Cuckoo, Roe Deer and Great Tits!

Once again our post box is home to a brood of Great Tits. As I pulled up to the front gate this morning I noticed a Great Tit dart down by the post box on the front gate, its beak stuffed full of food. After opening up the centre I went back to see and sure enough the Great Tits are busy coming and going with food, sneaking through a hole in the back of the post box.

Another supprise was instore when I went to open up the Ivy North Hide and I was treated to stunning views of two Roe Deer feeding by the side of Ivy Lake. Ofcourse I had forgotten the camera, so I took the gamble and raced back to get it. Luckily they were quite settled and were still there grazing when I returned.



As I carried on to open up the Woodland hide, I heard a Cuckoo calling close by the the woodlands. The Mute Swan family are still on the silt pond between the Woodland hide and Ivy South hide. They were out on the water first thing with the 3 remaining cygnets, one of which was hitching a ride on mum!

Careless Swans and Ill Thought Action

On Friday evening there were five cygnets with the Mute Swan pair on the Ivy Lake silt pond, by Saturday morning they were down to only three. The picture shows them on the path next to the Ivy South hide and I suspect this habit of sitting out on the path may have been their downfall as they can be easily surprised by a predator such as a fox. The defense of the cygnets is not helped by the cob spending a lot of time away on the main lake chasing Canada Geese.
In general Saturday was pretty dismal and birds were few, the only sign of passage was a single Bar-tailed Godwit on the western shore of Ibsley Water and even this might have been the same bird recorded last week. There was also a Common Sandpiper and a drake Pochard. The poor weather did produce a great display of aerial feeders, about 350 Swallows and a mix of martins and at times 300+ Swifts.

Scare of the day was caused by someone walking out onto the shingle in front of the Tern hide, I had just got to the Lapwing hide at the time and had to run all the way there whilst trying to contact the police on an iffy mobile connection. The concern is that this area has nesting Little Ringed Plovers and these are specially protected birds, it is an offense to disturb them when they are nesting added to which they are still a potential target for egg collectors - yes there are still some out there! It turned out that he had gone out because he was worried about an injured Lesser Black-backed Gull. He did not retrieve the gull so this was not helped in any way and would have put any eggs of plovers at risk of both being trod on by him or chilling, as it was raining at the time.

What it does highlight is that even the most well meaning and moderately informed, he was a birder, can put birds at risk. He was not meaning any harm but this would not have reduced the effect of what was done. Over the last four years I know we have lost several nests of Lapwing, Little Ringed Plover and Common Tern chicks from the reserve and other nearby lakes as a result of non-malicious action by people intent on doing one thing without considering the unintended consequences of their actions. With long-lived species that rarely produce young a slight increase in nest failure can make a large difference over time to population size. We are seeing this most obviously with the populations of our coastal waders and terns, now so squeezed to few sites that they are very vulnerable to casual losses and all are in big trouble. It seems not unlikely that Little Terns will disappear from the south coast within a few decades and species such as Ringed Plover, Redshank and Oystercatcher are under great threat.

Let's hope the weather starts to warm up next week, I have had enough of this reprise of winter.

Swans large and small, big sticks and tiny Pike

The Mute Swan family was out and about this morning allowing me to get a group shot. Later they returned to the nest and were being brooded in the dry.
In the morning Wessex Water started the first phase of work on a trial of different methods to control blue-green algae. As part of this some sampling of aquatic beasties was being done, the chosen site was Ellingham Pound, seemingly rather unpromising with little visible vegetation, but there was a lots of life. As well as hundreds of damselfly larvae a couple there was also a Water Stick Insect, an insect which at about 6cm was a good bit longer than a tiny Pike also caught.

Below one of the two "pikelets" netted in Ellingham Pound.

I saw my first Common Blue Damselfly of the year today, a newly emerged male. Birds were few and pretty much as expected, 2 or perhaps 3 Common Sandpiper on Ibsley Water and also a Dunlin, or at least I think it was, I just caught the tail end of it going round the long spit to the east of Tern hide. There are still 5 Wigeon and today also a drake Shoveler also on Ibsley Water and whilst on ducks the "Mallard up a tree" is still sitting, it seems like she has been up there for an age, surely they will hatch soon.

Rain tomorrow, sounds bad but perhaps a change in the weather will bring in some different birds, we will see.

A Leopard, a Saint and Lordly Trappings

Thursday once again so the volunteers were active on the reserve again today, clearing small trees from the heath, installing seating for the education area, making homes for House Martins, resiting a water butt, pulling nettles, fixing a barrier and putting in a ramp to the store - and they were only in for two hours! I did take a couple of pictures but, as is often the case, it looks like not much is going on and this is so far from the truth I decided it would be a misrepresentation to include them.

In moving the logs for the seating I uncovered a rather fine Leopard Slug, this was actually quite a small one, they can get to about 15-20cm long, but it is very well marked.
The moth trap would have been good if it had not been for a raid by a Great Tit which had reduced some species to just a few wings, including the year's first Poplar Hawk-moth. Another first was the pictured White Ermine moth, this is one of the "tiger moths" and has a hairy caterpillar of the woolly-bear type.

One of the other moths was this tiny Tortrix moth Cochylis atricapitana this is one of a lot of similar small moths that are camouflaged to look like a bird-dropping, on the basis that this is one thing a bird is unlikely to try and eat.

Other firsts in the trap were several Common Cockchafers and a St Mark's Fly, the males of these flies fly slowly about with legs dangling searching for a mate. Their huge (and hairy) eyes no doubt help them in this search and it is obviously fairly successful as they are always an abundant species at this time of the year.

Birds today were rather few, or at least birds of note were. A Common Sandpiper on Ibsley Water and the first taking to the water of the five Mute Swan cygnets hatched yesterday on the pond by the path to the Ivy South hide being the highlights.

The Stuff of Life and Death (and Ducklings)

I opened up the Tern hide to be greeted by a very chilly north wind blowing straight into the hide. The lake was swarming with Swallows, perhaps 400 or more and about 100 House Martins with 300 or more Swifts a little higher in the sky. There was also a brood of Mallard, eight ducklings in all and pictured below. A close look will show that one of the brood, the nearest to the duck, is larger than the rest, in fact it is clearly not from this brood at all. It has got adopted, probably having got lost. Normally Mallard ducks will chase off ducklings from other broods, but there can be advantages to adding to your brood.
It has been found that for some species "stealing" ducklings is common and seems to be advantageous, although the reasons for this are not entirely obvious. The duck's own offspring might be hidden in the crowd if a predator strikes, but then a larger brood might attract more attention, so the gain is perhaps debatable.

Various warblers were in good voice as I opened up the other hides. At Ivy North a Garden Warbler was singing strongly by the entrance and a pair of Reed Warblers were carefully picking off newly hatched damselflies from the reed stems. Towards the Ivy South hide a singing Sedge Warbler was a bonus and both Blackcap and another Garden Warbler singing and showing well.

The Common Terns were seem to be taking over the rafts now, six pairs were present and the one Black-headed Gull trying to tough if out was being given a very hard time.

I was off to the main office at Beechcroft in the afternoon for a meeting about the Wader and Brent Goose project, something I tried for years to get started and that once it did I promptly left almost all contact with waders and Brent behind. In essence it is attempting to identify what are the resource these birds use at present and how to maintain the necessary mix of habitat so that they might survive into an increasingly uncertain future. It is aimed at achieving a long-term future for species at real risk and for which this part of the world is truly globally important. We have very little wildlife that is in this category but our shorebirds are firmly there and changes going on along the coast mean that they are also just about our most threatened wildlife. This is real life an death stuff, what nature conservation is all about, it is not that we cannot do something to help these species survive it is just trying to get the right actions taken in a timely fashion. If we can understand what they need and there is the will, we can do things to help these species survive.

Blashford is a great project, but it is in a different category altogether. Blashford is about making the most of a site to provide the most for wildlife and people. Any environment can be managed to enhance the potential for wildlife and this is what we have aimed for at Blashford. On the coast we are going to lose some of our most wildlife rich habitats. If we are not to be one of the last generations to see the marvel of a mass of whirling waders we will need to apply the same potential maximising approach to the coast as we have been given the chance to do at Blashford.

A good start to the day...

...despite a very cold fresh wind and a distinct lack of the promised sunshine so far! Ibsley Water was looking cold, grey and not a little rough from Tern Hide this morning. The Little ringed plover were not in evidence at the time, but a nice pair of Redshank were patrolling the waters edge. More notable were the large numbers of Swifts that were literally screaming all over and around the lake. Yesterday evening about 80 were flying high above the car park while I locked up, but today significantly more have arrived and thanks to the weather were feeding uncharacteristically low, just above the surface of the water. I'm no expert at bird counts, particularly when they are swirling around as much as these swifts were but I guess that there must have been about 400 birds all told.

Greenfinch and Siskin were dominating the bird feeders at the Woodland Hide and Centre, the Coot that were sitting in the reed bed at Ivy North Hide have hatched 5 "cootlets" and the Great Crested Grebe were still busy building.

Meanwhile the old (grumpy!) Ivy Lake cob swan was up to his usual trick of seeing off "intruding" Greylag and Canada Geese from the far side of Ivy Lake about as far away as it is possible to be from the pen sitting in the reeds in Ivy Silt pond - surrounded by half-a-dozen Canada's! Many years, despite his aggressive nature, these swans fail to fledge young and it is no doubt because he is busy defending his "patch" and not the nest site!

A lovely Grey Wagtail was flitting between the branches of the felled alder over the water in front of Ivy South Hide, with a very large beak full of flies, presumably alder flies as they have been in evidence for the last few days, before flying south west into the Willow Carr where perhaps there is a nest?

The badgers continue to surprise us with the extent of their nocturnal excavations which seem to be spreading and increasing on a weekly, if not nightly basis. The cubs should be venturing above ground for the first time any time now. Badgers are well known for their fastidious attention to cleanliness - removing and replacing their bedding material and "pooing" in latrines (that also serve as territorial boundaries), but generally the Blashford badgers do not seem to pay such close attention to this toileting behaviour and their latrines are few and far between, so I was surprised to find one near the seasonal ponds adjacent to Ivy North Hide.

Bike, bloom and bird update

Yesterday turned out better weather wise than I had expected and found the Bluebells finally coming into flower along the Dockens Water and by the Woodland Hide. Butterflies were still flying in the sunny spells and I was pleased to find the tiny orange egg of the Orangetip butterfly on the underside of a "Hedge-garlic" leaf (one of those flowers with a multitude of names - you may know it better as "Jack-by-the-hedge" or "Garlic Mustard"). Typically I found it on the first plant I checked, and didn't find another, despite looking at several more plants. The resultant green caterpillar will be very well camouflaged being of very simmilar colour and also shaped very much like the seed pods that the flowers will evcentually form. It is rare to find more than one egg on a plant as the caterpillars are cannibalistic and therefore the eggs are laid quite sepparately! Another favoured foodplant of the caterpillars is "Cuckooflower", so called as its flowering is heralded by the arrival of Cuckoo - or vice versa (another of those plants; it is also known as Lady's Smock). Whatever you call it, it is now flowering well in the damper wetland margins of the reserve. At the end of the day I was even treated to a Cuckoo calling as I locked up the gate!

Staying with birds, I am not aware of anything of particular note yesterday, but Great Crested Grebes were busy nest building in a patch of open water amongst the reeds beneath Ivy North Hide and the Great Spotted Woodpeckers remain active around their chosen nest site outside the woodland hide - at the moment the "webcam" at mms://wms.carnyxlive.co.uk/blashford is switching between "Woodpecker Cam" during the day and "Pond Cam" during the evening and at night. Common tern are still holding out for control of the rafts on Ivy Lake and could also be seen much closer to, perching on the posts outsied Tern Hide on Ibsley Water.

Today, having battled my way through the New Forest Race triathlon competitors and their spectators that were clogging Ellingham Drove and any available hard standing they could find, I was able to open up the reserve and gently nudge at least some of the spectators to one side of the access into the reserve carparks in order that todays visitors might enter. A quick look out of Tern Hide was rewarded with 3 Dunlin, a Common sandpiper and Little ringed plover and displaying Lapwing doing their best to try out for the best weird robot noises in the latest Dr. Who series. Great crested grebe and Coot were all busy nest building on Ivy Lake, there were some very smart looking Siskin feeding on the niger at the Woodland Hide and it has been raining lots!

Fortunately the rain held off long enough for us to plant up some of the bare earth around the new pond dipping platform with plants that had been saved from their before the work was done during the winter - while at the same time freeing up space in one of the "planters" at the front of the building for some potatoes! This morning the Sunday volunteer team also started work on sprucing up the overly-wild (read neglected!) wild area next to the new shelter at the back of the building, with the aim of creating a more aesthetically pleasing "model" wildlife garden area! So far we have started a "dead-hedge" around the back of the site (serving both as a natural boundary as well as habitat for invertebrates and small mammals) and a retaining log "bund" at the front which will be filled with earth to level out part of the slope and planted up in due course - it is a work in progress, but should provide an attractive backdrop to the shelter as well as being attractive to a range of wildlife when it is complete - the trick will be in finding the right mix of plants that will provide a food source to insects and birds without being browsed back too vigorously by the mammals, namely rabbits and roe deer!