30 Days Wild – Day 22

Away on a trip up to Salisbury Plain, specifically Fyfield Down, near Avebury. Fyfield is a National Nature Reserve and it is where the people at Avebury got the stones from, remarkable dry valleys filled with a dense scatter of large rocks.

Fyfield Down NNR

The main wildlife interest is in the lichens on the rocks, but on the reserve and the walk up from Avebury there were lots of insects. Butterflies were unremarkable but I did see two painted lady, possibly a sign of a mass migrant arrival underway.

Mother Shipton

The picture shows a moth rather than a butterfly, it is a Mother Shipton, the pattern on    the upper-wing supposedly looking like the silhouette of a witch of that name, with eye, long nose, mouth and long pointed chin.

Most of the insects I saw were flies, nectaring, especially on hogweed. One was a species that was new to me, a fly with densely patterned wings called Platystoma seminationis.

Platystoma seminationis

Quite a few flies have patterned wings and use them to display by waving them around to attract a mate. Picture-winged flies are well known for doing this and I came across two males having a vigorous struggle for the right to a display point at the top of a musk thistle, possibly a mistake as the species breeds in the seedheads of knapweed.

Urophora jaceana, two males fighting

There weer also lots of dung-flies.

dung fly

It was not all flies though, there were also lots of garden chafer beetles, a species I don’t see very often.

garden chafer

 

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30 Days Wild – Day 9 – Fair Play

I was at Roydon’s Wood Fair for most of the day, so I was working, but it was a very enjoyable day and there were lots of people visiting. As usual there were lots of stalls with a general New Forest/Woodland craft theme, so anything from willow weaving to venison rolls via woodcarving and local honey and cider.

Setting up at the Wood Fair

One of the activities I did was a guided walk, actually just a short stroll into one of the meadows beside the site. There were meadow brown and large skipper butterflies and a Mother Shipton moth, lots of common spotted orchid and, an all too brief flyover sighting of two hawfinch. 

Roydon is a remarkable site, a complex mix of unimproved, flower-rich, damp meadows, heathland and woodland. It also has the virtues we would seek in all conservation sites, large size and linkage to a wildlife-rich wider countryside in the New Forest.

An oak tree, undoubtedly on its way out, but still wonderful wildlife habitat with deadwood and dense ivy cover.

I also did a session looking at the moth trap catches, despite the catches being rather low there were still crowd pleasers like privet hawk-moth, eyed hawk-moth and buff-tip. I also spotted a hobby flying over as we were looking at them.

It seemed that well over a thousand people came along to the event, in just about perfect weather, pleasantly warm, but not too hot, with a breeze but not too windy. Given the recent weather we have had and what is predicted for the coming week, this was a very good day to have chosen.

30 Days Wild – Day 15

Up hideously early and out to do a breeding bird survey, luckily the weather was fine, although I could have done without it having rained overnight as the trees were dripping and the tall grass very wet. Still it was calm and sunny and, for mid June, a good few birds were singing. As well as the birds I saw my first meadow brown of the year, actually lots of them and also a few common spotted and southern marsh orchid and a single Mother Shipton moth. 

common spotted orchid, or possibly a hybrid as the leaves were unspotted. (I have just spotted the 7-spot ladybird in this shot!)

I arrived at Blashford by ten o’clock and had a quick check of the moth trap, rather few moths but very fresh individuals of small angle shades and lime hawkmoth. However it was the trays of creatures laid out for the school pond-dipping session that caught my eye, in particular one containing a water stick insect nymph.

water stick insect nymph

The sun came out briefly at lunchtime so I went out for a break from the desk and nectaring on a hemlock water-dropwort plant was a very fresh red admiral.

red admiral

There are quite good numbers of migrant insects about just now, there have been modest arrivals of red admiral and painted lady butterflies and huge numbers of the tiny diamond-back moth, so many that they have made the national news and it is not often a micro-moth does that! There are also lots of the marmalade hoverfly and silver Y moths, if you have flowers out in the garden you will almost certainly be able to see them nectaring at dusk.

My afternoon was spent in a meeting, but as it was still sunny when I got home I took a look in the garden and found this swollen-thighed beetle (Oedemera nobilis) feeding on an ox-eye daisy in our mini-meadow.

male swollen-thighed beetle on ox-eye daisy