30 Days Wild – Day 26

As I was away I missed the Mass Lobby of parliament under “The Time is Now” banner to lobby about The Environment Act and The Nature Recovery Network. The turn-out was good and a fair number of MPs did come out to talk with the lobbyists, if they understood the need for action sufficiently that if will to lead to real action, only time will tell.

Meanwhile I got to spend the morning out in the dunes at Braunton Burrows NNR, fewer people but more military training.

One feature that could not be missed was the number of painted lady butterflies, they were everywhere! However it was not one of those that caught my attention nectaring on a stray buddleja bush, but a dark-green fritillary.

dark-green fritillary

The Burrows are an amazing place to visit, huge dunes with wet dunes slacks between, stabilised so that there is a rich and varied vegetation. The outer edges run onto a large sandy beach, with lost of species of more mobile habitats. I came across one plant I did not recognise, which turned out to be hound’s tongue.

hound’s tongue (thanks to Ian Ralphs for the ID)

The dune slacks are very good for orchids, we saw pyramidal orchid, marsh orchid, early marsh orchid and, my favourite, marsh heleborine.

marsh heleborine

My stay in Devon was all too brief though and in the afternoon we headed home, a brief stop in a lay-by did yield a very smart large skipper, only my third this year!

large skipper

Advertisement

Garden Highlights

I seem to have been very busy recently, a couple of days away and evenings spent out surveying nightjar have left no time for blogging. The last few days have produced a few notable species in my garden which I will cover, a Blashford update will have to wait a bit longer I’m afraid.

The other day I recorded my first silver-washed fritillary in the garden, it was on a Buddleia, the “butterfly bush”, I do not grow the common davidii, which seeds freely and can be an invasive species in dry habitats. To avoid the seeding risk I grow a sterile hybrid known as Buddleia weyeriana, it may not be quiet as attractive to insects, but has the advantage of a much longer flowering season.

silver-washed fritillary

The moth trap has been productive as well, warm nights are always good for moths and we have had lots of those recently. The pick of the recent catches has been a very smart mocha, caught a couple of nights ago.

mocha

Followed last night by a Jersey tiger, this splendid looking moth used to be found only along the south coast of Devon, but in recent years has become established on the Isle of Wight and very recently along the southern edge of the New Forest too.

Jersey tiger

Pictures from the Purple Patch

It’s often been said, ( although, probably only  by me!) that a lot of the conservation work at Blashford is  ‘ a bit like gardening, but on an industrial scale‘ .  Today I was doing what, to me,  is one of the more pleasant gardening tasks of dead heading the buddleia.   We don’t have much buddleia left on the reserve, it’s a terribly invasive non-native plant and as such doesn’t really belong here so it’s largely being eradicated from the more wild parts of the reserve, with only one plant left near the Centre.  It is, however, a great nectar source for insects and removing the seed heads encourages more flower to form.  So what could be finer on a pleasantly warm day than a little light pruning whilst seeped in a heady fragrance and being constantly visited by comma, small tortoiseshell, green-veined white, silver-washed fritillary and peacock butterflies and also this smart red admiral.

 

Red Admiral

The rich lilac/purple flowers of the buddleia are mirrored by many other flowers at the moment – indeed the reserve is going through a ‘purple patch; as evidenced by the flower-heads of creeping thistle, teasel and marjoram

creeping thistle

 

Teasel

 

Marjoram

All of which were within about four metres of the buddleia.

In fact I didn’t really need to go more than a few paces to see …

Green-veined white butterflies on marjoram

Southern hawker dragonfly

Common Lizard playing ‘peek-a-boo’ on fencing around the pond

and perhaps most unexpected this small furry mammal taking advantage of  the largess provided by some spikes of seeds ( sorrel I think) close by the pick-nick benches

mouse?

After my embarrassing faux-pas over the bee/hoverfly last week ( thanks to those who put me right) I’m reluctant to put a name to this  —  I just know there are really knowledgeable folks out there who can tell us.

And a final flourish was this rather posey small tortoiseshell who insisted on sharing a pick-nick bench with me.

Small tortoiseshell

As I say all this from, almost, a single position – can’t be bad…

The ‘Spot the Path’ competition

Being the first Sunday of the month, it is the day for the Sunday volunteers. As it’s now the height of the holiday season I wasn’t sure how many volunteers there would be. It’s a bit of a juggling act when planning conservation tasks – there needs to be enough work planned to keep people reasonably busy but not so much that it seems the work will never finish – we aren’t slave drivers!!    In the event seven people turned out so it was worth having a bash at reinstating an overgrown path at the back of the Education Centre.  It’s not a path that is readily accessible to visitors, but has been used when school parties are here.   It had started to get overgrown earlier this year and got to the stage where it was virtually impassable as the recent warm weather had encouraged luxuriant growth of grasses, nettles and brambles.

The first problem was establishing where the path should be – the following images give some idea of the scale of the problem.

The start of the path from behind the centre pond.

The middle section

The further reaches of impenetrability

Its amazing what a couple of hours of concerted effort can achieve, with the following result.

At the start – now

An obvious path – now

The end of the road – for some volunteers!!!

Although it could still do with a little bit more attention, we now have a useable path, thanks to all those volunteers who turned out today.

Bird-wise there are no reports of anything spectacular at the moment, although the young common tern and even the young black-headed gulls add a certain air of the exotic as they won’t look the same in a few weeks time

The warm humid conditions are encouraging good numbers of butterflies to the buddleia, where they nectar on the flowers and hang languorously from them, as did this red admiral.

Red admiral

Phew!! What a scorcher. – now you know I’ve run out of ideas for titles!!!

In a somewhat ironic (or iconic) piece of fortune the first mini-beast of the day was a gatekeeper butterfly which buzzed me as I opened up the gate to the Tern Hide car-park.

Gatekeeper or Hedge brown – keeping an eye on our gate!!

Other butterflies are really making their presence felt – not before time, following the unusually cold ( do you remember that?) spring.  A red admiral has been floating around the Education Centre and without moving too far away it’s been possible to see both large white and small white, meadow brown, speckled wood, peacock, comma, brimstone and what was almost certainly a silver-washed fritillary scuttling through.  Many of them will have been looking for nectar sources, but the plants that always used to be cited as the ‘butterfly bush’ , buddleia , have yet to produce much in the way of flowers– possibly another effect of the cold spring.

A gentle stroll around the path between Ellingham Water and Dockens water, ostensibly to do a bit of trimming back of overhanging branches and invasive brambles, produced a few bonuses in terms of dragonflies and damselflies including a fine male emperor dragonfly, a couple of brown hawker and numerous common blue damselflies,and one beautiful demoiselle. Only a keeled skimmer stayed still long enough to have its picture taken and that was from some distance away.

A more obvious pair of megafauna graced us with a fleeting glimpse, as a female roe deer and her fawn dashed across the lichen heath.

Along the path heading south towards the Iron Age hut there are a number of broad-leaved helleborine, which are only just starting to come into flower. Disappointingly a number of them have been decapitated, probably having been nibbled by deer.  There were, however, several intact specimens, which even before fully flowering have a delightfully sweeping architectural shape.

Broad-leaved Helleborine

but only one that had started to bloom.

First flowering spike of broad-leaved helleborine

Helleborines are in the orchid family, a fascinating group of plants with more different members than any other family of vascular plants. Genetically they are rather complicated with more DNA than many more complex plants and animals including ourselves. As a group that is currently rapidly evolving many hybrids may be formed and for this reason may present  challenges to anyone wishing to identify the species. Given my track record on plant ID, I might be foolish, but I’m pretty sure these are broad-leaved helleborine…

As it’s the time of year for interesting insects I’ll finish, as usual, with a few moths.

Pinion

Pale prominent

Small scallop