Wee-welcome you!

You will hopefully be delighted to know toilet facilities are now available just outside the front of the Education Centre, following a delivery today of two porta-loos. 

We are asking visitors to wear a face mask when using them (unless of course they are exempt from wearing one) and to use the hand sanitiser provided – they do not have soap and water for hand washing, just hand sanitiser inside. We will be cleaning them twice a day…

We are requesting a donation for their use, which can be made either by cash in the little donation box on the fence by the toilets themselves or by card using the contactless donations point just outside the Welcome Hut. 

They are costing us £10 a day so all donations for their use will be greatly appreciated.  Whilst we do have toilet facilities in the Centre, we hope you appreciate entering the building comes with an increased risk of being in an enclosed space for both any visitors using the facilities and to our staff and any volunteers who are working out of the building. There is unfortunately no easy way to discover whether or not the Centre toilets are free to use without either someone constantly monitoring them or entering them first, porta-loos are a much more straightforward option.

We hope you appreciate them being here!

Jim appreciating the new facilities!

The bird hides remain closed – when we have news on if and when any of the hides will be opening again we will of course let you all know.

Although the hides are closed there is still plenty to see. The feeder by the Welcome Hut is constantly busy with a variety of woodland birds including large numbers of goldfinch who can be seen flocking from tree top to tree top, nuthatch, greenfinch, wood pigeon, blue tit, great tit, chaffinch and great spotted woodpecker. Treecreepers are also regular visitors to the wooded area by the Welcome Hut and grey wagtail can often be seen on the boardwalk by the new dipping pond.

Robin

Juvenile goldfinch

Blue tit

Grey wagtail

The ponds are also still great places to sit and watch dragonflies, where this golden-ringed dragonfly was spotted by regular visitors John and Steve yesterday:

The moths are now few and far between and definitely have a more autumnal feel, with dusky thorn and sallow being the recent highlights:

Finally, I will finish with the rather spectacular cased caddisfly larva caught by Sam on Monday when pond dipping. I have only seen teeny tiny cased caddis so far this summer, so I think this magnificent insect might be my favourite thing from the pond so far:

Cased caddisfly caught by Sam

They build a case to live in as they grow and develop out of whatever material they have available, including sand,stones, old snail shells or segments cut from vegetation. This case was made from vegetation and the caddisfly kept trying to cover itself over with more vegetation as we were watching it. It was fascinating!

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All the small things

I spent some time in the meadow last Thursday and again yesterday, it feels as though it is going over more quickly than usual this year because it has been so dry so it was nice to take a closer look and see which insects are on the wing.

Last week I found a male and female bee-wolf, a solitary wasp that digs a nest in a sandy spot and hunts honey bees. The males gather together to form a lek, where each male defends a small territory and uses pheromones to attract a female. The females work a lot harder, digging a nesting burrow which can be up to one metre long and may have as many as 34 side burrows that end in brood chambers. Once excavation on the burrow has begun, the female will prey on honeybee workers, paralysing them with a sting and bringing them back to the burrow. Up to six paralysed bees can be placed into one chamber then a single egg is laid on one of the bees and chamber is sealed up with sand. After hatching, the larvae feed on the honeybees before spinning a cocoon to hibernate in throughout the winter, emerging in the spring.

I also found a number of different solitary bees enjoying the ox-eye daisies. I’ve been trying to learn a few more bees this year, but the solitary ones are quite hard. They were fun to photograph though!

I also spotted a ladybird larva, a female thick-legged flower beetle (the males have the thick back legs) and a pair of fairy-ring longhorn beetles.

The highlight yesterday was this small skipper, the only butterfly I saw in the meadow when I visited:

When I was there yesterday I had two great views of a fox cub, both sightings took me by surprise so there is no photo, but it first walked up the slope outside the meadow then a bit later came through the ox-eye daisies in the middle before disappearing through the fence. I’m assuming it was the same cub, but I suppose it could have been two different ones.

In the woodland there are lots of scorpion flies on the nettles and I also spotted a speckled bush cricket nymph. The dock are being devoured by the larvae of the green dock beetle, who have completely stripped the leaves from many. If you look closely you can see the larvae along with the occasional shiny green beetle.

I also had my first sightings of grass snake yesterday, although my first was actually this dead one on the path near the meadow, I’m assuming it was predated by a bird:

Dead grass snake

Having a dead grass snake as my first for this year, I decided to go down towards Ivy South hide and see if I could spot a live one in the dead hedge and was rewarded with two:

There were two there again this morning.

Going back to the reserve’s insect life, the planters outside the front of the centre are still continuing to attract large numbers of bees, hoverflies, horseflies, shield bugs and damselflies and this morning I had glimpses of a dark bush cricket and a ruby tailed wasp. Sadly no photos of either, I will have to keep looking every time I walk past…

The moth trap numbers have decreased again with the drop in temperature, but last week there was a very smart eyed hawk-moth in the trap and yesterday there was a spectacle moth:

You can guess how the spectacle moth gets his name…

Yesterday I noticed a jay spending quite a bit of time on the ground outside the back of the Centre and I watched it for some time sunning itself, stretching its wings, shaking and preening. It could have been dust bathing, but the picnic bench was in the way to see properly. After a while I managed to get a few photos:

It was joined by a great spotted woodpecker, who spent some time hopping around on the ground, possibly looking for ants, before flying up to a tree.

The woodpecker was sat calling from the bench a short while ago, so it must be a favoured spot.