Golden delight

Yesterday I accompanied Bob to the old Hanson concrete plant to see how the area was developing, what was growing and what insects were around. On our way we popped in to Tern Hide where there was a common sandpiper foraging on the shore of Ibsley Water:

Common sandpiper

The old Hanson plant, now named by Bob as ‘the empty quarter’, does look rather barren. Most of the area has crushed concrete underfoot, but plants including St John’s wort, ragwort and lots of common centaury are growing, alongside grasses and the pioneer tree species silver birch, which is quick to colonise new habitats following disturbance and will need managing to ensure the saplings do not take over.

The Empty Quarter

The sandy looking area in the photo above was probably the most interesting as here there was less crushed concrete and an abundance of holes in the softer ground, evidence the area is being used by solitary bees and wasps. There is obviously enough flowering on this part of the reserve and the surrounding banks for the green-eyed flower bee below:

Green-eyed flower bee

There were lots of dowdy plume moths (identified later by Bob, who also discovered one of their favourite larval food plants is common centaury) and we also saw a species of leaf-cutter bee and a six-spot burnet moth:

Megachile sp

Six-spot burnet moth

I haven’t set foot on this part of the reserve before so it was nice to get the opportunity to have a look and see how it is developing. For those of you who are regular, long-standing readers of the blog, please don’t ask about the footpath, there is still no news…

Elsewhere on the reserve I have seen my first cinnabar moth caterpillars, with their distinctive black and yellow stripes. Their bright colours are a warning to predators not to eat them: as they merrily munch their way through common ragwort, the toxins present inside the plant build up inside them, making them unpalatable to predators.

Cinnabar caterpillar

There are also plenty of gatekeeper butterflies on the wing, like this one enjoying the common fleabane in the sweep meadow:

Gatekeeper

When I emptied the moth traps this morning there were a couple of nice species inside, including a yellow-tail, coronet and a canary-shouldered thorn.

The highlight from the moth trap though was a hornet. Hornets are attracted to light, but are very docile first thing in the morning, taking a while to warm up and fly off. This one was quite content walking around the bench until it was ready to fly away, and it was nice to have a really good look at it up close:

Hornet

Although hornets may get a bad press, they are much less aggressive than their smaller relative the common wasp and will only sting if attacked. They play an important role in pollination and are a gardener’s friend, helping control unwanted pests with their diet of insects.

Today has been a really good day for dragonflies, with common darter, emperor and brown hawker all on the wing over the ponds by the Education Centre. The common darters in particular have been posing nicely and letting you creep up quite close for a photo:

Common darter

Today’s highlight though has to be the golden ringed dragonfly a visitor spotted over the ponds behind the Centre, with regular visitor John letting me know so I could take a photo:

Golden ringed dragonfly

This striking black dragonfly has yellow rings along the length of the abdomen, hence the name, and green eyes. The females are the longest dragonfly in the UK due to their long ovipositor which can reach 84mm in length. If they choose to rest they may stay in one place for some time and although present on the reserve (we sometimes catch their nymphs in the Dockens Water when river dipping, where they prefer flowing acidic water to still water) they are not quite as easy to see here as some of our other dragonfly species. It was a rather nice end to the day!

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Batty evenings and dewy mornings

Last night a number of our Young Naturalists were joined by HIWWT’s Senior Ecologist Sarah Jackson, for an evening in search of Blashford’s bats. After a short introduction inside, we headed out armed with bat detectors to see what, if anything was flying about above our heads.

Sarah has been at Blashford the past couple of Thursday evenings, running a popular beginners course on Bat Ecology and Survey Techniques, so we had high expectations after being treated to aerial activity from Soprano and Common pipistrelles, Daubenton’s bat, Noctules and excitingly, a surprising flyby by a Greater horseshoe. Definitely my highlight of Thursday evening!

Sadly our total number of species last night didn’t quite match the five mentioned above, but we were lucky enough to quickly pick up lots of the characteristic ‘wet slaps’ or ‘smacks’ of both Common and Soprano pipistrelles. On our way down to Ivy South hide we paused to listen to the Tawny Owls calling in the distance and with Ivy Silt Pond pretty quiet on the bat front, we went in to the hide in the hope of more bat activity. Here the pipistrelles were immersed in a feeding frenzy over the lake, not surprising given the amount of flies on and above the surface of the water!

We stayed long enough watching them by torchlight and listening to them on the bat detectors that we also picked up Daubenton’s bat, with their distinctive call sounding like a rapid series of regular ‘clicks’, before leaving the hide to the spiders.

A spider interrupted in Ivy South hide

As the sky was clear in places, we were able to spot a couple of the Autumn constellations, The Plough and Cassiopeia. If you look hard enough at the two photos below you might be able to make them out!

The Plough – seven stars in the shape of a saucepan, part of the constellation Ursa Major

Cassiopeia constellation, you can just make out the ‘W’ shape formed by five bright stars

Here’s a dot to dot to give you a better idea!

Thank you Sarah for joining us! Sarah’s second Beginners Bat Ecology course is also fully booked, but details of other courses offered by the Trust can be found on our website:

http://www.hiwwt.org.uk/courses

With courses on astronomy, nature photography, wildlife identification, forest school and wildlife art, there’s lots to choose from.

On opening up this morning the spider’s webs along the edge of the lichen heath were laden with dew, a sure sign of a cooler morning and lowering temperatures. I was lucky enough to see three kingfishers on Ivy Silt Pond, but there was no sign of a grass snake first thing.

Dew covered spiders web

The light trap was emptier than it has been, with 17 moths present, seven species in total. In amongst the Large yellow underwings, there was a Snout, two Sallows and this Canary shouldered thorn:

Canary shouldered thorn

The trap also contained a rather smart Ichneumon fly, Enicospilus ramidulus, which unusually hung around long enough to be photographed:

Ichneumon fly ‘Enicospilus ramidulus’

The highlight, or surprise, of the light trap though was this rather sluggish hornet, which was happy to be removed from the trap and relocated for a photograph or two:

 

One Day, Two Reserves

I am not often at Blashford on a Saturday, but this weekend I was, I managed to intersperse catching up on paperwork with a walk round all the hides. Getting around the reserve is very pleasant but also highlights all the tasks that need planning into the coming winter season, I think an eight month winter would just about be enough!

Opening up the hides I saw a greenshank and three wheatear from the Tern hide, which suggested that there might well be migrants about and with luck “something” might turn up.

As usual the day proper started with a look through the moth trap. This contained no rarities but one unexpected moth, a very fresh dark form coronet, this is an attractive moth and one we see quite often, but it flies in June and July. If I was to get one at this time of year, I would have expected it t be an old, battered one on its last legs, not a pristine newly emerged one.

coronet

The cumulative results of my wanderings throughout the day indicated that there were indeed a reasonable scatter of migrants around the reserve. Chiffchaff were frequently to be seen, although willow warbler were many fewer than last week. In one mixed flock of birds near the Lapwing hide I saw a very smart juvenile lesser whitethroat, a rather rare bird at Blashford these days. On the south side of the main car park a spotted flycatcher was catching insects from the small trees and there were several blackcap eating blackberries.

In the early afternoon I was in Tern hide when I spotted an osprey in the distance flying towards us down the valley, it looked as if it was going to come low over Ibsley Water, but as it came over Mockbeggar North lake a large gull started to chase it and, rather than brush off this minor irritation, it gained height and headed off at speed to the south. It was a young bird and is going to have to learn to tough out such attention.

It was not a bad day for insects, I saw red admiral, painted lady, small white and speckled wood, despite almost no sunshine and there were good numbers of migrant hawker and brown hawker about. I also saw more hornet than I had noticed so far this summer and very widely about the reserve too.

Other birds of note were mostly signs of approaching autumn, a single snipe near the Lapwing hide was the first I have seen since the spring here and later wigeon, one on Ivy Lake and 4 on Ibsley Water were also the first returns that I have seen.

For a couple of years now I have been noticing increasingly large floating mats of vegetation in the Ivy Silt Pond and kept meaning to identify the plant species involved. I finally did so yesterday and one of them, the one with the rosettes of pointed leaves, is water soldier, a rare plant in Hampshire and mostly found on the Basingstoke canal!

water soldier

It is probably most likely to be here as a result of escaping from a local garden pond, but might be wild, anyway it seems to be a notable record and as far as I know it has not been recorded here before.

In the evening I went out to another reserve in my area, Hythe Spartina Marsh, it was close to high water and I was interested to see if there was a wader roost. There was, not a large one but interesting, it included 74 ringed plover, 30 dunlin, 2 turnstone, 3 grey plover and a single juvenile curlew sandpiper. In addition 2 common sandpipers came flying north up  edge and on the way across the marsh I saw a clouded yellow butterfly nectaring on the flowers of the sea aster. I also saw that on e of the juvenile ringed plover had got colour rings on its legs, however it would only ever show one leg so all I could see was a white ring above a red ring on the left leg, not enough to identify where it had come from. Ringed plover can breed locally on our beaches or have spent the summer way off in the high Arctic of Canada, so it would have been good to see all the rings.

A Touch of Frost

With three millimetres of rain and overnight temperature a low single figure, it certainly feels more like autumn now.

The final butterfly transects, we have been monitoring them now since early April, were completed this week. The surveyors haven’t been bothered by huge numbers of butterflies, although understand we still have quite a few speckled wood butterflies,

speckled wood

 

37 were seen on the north transect, plus a good number of comma (16) and five red admiral on the south section.

Other signs of autumn are the burgeoning numbers of fungi, like this troop, of I believe lycoperdon sp.(?),  I saw beside the path.

 

lycoperdon species?

Whilst bird numbers aren’t particularly spectacular yet, the range of species is increasing slowly. One lucky couple saw what they are sure was a honey buzzard in the Ibsley Water area.  More prosaically I only managed a few of the more common species, like this lapwing

lapwing

and a couple of young little grebe, or dabchick, with a coot.

coot and dabchick

 

A final flurry of, mostly fairly inconspicuous, flowers is providing a little colour around the place, but most are well past their best.

cut-leaved geranium(?)

common storksbill

dark mullein

On the ‘light  trap’ front, we are still attracting hornets,

hornet

 

but a number of colourful moths as well.

pink-barred sallow

 

frosted orange

angle shades

Oranges and Lemons

After a three week break of duty, it made a pleasant change to be opening up the reserve and be greeted by a common sandpiper immediately outside the Tern Hide.  Ibsley Water bore  its usual compliment of waterfowl. Mute swans were much in evidence, not only as their physical presence, but from the large scale scattering of innumerable moulted white feathers floating across the lake.  Duck numbers are building up with representatives of several species including gadwall, tufted duck, wigeon,  mallard and shoveler. As usual at this time of year it can be quite difficult to sort many of them out as the usually distinctive drakes have moulted into a somewhat drab ‘eclipse’ plumage, similar to the females.  This is thought to be a survival mechanism, making them less conspicuous whilst they moult their flight feathers. Large numbers of lapwing are now making use of the shingle spit to the east of the tern hide and are accompanied by several (we counted fourteen) Egyptian geese.

Although we are still experiencing warm weather the numbers of insects have dropped dramatically since I was last here. A male Southern Hawker dragonfly was periodically patrolling the pond behind the Education Centre, but only a few large white butterflies and a red admiral were much in evidence.

The moth trap hasn’t been set out  much lately, but Jim kindly put it on for us last night.  Our reward was some seventeen species of moth, but the downside was  a fairly large number of wasps – sorry don’t know what species – plus a couple of LARGE hornets, which made emptying the trap somewhat challenging…

A rather sleepy hornet .

Other ‘interlopers’ were this rather nice shield bug,

Shield bug

and a number of what , with their smooth outlines, look to me like water beetles

Water beetle?

Not many of the moths were, to be frank, that dramatic or spectacular, although the rather ‘dead leaf’ looking angle shades is always good value

Angle shades

and also in among them this Frosted Orange

Frosted Orange

and a number of species with a distinct yellow (lemon?) hue, including this Canary-shouldered Thorn..

Canary-shouldered Thorn

Clickety-click

A bit of a disjointed day. I was in briefly to open up then off to Testwood for a meeting and back again by lunchtime, then path strimming and clearing. Still along the way I did see a fair few things.

Opening the Tern hide a shelduck and single duckling were feeding out on the lake.

shelduck and duckling

At the Ivy North hide a fly by female cuckoo was bubbling and a kingfisher passed shortly after. There was also a considerable commotion in the tree to the right of the hide and the culprits were a pair of amorous grey squirrels.

friendly squirrels

The moth trap was busy once again, although there was nothing of great note, although a very large and threatening looking queen hornet was a catch to treat with respect. Actually they are not aggressive and they are very fine creatures indeed.

queen hornet in the moth trap

Later, when I got back to Blashford I was having lunch when I noticed something moving on a hemlock water dropwort flower, looking closer I saw it was a crab spider which had caught a soldierfly, to be precise an Odontomyia tigrina and the female crab spider that had caught it seems to be Misumena vatia.

Misumena vatia with Odontomyia tigrina

On the Pyracantha flowers I saw a soldier beetle, it turned out to be a red-headed soldier beetle, which is somewhat less common than the closely related black-headed soldier beetle.

soldier red-headed beetle

I spent sometime clearing paths in the meadows during the afternoon and came across two click beetles in quick succession the first was a fine red one and seems to be quiet scarce, if I have identified it correctly.

Ampedus pomonae

The second is one I have seen before and seem to remember identifying, although I cannot remember what it is or how I found out the name!

click beetle