30 Days Wild – Day 1

Farmland survey plot

We’re off, 30 Days Wild 2020 is here! I started with an early morning bird survey of a farmland site on the chalk and what a way to start the 30 Days. Lots of yellowhammer, a few corn bunting and then a barn owl hunting for at least 15 minutes over the fields, a glorious morning. Just when I though tit could get no better a stone curlew flew over the ridge and passed me then alongside the owl, magical.

At Blashford it was hot and sunny, with lots of dragonflies, but still very few butterflies, although a very fresh dark green fritillary was a rare sight for the reserve. It was nectaring on Salvias in the raised beds by the Centre alongside lots of the wonderful little green-eyed flower bee.

I finished my day with a short walk out on the heath, with a distant calling curlew, nightjars aplenty and three species of bat, serotine, common pipistrelle and soprano pipistrelle.

Let’s see what Day 2 brings, it will be hard to live up to Day 1, I have to hope things have not peaked too soon.

 

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30 Days Wild – Day 27

Up and out early today to do my final breeding bird survey of the year, in fact not quite as early as I had hoped as it was rather drizzly at dawn, but still in the field by 05:40. I am surveying a site about 40 minutes from home so there is always a risk that conditions are okay at home but not at the site.  As it is now quite late in the season a lot of birds have stopped singing and some have completely finished nesting and are wandering around in flocks. In this regard the rather wet conditions of late are an advantage as this enables many resident species to have an extra brood, species like song thrush and blackbird, will give up in June in a dry season but can often have an extra brood if worms are still easy to come by in a wet season.

I did have quite a few singing thrushes and also a lot of wren and the summer visitors are still mostly singing so chiffchaff and blackcap were in good numbers. I also had several young birds, some being fed by their parents, confirming breeding. The survey involves mapping the location of every bird seen or heard on eight to twelve visits. This can then be analysed to give a fair estimate of the number of territories of each species present. All I have to do now is transfer all the data to species maps and work out how many territories of each species I have found, it could take a while!

For almost the whole of my four hours on site it was grey with low cloud, but just as I finished the sun came out and with it lots of insects. I saw meadow brown, marbled white, large skipper and small tortoiseshell in just a couple of minutes.

small tortoiseshell

Almost next to the butterfly on the same bramble there was a very smart longhorn beetle, with a very long-winded name, it is the golden-bloomed grey longhorn beetle Agapanthia villosoviridescens.

golden-bloomed grey longhorn beetle (Agapanthia villosoviridescens)

My afternoon was spent in a meeting at County Hall, Chichester, a pretty wildlife free zone, but as I left the building it was great to hear the cries of the peregrine on the cathedral, probably the young ones after food from their parents. It is amazing to think that about forty years ago these birds were restricted to western cliffs and that they were plagued by the twin ills of egg collectors and pesticides to the point where it seemed we might lose them altogether.

 

30 Days Wild – Day 15

Up hideously early and out to do a breeding bird survey, luckily the weather was fine, although I could have done without it having rained overnight as the trees were dripping and the tall grass very wet. Still it was calm and sunny and, for mid June, a good few birds were singing. As well as the birds I saw my first meadow brown of the year, actually lots of them and also a few common spotted and southern marsh orchid and a single Mother Shipton moth. 

common spotted orchid, or possibly a hybrid as the leaves were unspotted. (I have just spotted the 7-spot ladybird in this shot!)

I arrived at Blashford by ten o’clock and had a quick check of the moth trap, rather few moths but very fresh individuals of small angle shades and lime hawkmoth. However it was the trays of creatures laid out for the school pond-dipping session that caught my eye, in particular one containing a water stick insect nymph.

water stick insect nymph

The sun came out briefly at lunchtime so I went out for a break from the desk and nectaring on a hemlock water-dropwort plant was a very fresh red admiral.

red admiral

There are quite good numbers of migrant insects about just now, there have been modest arrivals of red admiral and painted lady butterflies and huge numbers of the tiny diamond-back moth, so many that they have made the national news and it is not often a micro-moth does that! There are also lots of the marmalade hoverfly and silver Y moths, if you have flowers out in the garden you will almost certainly be able to see them nectaring at dusk.

My afternoon was spent in a meeting, but as it was still sunny when I got home I took a look in the garden and found this swollen-thighed beetle (Oedemera nobilis) feeding on an ox-eye daisy in our mini-meadow.

male swollen-thighed beetle on ox-eye daisy

30 Days Wild – Day 6

Monday and I was up before dawn to head out to do a breeding bird survey in the south-east of the county before heading into Blashford for the day. Although I like being up at this time it does get to be quite hard when it means getting up before 04:00 in the morning! The first couple of hours of daylight are often the best of the day and there is something about being out and about when almost everyone else is still tucked up in bed.

Being the first week of June I came across several great spotted woodpecker nests with large, noisy chicks hanging out of them and also saw the first family parties of great tits. The site is a woodland and as well as the birds I frequently see roe deer, often at close range and perhaps not expecting anyone to be about so early in the day. I also found a swarm of tiny moths dancing over the tops of some bracken fronds.

Adela croesella

It was not easy to get a shot as it was early and rather dark underneath the tree canopy, but you can see that they are rather splendid creatures with extraordinarily long antennae.

The woodland has a wide range of tree species and much of it is clearly ancient, with a ground flora including bluebell, wild daffodil, ramsons and Solomon’s seal. There is also a good amount of standing dead wood, beloved of woodpeckers and fungi. On one partly dead oak I spotted a clump of sulphur polypore.

sulphur polypore