30 Days Wild – Day 25

As usual my day started with a check through my garden moth trap, the moth highlight was a lobster moth, which was not in the trap but on the house wall. As usual it was a male, I have always hoped to get a female one day so I could obtain some eggs and rear their extraordinary caterpillars, which I have never seen.

lobster moth (male)

Not all the insects attracted are moths and the other highlight was a cream-streaked ladybird.

cream-streaked ladybird

Mid-summer is typically a time when very little changes when it comes to the birds on the reserve, there are ever more youngsters around as the breeding season progresses, but generally until autumn passage gets going not much change in the species present. So I got a bit of a surprise when I went over to check to on the Tern Hide, as I approached I heard a Mediterranean gull calling, not too surprising as we get them quite regularly, although they did not breed this year, but then I could also hear a common gull. Common gull typically breed on moorland lakes and I have never seen one at Blashford in mid-summer, what was more this was an adult bird, a younger one would at least have been more likely.

common gull (adult)

One regular change at this time is the arrival of lot so geese to moult, the local geese are greylag, Canada and Egyptian. With so many in one place we do get occasional visitors, such as a Ross’s goose the other day, an escapee from somewhere, but without rings. This time I saw a single barnacle goose, another species that is establishing a feral population.

barnacle goose

The native range of both barnacle and Ross’s geese is the far Arctic north, at least barnacle gees do winter in the UK, but the Ross’s wintering areas are the Pacific coast of N. America. I had wondered if these two would stay to moult with the local geese, when they moult they are flightless for a period, which is why they choose to do so on the largest body of water they can find and why Ibsley Water attracts so many, however both seem to have been one day wonders.

Another fine evening meant another walk out onto the heath from home. There are still lots of silver-studded blue around and they were roosting in the tops of the heather as the sun went down.

silver-studded blue

I also found a tiny and very well marked micro moth called Aristotelia ericinella, which appropriately enough has caterpillars which eat heather.

Aristotelia ericinella

This summer has been very good for grasshoppers and on the heaths there are lots of field grasshopper and at the margins if there is more grass, or it is a little damper there will be meadow grasshopper too. I was a little surprised to find a woodland grasshopper out in the open heather though, as they usually utilise grassy rides within woodland.

woodland grasshopper

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A Good Day for Grasshoppers

It was my turn to be on site on Saturday again and after dealing with some office work I took advantage of the good weather to have a look for some insects. I used to get out occasionally to do a bit of wildlife recording like this, adding to the reserve species list, but somehow time to do this has ebbed away over the years. It was a real treat to spend a while just looking at things.

I was rewarded with a good selection of grasshoppers including lots of the tiny mottled grasshopper.

mottled grasshopper

I then had a real stroke of luck and found a new species for the reserve, perhaps not an entirely unexpected one, as it is common in the New Forest, but something I had looked for previously and failed to find. It was a very smart woodland grasshopper, one of my favourite species, with a black and red body and brilliant white palps, which unfortunately this picture does not show.

woodland grasshopper

The lichen heath used to have a string population of the bee wolf, a species of wasp that preys on bees as large as itself. As the heath has slowly vegetated there are fewer sandy patches, where they make their burrows, so now there are many fewer, but they are not all gone.

bee wolf lair

Other species I came across included another tumbling flower beetle, although I have yet to identify this one, there were several of them on this one tansy plant.

tumbling flower beetle on tansy

Apart from a good showing of insects the reserve was quiet, despite being warm there was a distinctly autumnal feel to things. I could find no little ringed plover around the shores of Ibsley Water, so perhaps they have started their trip south. The swift have certainly done so, I saw only two all day. The common tern have also almost all gone, just one family seems to remain.

I will end with one last insect, my first southern hawker of the year, not a great picture, despite getting quite close to it.

southern hawker