What is the name of this tree with gorgeous berries on the Wicklow Way? – The Irish Times

We noticed this pine with purple berries alongside a woodland trail week strolling alongside the Wicklow method in overdue April. The berries had been wonderful, nearly like raspberries! I puzzled if it was once Scots pine, which has purple feminine plants (however those had been indubitably berries) and yellow male plants, and I feel it had two needles joined at bottom. – Sylvia Magill, Co Dublin

This isn’t a Scots pine however a fir tree, Abies pinsapo, the Spanish fir. What you describe as purple berries – and, to be honest, they do appear to be luscious ripe raspberries for your picture – are the male cones. Those are purple prior to losing pollen and stay purple across the edges right through the pollen losing season, which occurs in opposition to the tip of Would possibly. The feminine cones, that are 10cm lengthy, are light inexperienced right through the summer time and clustered across the manage of the tree.

For the 3rd season this modest chicken has taken over my out of doors letterbox. There are six eggs this time; 3 hatched safely in 2023. Terminating time I assumed it was once a gold crest, despite the fact that it was once parched to identify it flight out and in of the letter aperture, next and now. My extra a professional neighbours assume it’s a blue tit. Are you able to determine the modest chicken for me please? – Frank Russell, Ballyvaughan, Co Clare

Neither your self nor your extra a professional neighbours are proper. This can be a stunning tit with a dull head and white cheek patches. Blue titties have blue heads and goldcrests form petite cup-shaped nests of mosses and lichens held along with spiders’ webs which hangs from a section. I’m hoping the picture you despatched is from a digital camera within the field as photographing birds on their nests is thought of as to be a disturbance right through the breeding season.

[ If you have this ivy in Ireland, try planting a seed from the berry to see if it breeds true ]

We discovered this connected to a bit of of heather at the aspect of Twilight Hill in Co Wicklow. Are you able to determine it? – Tom Fuller, Co Dublin

That is the pupa of the emperor moth. Those moths have immense, furry inexperienced caterpillars that feed on heather. They next spin cocoons round themselves, that are connected to heather, inside of which they metamorphose into immense gray grownup moths. Those have impressive ocular spots that resemble the visuals of an owl. Emperor moths are the one Irish consultant of the Satuniidae, a public that comes with the immense silk moths of Republic of India.

That is one in all quite a few flies that joined us right through a shiny lunch crack on Camenabologue Mountain within the Wicklow Mountains on April twenty first. I puzzled if it was once a St Mark’s fly, as they’re identified to be energetic at this presen, nevertheless it doesn’t glance as furry as the photographs I’ve detectable on-line. – Helen Lawless, Co Wicklow

You might be proper: it’s not a St Mark’s fly, that are dull and furry and fly with their legs dangling underneath them. This is a male sawfly, which isn’t in reality a fly in any respect because it has 4 wings. All fly species have two wings – therefore the identify Diptera. This can be a member of the crowd Hymenoptera, to which bees and wasps additionally belong. Feminine sawflies have an ovipositor for laying eggs sticking out from their rear finish. This one has now not, so this is a male.

Glad shrews. – John McNamara, Co Kildare

Refuse marvel the white-toothed shrew has unfold so speedy since they had been first recorded right here in Co Tipperary in 2008. They don’t appear to be afflicted by digital camera meekness anyway. The ladies are territorial and competitive, and so they briefly out-compete the local pygmy shrew as they unfold into fields the place they are living. They’re in all places Munster and maximum of Leinster now.

[ The life of the aptly named stink bug ]

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