I found this growing though bamboo under an arch in my garden which was covered with wisteria and jasmine. It was approximately 15cm and it smells like a fungus. Fionnuala Kilfeather, Booterstown, Co Dublin
I would say it smells like the vilest blocked sewers by this stage and not even the jasmine can mask it. Because this is the well-named Stinkhorn fungus with an equally descriptive Latin name – Phallus impudicus. The round head it acquires as it develops becomes covered with a dark olive slime, which contains the spores. This slime emits a strong, sewage-like smell that attracts flies from large distances. The slime sticks to their legs as they clamber over the fungus and departs with them as they leave again. A very effective means of dispersal indeed.
I saw this moth on a deckchair in Cologne, Germany. Can you tell me anything about it? Marian Crean, Dublin
It is a lime hawk moth, so called because its caterpillars feed on the leaves of lime trees. It now occurs in Ireland, too. The first Irish record was in 2010 in Drumcondra, and they are really well established now – just in the Dublin area so far. They fly after dark in summer and lay their eggs on the leaves of lime and birch trees. It overwinters as a chrysalis in the ground.
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We spotted this little fella on the wall of our grandparents’ house in west Cork. Why does he/she look like a tiny moustache? We are huge fans of “The Creature Pages”. Our daddy reads it to us every Saturday morning. Rosie (6), Sonny (4) and Maggie (2) O’Connor, Kinsale, Co Cork.
That is a very clever description of this creature, which is distantly related to spiders. It is a harvestman, which, like spiders, has eight legs but its head and body are fused rather than separate as in spiders. As Daddy’s excellent picture shows, it has a pair of forked palps at the front and its second pair of legs are much the longest. So it is definitely the fork-palped harvestman – Dicranopalpus ramosus. This is its resting position. It is having a break after catching an even smaller invertebrate, which it ate in lumps.
This spring a pair of blue tits nested in my nest box. So, in the hope of their return next year, at the end of the nesting season I cleaned out the box and the picture attached shows how packed and insulated it was. It also shows a failed egg. Should I have done so or should I have left well enough alone? Bríd Smith, Ballyfermot
You did the right thing. Nests should be removed and the box cleaned out after the breeding season in September or October. As various feather parasites and insect scavengers may be present, this work is necessary to get rid of them. You can finish the job by washing out the box with boiling water (take it down first) and leave it to dry out thoroughly before replacing the lid. Do not use insecticides.
What is this spider, which I spotted on a rose in my garden in Sutton? Donal O’Connor, Dublin
This is a female flower crab spider – Misumena vatia. It is so-called because its first two pairs of legs are turned forward and it can walk sideways like a real crab. It lurks inside flowers and pounces on nectar- and pollen-feeding insects as they approach. It can actually change its colour to match that of the flower where it sits waiting in ambush. The male, which is much smaller and has a dark brown head and legs, occurs lower down in the vegetation.
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