A very pleasant morning leading a guided walk today, with plenty of all round interest!
Things got off to a good start this morning when I opened up Tern Hide, with a female kestrel being mobbed by a couple of jackdaws. She has been around all of this week, mostly over the old ConBloc site and car park area, but for some reason she had really put the jackdaws noses (beaks!) out of joint today. While we were watching she gave up and settled on a post, with the two jackdaws standing guard either side of her, both swift to take off and harass her again if ever she tried to take off. Eventually they got bored and she settled to preening her somewhat ruffled feathers.
The light trap was very productive last night with 23 species recorded in total, including some of the more popular regulars including a poplar hawk moth, elephant hawk moth, couple of buff tips and the high light, a Scarce Merveille du Jour:
Scarce Merveille du Jour
Also pictured is this very aptly named figure of 80 moth:
Figure of 80 (or 08 viewed from this angle!)
Having looked through the light trap we walked on via the Ivy North/Woodland/Ivy South Hide/Dockens Water loop where highlights included a plethora of peacock butterfly caterpillars on the stinging nettles outside Ivy North Hide, meadow brown, common blue butterflies and a female scarce chaser dragonfly in the sweep netting meadow, female emperor dragonfly outside Woodland Hide, the regular grass snake in front of Ivy South Hide, along with a painted lady butterfly and newly hatched coot chick on the nest with mum, and a male emperor dragonfly hawking along the edge of the water skiers car park.
Lots of peacock caterpillars!
Just after turning the cover towards the bridge back over the river a couple more jackdaws caught my eye. They were perched either side of a large rot hole, flying up and around it and at first I thought they were maybe coaxing outside fledglings until I realised that there were bee’s flying in and out. In fact the jackdaws were snatching these apparently tasty morsels out of the air as they entered and exited their nest in the tree. Smart birds jackdaws!
We finished off with green woodpecker and a lovely male bullfinch on the lichen heath before finishing at the centre pond for a brief glimpse of another emperor dragonfly and several egg laying azure damselflies to compliment the common blue damselflies that had of course accompanied us throughout our walk.
Shortly after one of our regular visitors and accomplished photographers spotted what might have been a young raft spider on the pond – a closer look later revealed an additional two. They are still very young and are lacking the striking yellow stripes along the abdomen, but with their greenish legs I’m reasonably confident that they are raft spiders so should provide plenty of interest over the summer if the last raft spider residents of that pond, three or four years ago, are anything to go by!
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 