A very different day and just perhaps a prelude to a better spell of weather, with warm sunshine for a good part of the time and only the very slightest few spots of rain in the late afternoon. The warm damp weather has resulted in an abundance of slugs and snails everywhere and I came across two garden snails on the side of the Centre ensuring this will continue. They are not a pair in the conventional sense as they are hermaphrodites, each one is both male and female.
garden snails mating
The moth trap was not very busy, but included were several elephant hawk moths, a double kidney and 2 purple thorns, one of the hardest moths to photograph as they hold their wings so awkwardly.
purple thorn
The sunshine brought out a few dragonflies and more butterflies than I have seen in a long time, including two firsts for the year for me, a gatekeeper, which is a bit later than usual but reasonable. The other was a very fresh large skipper, in some years this would be about the latest I would see them and here was my first!
large skipper
I went to put some compostable waste into the bin and found a swarm of ants, just preparing to fly, possibly the extra warmth of the compost bin combined with the sunshine had triggered their flight, unusually there did not seem to be a mass flight so perhaps these had been fooled and got it wrong.
ant swarm
Other insects about today included several speckled bush cricket nymphs.
speckled bush cricket nymph
The sun also tempted out a few flies, although the recent cold and wet has severely depleted numbers, usually this is the peak time of year for many species, this robberfly was all I could get a picture of though.
robberfly
As we have an invertebrate study course at Blashford tomorrow I hope the weather remains favourable, we are supposed to be looking for dragonflies, damselflies and grasshoppers and crickets, at least in the main. A lot of species are so far behind their usual timetable that we will struggle to find a lot of them even if the weather is ok, still we may come across some other things along the way.
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 