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Bugs For My Birthday

It was my birthday at the beginning of this week – not a big birthday, but a high enough number to make me realise that 30 is creeping closer. Although to be honest, I’m quite excited. They (the mysterious ‘They’!) say that your thirties are better than your twenties!

No matter my age, I was determined to have a nice nature-filled day. Originally I had planned to spend the day at RSPB Minsmere, but then Storm Katie arrived with howling winds and plenty of rain. Instead I had a relaxed morning at home, eating homemade cake (made my Matt) and drinking many cups of tea!

Once the weather had calmed itself down in the afternoon, a few friends and I visited a local nature reserve, Overhall Grove. It was a really sweet reserve, apparently both an Ancient Woodland and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and I look forward to returning there again over the coming seasons. Some of the friends accompanying me are also into nature, so we got stuck in with trying to find some good species. I’ve added a few more species to my pan-species list – including Cauliflower Fungus (Sparassis crispa), a new beetle species (Abax parallelepipedus) and Median Wasp (Dolichovespula media). Although I haven’t identified everything just yet, I am getting there gradually.

In addition to the new species, there were a number of 7-spot Ladybirds (Coccinella 7-punctata) about. I am always thrilled to see them as they are a sign that winter is over! Spring has started and summer is not too far away! There was even a butterfly – but it flew away from us and we couldn’t identify it. It was quite a funny sight, particularly for my friends that aren’t into nature – 4 adults running across the field after a butterfly! Bring on much more butterfly (and moth!) chasing this year.

There’s not so much else to add. I had hoped to hear a Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), which would’ve been my first of the year. But no luck, and I still haven’t heard one since. As I have said above, I look forward to returning there across the current seasons so I am sure I shall hear one there at some point!

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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

A bewildering start to the week, as I awoke in the east side of Dorset. Not by magic mind, I had travelled over on Sunday evening to visit a friend who has just started a Masters at Bournemouth University. Watch out Bournemouth! A lovely start to the week, due to seeing both my friend and also a Red Admiral first thing in the morning. As she (my friend, not the butterfly) went off to her first lectures of the term, I wondered how to pass the time for the rest of my day off. There was no question of course – at a nature reserve! But which one …

I settled upon Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Upton Heath Nature Reserve, as it had been over a year since I had visited, and I haven’t wandered around heathland much. Naturally I popped my head around the door at the Beacon Hill Urban Wildlife Centre to say hello, then headed out to see what I could discover.

Ah, heathland … still purple in autumn, with the bright splashes of other colours, plus the more subdued oranges and browns of drooping leaves and partially hidden fungi. The quick glimpse of a snake as it is startled by my footsteps and slides away into the gorse and heather. (I think it was a Smooth Snake (Coronella austriaca), but not 100% sure as I haven’t got much experience with snakes).

I was drawn to examine the stems of the plants as I could hear the singing of a cricket … it took me a while, but I finally spotted a male singing away. It was a Bog Bush-Cricket (Metrioptera brachyptera), a new species for me and my eighth Orthopteran. I soon found a couple more, including one with the green patterning.

I also saw a couple of different grasshoppers and a groundhopper, but I haven’t yet worked out which species they are. With the grasshoppers, I think one of them was a Meadow Grasshopper (Chorthippus parallelus), and the others are Field Grasshoppers (Chorthippus brunneus). The groundhopper is most likely a Common Groundhopper (Tetrix undulata).  I also took a video of the bush-crickets/grasshoppers singing, but haven’t uploaded it yet.

And then the fungi … no idea what they were, but they look rather cool!

A few days of working at Lorton, and I made sure to eat my lunch outdoors. I had allowed myself to get into the bad habit of eating at my computer, which is not at all healthy. I even sat in the sunshine by the pond for my lunch, which was just lovely – and still warm despite being the beginning of October! I enjoyed watching the dragonflies zooming about – and even managed to get a few shots of one in flight. A tad blurry, but the best I’ve ever got! This particular one was very curious and kept flying over to see what I was doing (or to work out what I was?).

At one point, I was rather startled as suddenly a bird appeared suddenly overhead and splashed into the pond. A duck! Rather surprisingly, this is actually the first duck I’ve seen at Lorton! I wonder if she was hiding from a bird of prey?

A few more photos from lunchtime outside, including a slow-worm (Anguis fragilis) who was really chilled out and let me take lots of photos!

A post-work weekend walk with Sean took us down to Two Mile Coppice as we peered into the undergrowth attempting to find fungi. However, it has been rather dry recently so we weren’t expecting much. We found a few scattered about though and Sean managed to identify a few (I got one too, wahey!).

End of the week, I was sleepy and wanting my bed. But I headed up to Portland to show Christina and Amy (two of the trainees) where the Portland Bird Observatory is. We saw a Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) in the PBO garden, plus the Little Owl (Athene noctua) in the quarry, ate plenty of blackberries, saw some tiny caterpillars and listened to Great Green Bush-Crickets (Tettigonia viridissima). All in all, a very nice Sunday evening.

As I finish writing up this post, I can hear the wind howling outside. Looks like our spell of good weather is over for now! I wonder if there will be any more decent periods of weather before I leave Dorset? There’s still so much to see and do!

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dorset Wildlife Trust’s positions, strategies or opinions (or any other organisation or individuals for that matter).

 

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A Merry Dance

I had so much fun leading a family activity on Tuesday. The theme was butterflies, so I got to train some young children (the oldest couldn’t have been more than 7) in the art of identifying common butterflies. By the end, they were getting quite confident at their Gatekeepers, Speckled Woods and Meadow Browns. Future lepidopterists/naturalists in the making! I also challenged the families to become citizen scientists and do a butterfly count.

Mid-week and I was down at Chesil. I was out of the office and away from my computer much of the time, so naturally that’s when the kestrel chicks at Lorton decided to begin fledging! At least two chicks hopped out, and when I returned to Lorton the following day, I managed to get a photo of one in the nearby trees. On Saturday, the last one was seen leaving the nestbox! Though you can still hear them nearby, and they have occasionally popped back in.

I was dashing back to Chesil again soon enough, as Dr Martin Warren (the CEO of Butterfly Conservation) has been doing a 100-mile long Big Butterfly Hike (#ButterflyHike on Twitter) along the Jurassic Coast to raise money for butterflies (particularly Wood White, Duke of Burgundy and High Brown Fritillary). He has asked if I was working there that day, which I wasn’t, but I went down after work to say hello. As well as generally chatting about butterflies, moths and the Jurassic Coast, I had to ask a couple of questions. It turns out that (a) he has seen all the British butterflies, and (b) his favourite is Red Admiral as it was the species that got him interested in butterflies as a child. You can read back on his hiking blog on the BC website.

Upon bidding farewell to Martin, I had a small ponder. It was early evening, sunny with plenty of hours left. Do I go to look for wildlife or head back and prepare dinner? Well, there’s no real choice and so I was soon at Tout Quarries Nature Reserve, wandering about with my camera. I wasn’t expecting to see much, the wind was a touch chilly. But I decided to try and look for suitable Grayling butterfly (Hipparchia semele) spots. I didn’t really know where they preferred, but I figured a slope in the sunshine and out of the wind would be a good start.

Now I should say here, that the Grayling is my “bogey” species. I.e. it’s one that I have gone looking for a number of times, and never found it! Hence the title of this blog post – this butterfly has led me on a merry dance! Imagine my joy (and yes, I exclaimed out loud) when I saw one. And then triple it, because there were actually three of them fluttering about! Then increase it again as one of them landed on me, and again when two begun their courtship (see video below). I felt like I was going to burst from the happiness.

To give you an idea of how brilliant the camouflage of this species is amongst the quarries, I took the photo below. Taken without a zoom, so that you can see exactly what I was seeing! Can you spot the Grayling butterfly?

On my first day off in a while, I gave myself the luxury of a lie-in before heading out to watch wildlife, only to be texted by a friend (at the reserve I was heading to) saying that he had achieved the hairstreak hat-trick there. Time to get up and out there! So I drove on up to Alners Gorse Butterfly Reserve, one that I had been meaning to visit for ages. I hear and see a lot about this reserve, not least on Twitter from the aforementioned Martin Warren. What better way to spend a sunny day off than exploring somewhere new and (hopefully) seeing some new butterfly species! And indeed, it was a stupendously fantastic afternoon!

I didn’t get the hairstreak hat-trick (brown, purple and white-letter), but I did see 17 species of butterfly in one afternoon, so that’s not bad if I do say so myself. Highlights were: Brown Hairstreak (Thecla betulae), Purple Hairstreak (Favonius quercus) – both new species to me!, Silver-washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia), Essex Skipper (Thymelicus lineola) and Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni, my first ones in ages!).

I just had to include lots of photo of the Brown Hairstreak (above) as it is such a gorgeous species, don’t you think? Although I am likely to say that about all butterflies/moths/wildlife in general! A few more butterfly photos from Alners Gorse:

At one point, I sat in the lush grass of a woodland ride, content to look about and allow myself to notice the wildlife around me. When sitting in such a way, you gradually become aware of creatures, their behaviours and sounds that you might otherwise pass by.

I watched as a male Silver-washed Fritillary patrolled his territory, dive-bombing and chasing off any intruders – be they the same species or not! He even chased off a dragonfly, and I believe he attempted to chase me off, flying in close to me. Luckily I’m made of stern stuff! Or something like that. A grasshopper crawled onto my backpack to investigate it. Nothing of interest apparently as it wandered off again. I could hear rustling in the bushes, most likely a blackbird foraging for food. They are surprisingly noisy on dry leaves. I was taken by surprise after 10 minutes of sitting there, when I suddenly realised that a dragonfly was resting motionless in a bush nearby – I just hadn’t spotted it until then!

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dorset Wildlife Trust’s positions, strategies or opinions (or any other organisation or individuals for that matter).

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