The Starry Eyed and the Very Small

It was raining hard when I arrived at Blashford this morning so other than noting the little ringed plover was still sitting I saw very little from the Tern hide.

I was not expecting much from the moth trap, it had, after all been windy and quite wet overnight, but I was pleasantly surprised. The larger moths included a double lobed and several slender brindle, but it was the micro moths that were the stars. Usually a windy night is poor for the smaller species, but not last night. There were a couple of nice Tortrix moths, the first picture is of Eudemis profundana, an attractively marked species with wonderful starry eyes.

The second Tortrix was also a fine one and this also seems to be the first record in the Blashford 10km square. A bit of a surprise as it is the willow tortrix and the caterpillars feed on willows, not trees in short supply hereabouts.

The Tortrix moths are 7 or 8mm long, but moths go much smaller than that and there were a couple of these minis, the first a common species, the apple fruit moth, although in an unusual form as it normally has large white patches on the wings, this one was more or less uni-coloured, but very fine glinting in the sunshine.

The last was even smaller, a real mini-moth called Phyllonorycter geniculella, like a good few really small species it has a very fine pattern, too small to see properly at life size.

Birds were rather few today, although the great white egret was reported again, this time on the pond behind the Lapwing hide, an old favourite haunt. The young common tern are all over the place now, I encountered six or so on the shore of Ibsley Water near the Lapwing hide when I was moving the ponies round to the eastern side of the lake. I moved the ponies so that I can mow the western shore without worrying about them eating anything they shouldn't.

Great White Return

I opened up the Ivy North hide just after 08:00 this morning, looked out and there was the great white egret, returned for an eighth season. It was ringed at Lac de Grande-Lieu, Loire-Atlantique, France on 4th May 2003 as nestling and first appeared at Blashford in the following August. It has returned every year since, usually staying until late February.

The Rarer Tiger

Although there were not many moths in the trap, there were a couple of new ones for the year. The finest was an immaculate garden tiger, this used to be a very common species all over the place, but now I very rarely see them. This is not because of any lack of food, as the caterpillars will eat all kinds of general weedy plants, so just why they have decline so much is a bit of a mystery. There was also a gothic, another species I see rather rarely, but the garden tiger makes the better picture.

A good part of the day was taken up with a meeting, so I did not get out until after lunch and that was taken rather late. The carp removing team were working on Mockbeggar Lake again today, although I did not see them until they were leaving, once again they had caught a fair load of fish, so there are evidently lots more to go yet.

When I went to check upon my Crassula experiment I saw a bee resting on a low marsh thistle, it was a leaf-cutter bee. It was about the size of a honey-bee but are in many ways quite unlike most other bees. As the name suggests they cut leaves, rose is a favourite, using the leaf pieces to make their brood cells. They also do not collect pollen in the usual pollen baskets on the hind legs, instead using long hairs on the underside of the abdomen.

Good and Bad

A day of two halves a fine, sunny start, warm and calm. From the Tern hide early on pretty much all the birds were on the southern part of the lake nearest to the hide. They were a fairly undistinguished mob of geese and gulls, but did include the duck pintail and as it came close to the hide I had another go at freestyle digi-scoping and the result was not at all bad.

The birds may have been close, but on the bank way up on the north-west of the lake I saw a group of four large fox cubs, they must have been some 700m away, so the picture is not that bad, all in all.

Just outside the Ivy South hide an adult great crested grebe was sitting close to one of the chicks and I had a go at digi-binning. Actually this was rather a poignant shot, possibly the last time that they were together like this. At the end of the day the adults were together and when one of the chicks came over it got chased and pecked hard several times, clearly it is time for them to fend for themselves.

I had occasion to do a more or less full circuit of the reserve this morning, on the way the full horror of the Crassula issue in the south-east corner of Blashford Lake was more than evident. Luckily it doe snot spread beyond the sheltered corner, but it would be good to have something I could do about it. There are new possibilities being trialed and so maybe next year there will be something to try.

Rather better was the realisation that a pair of lapwing had nested successfully on Rockford Lake, although the pair of Egyptian geese with three goslings there were less welcome.

Less Worried more Ragged

I was working way up at the top of the reserve today so had to go up the path between Mockbeggar Lake and Ibsley Water, passed the "Worrying willows", which don't look so worrying now. Their leaves all went brown and crispy about six weeks or so ago, to me they looked to have been mined by a leaf-mining insect, probably the larva of a small moth, although I could not find any. The leaves mostly fell off leaving the trees looking like winter, but now new leaves are growing. This is just the same response that oak trees will make to being defoliated by winter moths, they produces a summer crop of leaves and I reckon this supports my theory, rather than any disease alternative. The picture shows a few of the old crisped up leaves with the smaller new growth.

Also on my way north I also spotted a small group of very fine parasol mushroom, growing in a very dark spot under some trees, so even on a day as bright as today I had to use flash to get a picture.The objective of my trek was the north shore of Mockbeggar Lake, I was going to cut the ragwort, not ideal but the amount of it makes pulling it up impractical and cutting is fine so long as the ponies are not allowed to graze there afterwards, in truth this year here is so little grass that they would have trouble in there in any case. Before I started I took a shot of the size of the problem! Sadly this is not the last of it, but it was the worst.

I was also briefly at Blashford Lake this afternoon and saw a few of the young common tern there, they are all over the reserve now, another group are using the small shingle spit in front of the Lapwing hide and there are still several on Ivy Lake. I got an incomplete count of the moulting greylag on Ibsley Water, there were at least 264 and 7 Egyptian geese.

A Sunny Sunday

The day started badly, I opened the Tern hide and realised there was someone sitting on the western shore of Ibsley Water, resulting there being no birds on the western half of the lake. I went round and spoke him and he went off alright, although a bit oblivious.

The moth trap was fairly busy with a couple of migrants, in the shape of dark swordgrass and a rusty dotted pearl. There was also a peach blossom, one of the more attractive moth species.

There are a fair few grey species, but I think the miller is the smartest, it is also probably the palest.

The morning was taken up with the first Sunday of the month volunteers, we were pulling ragwort again, unfortunately it is that time of year and there is still a fair bit to go yet. Still we have now got the western shore of Ellingham Lake done, or at least the major part of it.

In the afternoon I had a dragonfly walk, twelve people came for a two hour walk. It was a little disappointing, something I put down to the poor weather throughout most of June reducing numbers. We saw lots of common blue damselflies a few blue-tailed damselflies and a single large red damselfly.

Dragonflies were few but included egg-laying emperor, black-tailed skimmer, brown hawker and most surprisingly an egg-laying downy emerald.

At the end of the day from the Tern hide I saw the roe buck again, he was feeding right out on the lake edge.

Birds are still rather few, or at least ones of interest. On Ibsley Water a little ringed plover is still sitting on eggs and the geese are moulting in swarms, well hundreds. The geese included at least 5 Egyptian geese and the black swan is still in the mute swan flock.

Burrowing and burying Blashford beasties...

It was already warm as I opened up and with no wind to speak of the lakes were all like mill ponds. Should be a few more dragonflies and butterflies around with more weather like this - having started spring well the recent wet weather has diminished their numbers somewhat. Indeed, locking up at the end of the day there was a clouded yellow butterfly in the meadow area north of Ivy North Hide. Although I wasn't close the distinctive orange of its wings in flight was quite obvious.

It's certainly good for the solitary wasps and bees that lay their eggs in burrows in the sandy soil around the reserve - I spent some time watching this "thread waisted wasp" excavating its burrow in some bare ground next to the main car park entrance while unlocking the gate this morning. It will paralyse some caterpillars with its sting, lay eggs on the poor creatures and then seal them in, fated to be consumed alive by the wasp larva when they hatch!

More familiar wasps are busy too - the "scritch-scratch" sound of common wasps chewing the wood that makes up the hides reverberates surprisingly loudly when your sitting in the hide that they are (very, very, very slowly!) destroying! This one was one of several working at demolishing Ivy North Hide. The chewed wood will be regurgitated back at the nest as wasp paper and added to the nest to increase it's larvae rearing capacity.

Good weather for reptiles too - having commented to someone while opening up that I hadn't seen a grass snake basking in the Ivy Silt Pond dead hedging for a while, guess what I saw on my way back up to the Woodland Hide? Yup, a grass snake. Unfortunately my comment that I hadn't seen an otter yet did not result in an otter... yet. I live in hope!

It was a good night for moths with 28 species, including some of my favourites; a poplar and an elephant hawk moth, buff tips and a burnished brass.

There was also a burying beetle in the trap - surprisingly fascinating animals. Apparently they can smell a dead body from some distance away and then having found it bury it by digging away the earth under the body so quickly that a bird can be buried within a couple of hours! A good tactic as once buried it is less likely to be discovered by other scavengers. The female then lays eggs in a little chamber next to the body which she feeds off until the larvae hatch when she promptly feeds them off the carcass too. How loving! They are often covered with mites which always makes them look a bit "unhealthy" somehow to me, but apparently even this is all planned - the mites don't feed on the beetle but simply hitch a ride and then prey on any blowfly larvae that hatch out in the carcass and so reduce the beetles competition for the food!