Red Crests and German Wasps

Bird News: Ibsley Water - red crested pochard 5 (4 drakes, 1 duck), green sandpiper 1, dunlin 7 (but I only saw 5), pochard c30, yellow-legged gull 3+ (at dusk), Egyptian goose 3, peregrine 1.

Ivy Lake - Cetti's warbler 1 (calling), water rail 1 (calling).

The night was cool and the moth trap contained rather little as a result, but this little did include a December moth.

There was also another well furred species, a sprawler.

As it was the first Sunday of the month, nine volunteers came in today. Unfortunately my plans for the morning were scuppered by reports of an escaped pony, so off we went to try and reunite it with the other seven. For some reason a whole section of fence had been knocked over, I would guess that the animals had been spooked or chased and blundered into the fence in the dark. After a certain amount of discussion we arrived at plan and better still it worked. The fence was then repaired and we returned to the Centre. We now had only half an hour to do something so we sorted the tools in the store so that we could make enough space to stack the maize sweepings we were donated yesterday, it makes ideal winter feed for finches.

We also sorted some rubbish and came across a group of queen wasps gathered for hibernation, they appeared to all be German wasps.

The three dots on the front of the face along with four on the rear of the thorax identify the species. Although this does not seem to have been a really bumper year for wasps at Blashford there do seem to be a very large number of queens about now, perhaps the warm autumn has enabled more than usual to be produced.

The bird highlight of the day was the group of 5 red crested pochard that spent the day near the northern shore of the lake. The very bright, clear light made the drake's ginger heads and red bills shop up well even at the long range.

The Fire Starters

Another fine, if cold, Volunteer Thursday, today's tasks included clearing rhododendron. There is only one thicket of this plant on the reserve and we started to clear it last year and left it stacked. This was not laziness, the idea was to see if any of the original ground flora had survived before we burnt up the cuttings. Sadly it turns out the answer was no, which is a shame as this is one of the few areas of the reserve where the original ground surface remains. The massive size of the hazel stools testifies to a long standing woodland, but now without any ground cover plants, or it would seem surviving seed. We will still keep the fire sites small, just in case. I try to avoid having fires on reserves, the cut branches are habitat and a fire both sterilises the ground and produces a nutrient "hotspot". In this case the rhododendron is in huge quantity and is home to very little so the best way to restore the old woodland character is to get rid of it and after the fires to remove the ash. This was actually the first fire I have had on the reserve in four and a half years, the picture shows the fire in the early stage.
This was not the only task we did though, one of the signs at the entrance that had been bent by over exuberant driving on someone's part was replaced and two trailer loads of willow were added to the dead hedge around the main car park.

The cold wind following the overnight frost made looking out from the Tern hide less than pleasant first thing, in the quick look that I had I saw a green sandpiper and 3 black-tailed godwit. At the Ivy North hide the sheltered shallow water at the edge of the lake was frozen for the first time this winter, a calling Cetti's warbler was the only bird of note. Around the Centre feeders a brambling and a few lesser redpoll in the trees were about it.

Rather impressively, considering the overnight temperature, there were two moths in the trap, a December moth and a sprawler, unfortunately it was late in the day when I checked the trap so the picture of the sprawler below was taken in rather low light.