Blow-ins

Bird News: Ibsley Water - knot 2, ringed plover 1 ad, 1 juv, common sandpiper 1 juv, peregrine 1 ad. male, sand martin 2000+, swallow c10, house martin c100, arctic tern 1 juv and little gull 1 juv .

No pictures due to terrible wet, windy weather, but as a result lots of birds. The "count " of sand martin was a guestimate at best, there could have been 5000, but the single swift was good and possibly my last until April next year. The rough weather was also responsible for the arctic tern and little tern both, no doubt, storm-driven.

Let's hope for better weather tomorrow.

A Beauty Snapped

Although last night was not all that warm, the moth trap was quiet busy this morning, with one hundred and twenty three moths of seventeen species. They included three pine beauty and I finally got a picture of one, my last attempt failed when it flew off. There were also 4 frosted green, the greatest number so far this year. They are quite variable, some very dark with few frosty markings and others like the one below with bold silvery patterning.

There were three new species for the year, nut-tree tussock, early thorn and a very fine purple thorn, always difficult to picture as they hold their wings half open when at rest.

As it was the first Sunday of the month, it was volunteer day, seven people worked with me finishing off the rabbit proofing of the Millennium Meadow. Hopefully this will allow the vegetation to grow longer and make the area more suitable for insects and other mini-beasts making it good for education work. It will also produce another type of habitat, there is very little long herbage anywhere on the reserve because of the generally high rabbit population.

I only had a very brief time to look anywhere on the reserve today, a meeting took up much of the afternoon, but when I did it was evident that there are still good numbers of brambling around. Over on Ibsley Water the little ringed plover were displaying vigorously, both of the lapwing near the Tern hide are still sitting comfortably and the two pairs of redshank are still bickering around their territory boundary. This boundary is just in front of the Tern hide, giving a great opportunity to see the strutting displays and surprisingly violent outbursts of fighting.

The picture is of one of the males having a good shake after one such confrontation.

There was a good flock of sand martin over the lake all day and a first summer little gull, with very pink underparts, by the end of the day there was a second, also a first summer bird.

Signs of Nature

First look from the Tern hide this morning yielded 2 little gull, both adults in non-breeding plumage, probably yesterday's plus a new one, but then again, perhaps both new birds, who can say at this time of year with so much on the move.

Going through the woodland it was clear that lots of the brambling and redpoll had left, yesterday the trees were full of the sounds of these birds, today hardly one to be heard. I did see a few brambling, but no redpoll at all. The highlight was another slime mould encounter, this time both on the same alder log, I think different species, but perhaps just different stages of the same one. The first was most like a lump of expanding sealant foam, although rather whiter than they usually are.
The second was smaller and with a frogspawn-like surface, very like the one I posted the other day, but not as white, which may or may not be significant.

Continuing on from the "spring-clean" theme of yesterday I decided the various signs could do with a wash down, lots of them go green with algae and general dirt discolours them, so I was off with bucket and brush. The main entrance signs on the south side of Ellingham Drove were algae covered, but on the north side they were speckled with lichens.

Up close it was clear there was more than one species, the signs seem an unlikely surface for lichens, they are not made of wood, a very synthetic substrate, but one they seem to like.

I had not expected to encounter much interesting natural history cleaning the signs, well it doe snot seem very likely, but the lichen was not the end of it. On the main sign near the Tern hide I remembered there had been a small moth yesterday and it was still there. This might seem unlikely, but not quite as much as you might think. The moth was a female of a "micro" called Diumea fagella, it had not flown away because females of this species are flightless. It has wings, just too short to fly with, they actually look like the wings that have failed to inflate properly one emergence from the pupa. The effect is to make it look rather like a beetle or a bug, certainly not very moth-like.

The shore outside the Tern hide is very good for watching wader behaviours at present. At lunchtime there were displaying redshank, both males having territory disputes and a pair displaying and eventually mating. There are also five pairs of lapwing and one was engaged in elaborate nest scraping. The male often adopting a very tail-up pose with the tail fanned to display the coloured under-tail coverts.

Although the little gulls had gone there scaup form last weekend had reappeared, although way up at the north end of the lake. A Mediterranean gull was also reported and the little ringed plover was displaying over the water. When it landed it could be seen to have a ring on the right leg. Last year's male was ringed, it was seven years old then and apparently very close to being the oldest British ringed bird of this species. If this bird is the same one it would now easily break the record. Despite looking hard only a few letters and numbers could be made out, it seems it is the same bird but we cannot be sure. It would be good to get some pictures to confirm the ring number, a challenge for all those visitors who come armed with all that serious camera gear.

With all these nesting preliminaries I decided I had better get the stick rafts out on Ivy Lake so that is what I did in the afternoon. There are several pairs of great crested grebe on the lake so it will be interesting to see if any of them choose to use the rafts. These are the rafts based on a discarded lifebelt with a broken paving slab for ballast and topped with bundles of sticks. They have proved popular with nesting coot and grebe in the past and have the advantage of being able to cope with the sudden fall and rise in water level that can come with the lake being used for water supply.

With a maximum temperature of 18 it was not surprising that butterflies were a feature of the day. I saw at least 2 red admiral, several peacock and even more brimstone and comma and another single small white. I also caught one new moth for the year, a pine beauty, I would have posted a picture, but this is a species which often flies by day in sunshine and I had made the mistake of opening the trap in the sunshine and it flew away.

Another Quaker

Really misty to start with today, it cleared very strangely from over Ibsley Water as I watched. The wind was from the north but the mist on the eastern half of the lake suddenly cleared, but it stayed on the western half, very odd effect. I could see no sign of an black-necked grebe today and although I failed to see one there were 2 little ringed plover reported again.

As I went to open the Ivy South hide I heard a falcon calling, then a peregrine carrying prey came low over the silt pond pursued by a calling crow, not something I really expected to see there. Once the peregrine had gone I could hear another "kee, kee, kee" call, this time it was the lesser spotted woodpecker somewhere near the Ivy South hide. I could not find it at the hide but on my way back it was in the top of one of the alders beside the silt pond.

The moth trap was busy again, mostly with small and common Quakers, but also one new species for the year, a powdered Quaker, not perhaps the most spectacular of moths, but about the only picture I got today.
Fourteen volunteers came in today and we were working around the main car park, generally tidying up, beefing up the dead hedges, putting wood treatment on the back of the hide and fixing the map board.

At lunchtime I went to the Tern hide, leaving the Centre to the visiting school group. I was pleased I did as an adult little gull was flying about over the lake, the first of the year. It was still in winter plumage so did not have a black head, but the sooty underwings were striking, they are very elegant birds.