maritime climate, tropical looking flowers flourish in a way I can only dream of back home in the relatively cold climes of Worcestershire. The gardens on Tresco are world famous, but the plant life proliferates everywhere. I particularly liked the Angel’s Trumpets (left) and the tall spikes of Echium that crop up all over the islands. Here’s a couple of the more alien looking species from the Tresco gardens.

With an abundance of flowers comes an abundance of insects, particularly bees. The Echiums must have been several metres tall and were alive with bees making the most of the tall floral spikes. Elsewhere even the clover covered grass in gardens was humming with bees, in far greater numbers than I get at home. My favourite spot though was this leaf-cutter bee taking a break or perhaps regretting cutting such a large piece of leaf.

We saw some cracking beetles too as we walked the coastal paths. This Rose Chafer beetle was a stunning iridescent green and huge (I regret not sticking a finger in the photo for scale here). If you’ve ever read the book Miss Benson’s Beetle (and I highly recommend it) then you’ll understand I had a bit of a Miss Benson moment finding this.

We also found a pair of these large black beetles on another path in Bryher. I think it’s an oil beetle, but more than happy to be corrected if it is not.

I did miss my moth trap while we were away. I had briefly considered packing a portable one, but where we were staying wasn’t really suitable for moth trapping without annoying the neighbours, so I resisted. I did get a bit of a moth fix in the form of hummingbird hawk-moths which popped up all over the place – even when we were on a boat out at sea. Many thanks to my sister for managing to catch this one on video with her phone.

 

So that’s probably enough of me sounding like an advert for Scilly for Part 1, I’ll be back soon with birds and mammals for Part 2.