30 Days Wild – Day 10

A third of the way through the 30 Days now and we continue to live in strange times in which many of us have changed somewhat our relationship with the local environment. Even people who were in the habit of walking out from home have found new places to go and in the process found lots of unnoticed doorstep wildlife. In particular the flowers growing on verges, greens and playing field edges have caught people’s eyes with lots of pictures in social media of bee orchids in new places. There was also “No Mow May”, this was promoting the idea of not mowing grass in the month of May and seeing what came up. Quiet a few people found that bee orchids were growing in their lawns all the time, and many realised just how important dandelions were for insects. It demonstrated that our gardens and maintained green spaces could be supporting a lot more wildlife and helping to address some of issues around the decline in pollinating insects.

Day 10 was rather damp at times, actually for quite a lot of the time where I was, but the moth trap can be relied on to deliver something of interest and this time it was a very beautiful small elephant hawk-moth. Perhaps because I don’t see them very often this is just about my favourite hawk-moth.

small elephant hawk-moth

I took the afternoon off and made a short excursion to the coast, where it was rather grey and breezy, but I did manage to see my first little tern of the year. I tried to take a picture but it avoided me as soon as I raised my camera, in fact all the birds seemed very camera shy, even this black-headed gull did not want a picture taken.

camera shy black-headed gull

 

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Full of Promise

It seems to have been a week for blossom, the crab apple is at its best, the pear is just ahead but still great on the northern side of the tree and yes we do have a pear at Blashford, blackthorn is over and today I saw my first hawthorn in bloom.

Hawthorn in flower

Lots of  flowers should mean lots of fruits in the autumn, unless we have a very, very dry summer of course.

Elsewhere on my rounds I found three orchids, twayblades nearly in flower, but also in the dark under a bush so I could not get a picture. In the open were a southern marsh orchid, with very spotted leaves.

Southern marsh orchid

And even more in the open, several bee orchid rosettes.

bee orchids, rather nibbled by rabbits

These orchids will be flowering later in the season, but as you may have noticed there are lots of bees out now, many will visit dandelions and daisies, not weeds but vital nectar sources. A good few species also visit willows in the spring, including that rare spring species the grey-backed mining bee Andrena vaga, the females return to their nests with loads of the bright willow yellow pollen as food for their larvae.

grey-backed mining bee

Spring is a time of migration and one of the species that passes through on the way from North Africa to the uplands of Scotland an Scandinavia is the ring ouzel. This is a bird very like a blackbird, in fact sit was known as the mountain blackbird, but it has a white crescent across the chest and rather longer wings, as befits a bird that flies long distances. Today I saw a blackbird with some white, sadly though not a ring ouzel, but a common blackbird with some white feathering.

“Just” a blackbird

Finally I turned on the camera screen at Blashford today as I waited for computer support to reconnect me to our network and found that the grey squirrel that has been occupying the owl box has actually been rearing a family.

young squirrel in the owl box

30 Days Wild – Day 14 – It’s Not Just Grass!

A day off catching up with domestic tasks, so wildlife watching was largely restricted to the garden. The mini-meadow is looking very fine at present, it may only be 5m by 4m, but it is packed with flowers and has  a very good structure. The term “structure” in relations to grasslands means the variation in height and the layering of the vegetation. A well structured grassland will have vegetation at every level. In mine the lowest level is occupied by lesser stitchwort, mouse-eared hawkweed, cowslip, bugle, bird’s-foot trefoil and white clover. Slightly higher is the yellow rattle, creeping buttercup, dandelion, ribwort plantain, red clover and bloody cranesbill.  Higher still are the ox-eye daisy, hawkbits, field scabious, perforated St John’s wort, meadow buttercup and corky-fruited water-dropwort. The top layer is mostly taken by knapweed. There are several different grass species and a number of other herbs dotted about. 

This structure allows insects to move about all through the area at every level and light can get through to the ground. This is the opposite of an intensive grassland where the objective is a dense even grass sward, these may be fields, but they are really high yield grass crops, with high biomass and low biodiversity. Traditional forage crops were hay, and repeated cropping tended to increase biodiversity and and reduce the biomass. It is easy to see why farmers seeking lots of forage would move to an intensive model, but the result has been a 97% loss of herb rich grasslands in the UK in a lifetime.

“Views over green fields” might be trumpeted by estate agents or implicit in the idea of the “Green Belt”, but green fields are ones that have lost their biodiversity. Similarly green lawns, verges and civic areas are ones that have had their diversity and wildlife stripped away. It is easy to see why agricultural grasslands have been “improved” to increase their productivity, these are businesses seeking to make a profit. Despite this most of the best remaining herb-rich grasslands are on farms and farmers are at the forefront of improving the situation.

So why are local authorities and corporate owners of mown grasslands so set on removing their variety has always been a mystery to me. Many years ago I worked at a Country Park and took to leaving the banks and other areas not walked on to be cut just once a year, mowing the rest as paths and patches around picnic tables. Pretty soon we had meadow brown, common blue and marbled white flying between the picnic places. However I soon got complaints, not from the site users, but from councillors and others who declared it “untidy”, I did not give up but as soon as I moved on they restored the old regime.

My mini-meadow, it really is not difficult to have diverse wildlife friendly spaces rather than dewilded grass.

Some land uses demand regular mowing, but it should not be the default approach, we should expect habitats to be managed to maximise their environmental value. Wildlife lives everywhere, given the chance and should do so, we should expect land managers to be properly discharging their responsibility for the land they manage and to be looking to increase biodiversity, not mowing, or worse still, spraying it to oblivion.

Meadow brown in the meadow, hiding from the wind

Bombus lucorum, the white-tailed bumblebee on ox-eye daisy

Bee is for Blashford

Or maybe Blashford is for bees, well of course it is! Blashford is for all wildlife and the people who like to experience it. Everyone knows the honey bee and bumble bees, although perhaps not that there are 28 species of them. However there are something like 250 other species of bees in Britain and they all spend their days visiting flowers and pollinating them. These 250 are the so called solitary bees, despite the name they can occur in great aggregations, importantly though each nest is the domain of just one female, there are no worker bees.

grey-backed mining bee (female) with a load of willow pollen.

There has been much coverage recently about the declines in insect numbers around the world and that of pollinating insects in particular, perhaps because they are economically important to us as pollinators of crops. Declines could be for many reasons and probably are multi-factored, but a general loss of habitat and an increasing uniformity in what is left, along with increased prevalence of chemical contaminants are all likely contributors. Some enlightened local authorities are modifying their grass mowing regimes on verges, roundabouts and recreation site to allow more flowering, some of the best are actually seeding back wildflowers or using “meadow mixes”. In fact we can all help by providing flowers that are good sources of nectar and by valuing some of the “weeds” that we might have removed in the past. For instance a lawn with dandelions may not win the green-keepers prize but these are a very important source of food for early flying bees and hoverflies.

Blashford Lakes has lots of nectar sources, especially at this time of year when willows are important for many species and so has lots of solitary bees. Many also need bare, sandy soil to dig their nests and we have that in abundance too.

grey-backed mining bee (female) emerging from nest hole

One of the problems with solitary bees is that some species are very similar to one another and so difficult to identify in the field. Although the grey-backed mining bee female is distinctive the male looks very like the male of another species, the ashy mining bee.

ashy mining bee (male)

One of the commonest mining bees around at present is the yellow-legged mining bee, which can be found nesting in bare ground in banks, lawns and various other places.

yellow-legged mining bee (male) – or at least I think it is!

Some bees are neither colonial nor make their own solitary nests, they are nest parasites of other bees. One genus of bees the Nomada bees specialise in this way of life, often specialising on one particular host species. The yellow-legged mining bee plays unwilling host to the painted nomad bee, which looks very wasp-like.

painted nomad bee (male)

The last few of days have seen big arrivals of hirundines, Monday was almost all sand martin, yesterday there were a few swallow and the odd house martin and today there were even more swallow, probably over 50. On Ibsley Water there a couple of pairs of oystercatcher, a pair of redshank, probably five little ringed plover, several lapwing and today two green sandpiper. Meanwhile around the Centre and Woodland Hide the wheezing of brambling is very much in evidence, particularly in the morning, there are at least 30 and I suspect 50 or more around just now.

And remember it does not take much effort not to mow the lawn for a few days and let the dandelions flower to feed the bees. You could put your feet up and have a cup of tea, or a beer (other drinks are available), whilst making your own contribution to Wilding Hampshire!

30 Days Wild – Day 16 – Dealing with Uncertainty

After writing yesterday’s blog I was out at dusk surveying nightjar again. I did find some nightjar, I heard at least four churring males, but the highlights were actually a roding woodcock and drumming snipe. The churring of nightjar is an extraordinary sound, much more reminiscent of machinery than a bird. Woodcock make a strange squeaking call as they fly around their territory and, if they fly right overhead you will also hear a short croak between the toy-like squeaking. Snipe are closely related to woodcock and also fly around at night on display flights, they make a weird sound called “drumming”, this is not a call but a noise made by the bird diving at speed so that the air causes the outer tail-fathers to vibrate. A walk on a New Forest heath at night is a fabulous experience filled with strange sounds.

Day 16 started with a look at the moth trap, there were 2 privet hawk-moth, but the only new species for the year was an uncertain, or was it? It might have been a rustic, because these two species cannot reliably be distinguished and are best recorded as an aggregate.

perhaps an uncertain and not certainly a rustic

What’s in My Meadow Today?

There are several dandelion like yellow flowers in my meadow, but a lot of them are not dandelion. The Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon is one as are the hawk’s-beards. The smallest is smooth hawk’s-beard.

small bee on smooth hawk’s-beard

They are very attractive to nectaring bees and these small bees, which I have not identified so far, like them all and often move from the smooth hawk’s-beard to the other common species, beaked hawk’s-beard.

beaked hawk’s-beard

Looking into the meadow is always worth a second and a third look. As though to confirm its status as a meadow I spotted two meadow bug Leptopterna dolbrata.

Meadow bug (Leptopterna dolabrata)

I think these are a pair, although the females typically have short wings and both of these are fully winged. I also found a brilliant green beetle on the wild carrot flower head, it was a rose chafer. This was at about five in the afternoon on Day 16, as I write this now, at just after seven in the morning on Day 17, looking out of the window I can see the beetle still on the same flower head.

rose chafer on wild carrot