Nature’s tricky customers
April begins with tricks and fakery. But nature’s at it all year round.
Here are some of the most ingenious examples.
Buff-tip Moth
Pretending to be: Birch twig
Common, but easily missed, because they look just like a broken bit of Birch twig.
Buff-tips caterpillars eat Birch leaves, but also many other kinds of tree and shrub, which means they can be found almost anywhere in Sussex. The adults are on the wing between May and July.
Herring Gull
Pretending to be: Rain
Ever seen a Herring Gull shuffling from foot to foot on a football field? It’s not doing warm-ups, but imitating the patter of rain on the ground.
Earthworms seem to fall for it. They come up expecting a good time and end up in a gull’s stomach.
Bee Orchid
Pretending to bee
When your flower looks like a lovely lady bee, male bees come a-calling. But rather than the mating opportunity they’re hoping for, they get to offer a free ride for the orchid’s sticky pollen.
Unfortunately for Bee Orchids in the UK, the correct species of bee isn’t present here, so our populations have to be self-pollinating. Nevertheless, they can be found flowering in widely scattered grassland spots in June and July.
Great Tit
Pretending to be: other Great Tits
Great Tits make a lot of different noises, bamboozling many a birdwatcher in the process.
But bamboozling birders can’t be the evolutionary objective. Are they bamboozling other birds?
That’s the best explanation we have – that they are making it sound like there are lots of Great Tits, all with slightly different tunes, already present in a given area. The idea is that this could be off-putting for a wandering Great Tit trying to muscle in on the territory.
Peacock Butterfly
Pretending to be: something scary
Is this the ultimate trickster? The Peacock has not one, not two, but three different tricks up its sleeve.
To start, with wings closed, they are a plain dark colour, and easy to miss when hibernating or resting.
But with wings open, they display four large ‘eyes’ that can startle a would-be predator, especially birds. They can also back this up with a hissing sound, made by rubbing their forewings and hindwings together.
Comments
Thankyou for bringing amazing topics all the time.
03 Apr 2025 11:04:00
I am enjoying what I have seen so far from butterflies to red kites and finches , I am sad to see lovely bumblebees lying on the ground deceased I have helped a few with sugar water and fruit or have put onto flowers , I have also noted that children are totally scared of bees and hover flies as children feel they will get stung and are not educated enough to know this is not the case it is such a shame.
03 Apr 2025 11:13:00
Fabulous fascinating information
03 Apr 2025 11:45:00
Brilliant
03 Apr 2025 12:00:00
Thank you, this is very interesting
03 Apr 2025 12:26:00
Those photos are amazing. The Buff tip moth is so clever! It took me ages to see it not being a old tree stick! The orchid bee and peacock butterfly totally beautiful.
03 Apr 2025 18:07:00
Thanks so much for all your info. I find it all so interesting and such a welcome change after a day’s work when I can relax in my garden😁
03 Apr 2025 19:03:00
Nature is amazing and we are products of nature, too. We creatures need to look after each other.
03 Apr 2025 20:51:00
Thank you all so much. I am 83 and it is so refreshing to know that in this crazy and sad
world where greed for money and power rule; that people such as yourselves try to preserve the beauty and wonder. Val 🥰
04 Apr 2025 06:09:00
Brilliant I love it, more of this please
04 Apr 2025 06:29:00
When herring gulls are tap dancing they are not immitating rain – rain only makes worms come to the surface slowly as the ground saturates. They are fleeing from what they think is a mole digging towards them to eat them.
Sussex Wildlife Trust
The mole explanation is interesting! However, we understand that earthworms come to the surface even when the ground is not saturated - perhaps because it's possible for them to move around quickly overground when it's wet.04 Apr 2025 07:45:00
Absolutely first class photos, the additional info with each, most useful, keep up the good work, it is much appreciated by foks such as I
04 Apr 2025 11:27:00
The buff-tip caterpiller gets my vote for the most ingenious fakery !
Interesting discussion about the Herring gull – why does it “seem to be beating the grass with its feet?”
We have shore birds here in Auckland, similar to the Herring gull pictured. But ours have either red bills and red feet or black bills and black feet.
I’ve seen them doing a similar foot-tapping thing and it doesn’t seem to be related to “hunting for worms”.
Our gull species evolved in isolation, and NZ originally did not have “grass” as in pasture grasses. We have indigenous worms of course, but they lived in the humus of the forest floor.
Our Shore birds didn’t venture into the forests much, they hunted small fish and invertebrates along the shore. Which used to be plentiful, before overfishing, and environment depredation/habitat loss.
I always thought the gulls were “moving from foot to foot” because their feet and ‘ankles’ were uncomfortable on hard surfaces: being webbed feet, which were designed to be in the water.
That reasoning may be an “attributional error” or simple anthropomorphising on my part.
It could be quite accurate. We will never know…
06 Apr 2025 10:41:00
Very interesting, thank you. Particularly the Buff-tip Moth!
07 Apr 2025 14:14:00
Interesting and well presented
09 Apr 2025 16:37:00
Bufftip: Many years ago when doing a moth survey I was completely fooled by the moth’s form! I thought it was fragment of wood! When I realised the truth , I am truly amazed. The Great tit has over 70 calls. It can imitate birds prey to alarm over birds at a feeder and fly in to feed freely!
21 Apr 2025 06:57:00
I think seagulls may tapdance to sense the worms under the ground or to feel where the ground is moist but the rain theory is the most persuasive they are my favourite animals and this is an interesting subject to study.
02 May 2025 06:57:00