30 Days Wild – Day 15 – Half Way Day in the Garden (weather permitting)

Another day off today, I would have spent much of it in the garden but the rain had other ideas. However I did get out between the showers and even had some sun at times.

The moth trap was not busy being mostly filled with the really common species like heart and dart, Vine’s rustic, willow beauty and treble lines. One of the very common species for much of the season is shuttle-shaped dart, a moth that is so common as to be largely ignored and not helped by a rather drab colour scheme. However the detail of the wing patterning is exceedingly intricate.

shuttle-shaped dart

At this time of year I am always drawn to the mini-meadow, it attracts so much insect life and today was no exception. There were an array of bees, hoverflies, beetles and bugs, including the grass bug Notostira elongata, this one is a male, with a much stronger, more contrasting, pattern than the female

Notostira elongata male

I had not recorded this species in the garden before that I could remember. Another “First” was the hoverfly Scaeva selenitica, a species of pine woodland, so I expect it had wandered off the New Forest to visit some good nectar sources.

Scaeva selenitica (male)

You can tell that this one is a male as the eyes meet on the top of the head to give it the maximum possible all-round view of the world. This difference in eye size between the sexes is common amongst flies and is probably to help them, spot females.

Caught up again! Just fifteen more days to go.

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30 Days Wild – Day 2 – Hawks and Dragons

Once again a day off at home trying to work in the garden, but the sun was a bit much so productivity was rather low!

However the day started with a look through the moth trap, most of the moths would have been attracted before midnight when it was warmer, but as the minimum was 14 degrees some will have been active throughout. The pick of the catch were a couple of hawk-moths.

lime hawk-moth

Lime hawk caterpillars eat the leaves of lime trees, but also birch. Many hawk-moths are named after the larval foodplant, or at least one of them. The privet hawk-moth caterpillars eat privet, but also lilac and ash, it is our largest resident hawk-moth.

privet hawk-moth

Other moths caught were buff-tip, heart and dart, treble lines, flame shoulder, light brocade and fox moth.

The sun brought a few butterflies out, I saw a male common blue and a female brimstone in the garden during the early afternoon.

female brimstone nectaring on storksbill

The sun also encouraged a fair few hoverflies to feed on flowers in the borders.

Dronefly Eristalis horticola on fox and cubs

Eventually I gave up on the garden and went out for a walk in the New Forest, luckily I live close enough not to need to drive there. The recent wet weather has filled a lot of the small ponds and each one seemed to have a broad-bodied chaser or two.

broad-bodied chaser male

There were also good numbers of emperor and four-spotted chaser too.

The New Forest is one of the largest areas of semi-natural open space in Southern England, although a “Forest” it has a lot of wide open treeless areas. This is because a forest in this context is a place where deer were hunted rather than, as we tend to think today, a place dominated by trees. To pick up on the theme of Jo’s post of the other day and also highlight a particular problem within the Forest, I did see a couple of invasive alien species on my short walk. Both were attractive escapes from cultivation and wetland species.

Iris laevigata growing in a New Forest mire

In the background of this shot is another invasive, the white water-lily.

white water-lily

Finally………..

What’s in My Meadow Today?

Although it is perhaps not really a meadow plant I do have a few wild carrot plants in the meadow, like all umbellifers they are very attractive to insects, so I allow them in. The flowers are only just opening and actually look rather interesting just before the flowers open with the head enclosed caged.

wild carrot flower head just about to open.

Two days gone, just another 28 to go!

Row, row, row your boat

As yesterday was so gloriously sunny, our Young Naturalists enjoyed a day exploring the further reaches of the reserve and finishing off a fun task started back in January at our volunteer get together.

We began the day though with our usual rummage through the light trap, where the group were thrilled with a good selection to identify, their best so far this year. Our haul included the following: white ermine, cinnabar, treble lines, poplar hawkmoth, common marbled carpet, marbled brown, orange footman, common white wave, angle shades, light brocade, brown silver lines, common pug and marbled minor. Here are a few photographs taken by Young Naturalist Talia Felstead:

Common marbled carpet

Cinnabar

Poplar hawkmoth

Light brocade

Marbled brown

White ermine

Angle shades

It was then time to undertake a practical task with a difference, the lining of the coracle made earlier in the year at our volunteer get together. Coracles are small oval shaped boats traditionally used in Wales, but also in parts of western and south western England, Ireland and Scotland. Designed for use in swiftly flowing streams they have been in use for centuries, primarily by fishermen.

The structure is usually made up of a framework of split and interwoven willow rods, a material which we have plenty of here on the reserve, so it seemed silly not to take the plunge (literally) and attempt our own Blashford coracle.

Our willow framework and wooden seat

The group were up for the challenge of finishing it off, cutting a slightly less traditional liner out of some left over pond liner from Testwood Lakes – thank you Testwood! This outer layer would have originally been an animal skin, covered with a thin layer of tar to make it fully waterproof. Today this has been replaced with tarred calico or canvas, with the Blashford way being whatever we could lay our hands on. So pond liner it was!

We carefully cut the liner to size, before Bella came up with the idea of looping cord through slits cut in the liner and weaving it in and out of the liner and willow rods. It was then time to take it down to the river for the all important will it float test…funnily enough no one else was brave or silly enough to give it a go:

Looking slightly dubious

Getting ready…

 

Excitingly, it floats rather well, I think to the disbelief of some of the Young Naturalists, and possibly volunteers! So now we can get cracking with the rest of the flotilla…with plans already in place for a coracle themed Wild Day Out for the older children in the summer holidays.

After lunch we headed over to the northern side of the reserve on a wildlife hunt. We quickly spotted large numbers of Common blue damselflies sunning themselves on the gravel, moving a little further ahead as we approached them:

Common blue damselfly

We headed up to Lapwing hide where on entering we were greeted with this view of a Canada goose with seven goslings:

Canada goose with goslings

We stayed for a while, spotting a couple of herons, a little grebe and watching a Common tern fishing over Ibsley Water before perching on one of the posts:

Common tern

On our way back, Edie somehow spotted this Elephant hawkmoth in the long grass to the right of the path:

Elephant hawkmoth

Finally, our last wildlife spot was this Beautiful demoiselle, which perched beautifully for a photo:

Beautiful demoiselle

Thanks Talia for taking the photos!

Our Young Naturalists group is kindly funded by the Cameron Bespolka Trust.

Sparrows!

There is not much bird news as such at this time of year, migration is as near to being over as it ever is, there is always something on the move, the last of the high Arctic waders are still going north and the first returnees will only be days away. Of course I am wrong to say there is no news, the nesting season progresses, this morning I saw that the oystercatchers on the west shore of Ibsley water still have one chick growing well. Meanwhile on Ivy Lake the common terns are all sitting tight on there clutches, hopefully they will have another successful year. In fact when I opened the Ivy South hide I did make a very notable bird observation, there were 2 house sparrows on the trees in the water below the hide. Both were females and they were collecting newly emerged damselflies, they do this to feed their nestlings, but must have come some distance. These were only the second house sparrows I have seen on the reserve proper, they do breed around the boundary but records from the central area are very rare indeed.

house sparrow female

Not a great picture I know but I thought worth it for such a notable record.

The moth trap was busy again after another warm night, a good range of species but nothing rare. One of the commonest species at present is the treble lines, most of them look very similar to one another, but just one or two each year look so different that you would almost think they were another species. The picture shows a typical one on the right and the unusual dark form on the left.

treble lines, typical form on right, dark form on left.

The day started very cloudy but slowly brightened and was another good insect day in the end. As the sun came out I realised a lot of insects were basking on the nettles and brambles near the Centre, one of the most frequent was scorpion flies and they all seemed to be males. These are not flies or scorpions, they have four wings and get their name from the curved tip to the abdomen, it is not a sting however but the male’s sexual apparatus. There are three species in Britain and although the wing pattern looks distinctive to be certain of the species the genitalia need to be examined. This is probably Panorpa communis, the commonest species generally.

male scorpion fly, probably Panorpa communis

As the day warmed I was putting the moth trap in the shade when Jim came out of the Centre tp say a large grass snake had just swam past the pondcam, we looked on the log beside the pond and sure enough there wa sa large female grass snake. It quickly became apparent that it was not the one of the camera though, it was still in the pond and then started to skirt the edge in hunting mode.

grass snake hunting around the pond edge

It was Volunteer Thursday once again and fourteen people turned out despite having to walk over from the main car park due to the repairs to the entrance track. We did several tasks, path trimming, always vital at this time of the year, weeding brambles from the education meadows and laying a new cable from the Education Centre. During the afternoon the track repair really got going and by the end of the day most of the worst pot-holes were filled.

I am next in on Sunday when, if the forecast is to be believed it will be cold and wet, catching up on office work may become an attractive option.