Diamonds and Rings

Opened up the Tern hide to be greeted by a calling Little Ringed Plover just in front of the hide in the sunshine. This is the male that has replaced the ringed bird that was nesting there until the nest was predated. The two males have been competing for the space for some days and it seem the newcomer has triumphed, although it might be a hollow victory as he does not seem to have a mate. The only other bird of note was a single Arctic Tern flying about with the Common Terns.
The moth trap contained little that was new apart from the first migrants of the year in the form of 2 Diamond-backed Moths, these tiny moths are often one of the most abundant migrants, perhaps this is going to be a year for migrants, last year was one of the poorest for many years.

At the Ivy South hide I finally got a good look at the female Lesser Black-backed Gull, I could see it had a blue colour-ring but had not been able to read it. It turns out to have AP written on it in white, I think this is the same bird that was there in both of the last two years, but I will have to check the records to confirm this.

Woodpeckercam came back online today, I will get some captured images, but for now the picture below gives something of the flavour of what can been seen on the screen in the lobby of the Education Centre.

A Moth with an Identity Crisis?

The last couple of days have been pretty quiet for birds with almost no sign of any arrivals or birds passing through. There has been a good bit of activity though with the arrival of Compostcam and Woodpeckercam to add to Pondcam. I will post more about these later, hopefully with a link. For those that copied the address when I posted it earlier I have to apologise as it now seems to have failed following a power cut today.

Although quiet for birds another warm night was good for moths, highlights included a Herald, another species which has over-wintered as an adult, but this one looked amazingly fresh considering it is probably at least seven months old. The jagged outline of the wings no doubt helps to hide their outline from being recognised by predators during the long hibernation period. Another moth in the trap was a Small Engrailed, this moth is very like the Engrailed, in fact so alike are they that there are no really certain character for telling them apart and it has been suggested that they are not different species at all. You might ask why they could be thought separate species and the answer is in the time they fly. Engrailed moths have two broods, one in late winter and one in late summer, the Small Engrailed flies in mid-late spring, between the two broods of the Engrailed. It has been suggested that the one is just a single brooded form of the other, but if they stick to their timing the two populations will never meet to inter-breed so would be reproductively isolated giving them a fair claim to species status. The picture shows the moth to be not the most exciting to look at but a source of interest and perhaps even controversy for all that.

Having said there were few birds a White Wagtail on the shore of Ibsley water at lunchtime with a group of, presumably migrant, Pied Wagtails was of note. The Common Terns are competing for raft space with Canada Goose, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Black-headed Gull, hopefully they will arrive in force soon and see off these competitors before they get settled. On Ibsley Water the 5 Wigeon remain and are possibly here to stay now, as I locked up there was a fine drake Goosander, no doubt one of the birds that have taken up residence in the Avon Valley in recent years.

Being Thursday, it was volunteer day and twelve people turned out to fill potholes, tidy up the yard and do a variety of other tasks. As usual loads of work got done and the rain held off as it almost always seems to.

New Openings and Moth Mysteries

The Blashford Badgers are very active at the moment with lots of new holes being opened up and old ones cleaned out, hopefully this mean there are lots of cubs and perhaps they will get easier to watch. the hole in the picture is a new one opened to the north of the main sett and not connected directly to it, the silty ground makes for easy digging.
The moth trap contained a few more species new for the year. A Pale Prominent was newly hatched but the two others were actually species that hibernate as adults and the moths would be something like seven months old now. The species were a Pale Pinion looking very fresh and pictured below, a local species of woodland and a Dotted Chestnut, which flew away before I could get a picture. This last is quite scarce and the larvae have rarely been found in the wild, those that have been found often seem to favour apple trees and possibly have an association with ants but this is still to be confirmed. Who says there is nothing left to discover?

Birds today were rather unremarkable, or at least much as yesterday. The most interesting exception was a Yellow Wagtail which flew over the Centre when we were eating lunch, sadly a record that does not count towards our BTO Business Challenge total. A singing Sedge Warbler at the Ivy North hide was certainly of interest as they are usually only in the reeds near the Lapwing hide.

Micro-miners and Chocolate-tip

Another warm day following on from another warm night and so one that was good for moths. As well as the usual more recognisable species there was one tiny moth that I did not recognise, actually I can't recognise many of these tiny ones. This one looked quite distinctive so I took a picture in the hope of being able to identify it later. Skipping quickly to later I can report that it seems, if I have it right, to be a species without a common name called Ericrania chrysolepidella the larvae of which feed by mining the leaves of Hazel, it is apparently quite scarce in Hampshire, but it also says "possibly overlooked", given how small it is this comes as no surprise at all.
Some of the other of last night moths included two rather fine Purple Thorn, these rest with their slightly curled wings slightly open.

There were also Great Prominent and another Chocolate-tip, this time I got a picture, yesterday's one flew off before I could snap it.

On Ibsley Water today, two summer plumage Dunlin were looking very fine as I opened up the Tern hide, although they were just about the only sign of any "new" birds. The Little Ringed Plovers were displaying noisily, a second male seems to be trying to muscle into the territory by the hide and it is leading to a lot of competitive flying and calling. A quick call into the hide to eat lunch gave me a chance to get a picture of one of 2 Common Sandpiper, for a change it was standing still making focusing a little easier.

Probably the most notable sighting was of at least 345 Herring Gulls, almost all first summers, they flew in from the south in the late morning, when I noticed them flying over the Centre.

In the afternoon I went over to Shaves Green to look at some proposed drainage works, although unplanned the wet and I mean really wet, woodland that has grown up there is a rather fine bit of habitat. There were Speckled Wood, Orange Tip and Green-veined White butterflies flying about, all species that hatch out in spring as well as several of the hibernating species such as Comma and Peacock. Hopefully the work will achieve the improvements needed without losing the interesting habitat that has developed.

Songs, Pongs and Fronds

Twenty five of us met at 5 o'clock this morning for a Dawn Chorus walk, conditions were almost perfect with no wind and quite warm thanks to the cloud. The first bird, as it almost always is, was Robin, followed by Blackbird and Song Thrush, we also heard a late Tawny Owl and gradually all the other birds joined in. Blackcap and Chiffchaff, Great and Blue Tits, Wren and eventually the whole woodland was full of song. The peak passed quickly though as the light increases and many of the birds started to feed, only then did the Chaffinch start to sing, like all finches they are late to rise and early to roost.

Following on from the early start I decided to see how many bird species I could find on the reserve in the course of the day, of which more later. The warm night meant it was the best so far for moths with by far the greatest number of species so far and many new for the year such as Chocolate-tip, Waved Umber and Pebble Prominent. There were also several Frosted Green, including the unusually pale one in the picture. There were also several, very smelly, Burying Beetles.
The Pebble Prominent is very distinctive with the oval "pebble" mark on the ends of the wings.

Back to the bird-listing, in the end I finished with 76 species, not bad, but it could have been much better if there had been a few more migrants about. I did see 10 Whimbrel, including one on the shore of Ibsley Water right in front of the Tern hide, also my first Hobby of the year, over 100 Swifts, 3 Cuckoo, several Garden Warblers and at least 15 Common Terns including up to eight on the rafts on Ivy Lake. I reckon 70 is a good "par" score for the day at Blashford, so today's list was not bad, but over 80 is quite possible on a day with migrants passing through. The Hobby was actually pointed out to me by a Pochard, itself quite a good bird to see at this time of year, I was at the Goosander hide and saw the Pochard when it suddenly started looking up, usually a sign of a bird of prey overhead, so I looked up also and there was the Hobby.

The Goosander hide is also home to the Sand Martins and they were excavating vigorously and then had to preen the sand off their feathers allowing me to get the shot below.

One thing that did flow from my listing was that I walked right round all of the paths for the first time in ages. The various planted cherry trees are in full bloom now and quite spectacular in their way and popular with bees and hoverflies.

The blue carpets of Ground Ivy flowers also attract lots of bees and some flies, but mainly those with long tongues to reach deep into the flowers, one such is the hoverfly Rhingia campestris which was another first for the year.

Around the Woodland hide to Ivy North hide path the Badgers are very active just now with several new holes being dug out. Also in that area I took this picture of what looks like some fantastical grasping paw emerging from the earth (well I thought so anyway), it is, of course, a fern with the fronds just starting to unfurl.

Nesting update: The Mute Swans sit on by the path to the Ivy South hide, but the Song Thrush there has failed, whatever took the eggs ate them in the nest as there were tiny fragments of shell left behind. The Mallard up a tree is still sitting and nearby a Mistle Thrush is feeding young in the nest. At the Ivy North hide the two Coots are still sitting and the Great Crested Grebe is now incubating as well.

Dragons and a bad finish to the day

He famously slew dragons and although it may have been St Georges Day yesterday, and it was yesterday when the first dragons of the year were spotted on the reserve, it is this weekend that a lot of people are celebrating the patron saint of England – and today that I saw my first “dragon” of the year on the reserve. However, don’t run to the hills just yet, it was a dragon of the diminutive kind – actually a Large-red damselfly. Always the first of the dragonflies to emerge in the spring, this year they are actually quite late, as they are regularly seen in early April and are not unknown in late March. This particular specimen was in the willow scrub between Lapwing and Goosander Hides and had clearly only very recently emerged from the water it had spent its larval stage in as it was still “vestigial”, that is to say, it’s wings were still very “milky” in colour rather than the clear wings that they will develop into over the course of a couple of days.



Sadly it had flown away before I had managed to get a picture of it, but I did manage to snap this large Grass snake I saw from Goosander Hide as it swam from one corner of the Sand martin bank to the other. I was a little surprised to see it, not so much because it was in the water (they specialise in preying upon amphibians and spend a lot of time in and around water, are excellent swimmers and are even known to be able to hold their breath for up to 30 minutes), but rather because of the time of the year and the fact that the water temperature must still be quite cold.

Elsewhere this morning, a Peregrine was flying over Ibsley Water when I opened up this morning, there was a pair of Dunlin seen from Tern Hide, the Sand martins were of course very much in evidence and as spectacular as ever, I heard my first Cuckoo of the year (one heard calling near Mockbeggar Lake, and another near Ivy Lake, so possibly there were two calling on the reserve) and both Reed and Sedge warblers could be heard singing from reed and scrub around Ibsley / Mockbeggar Lakes and Ivy Lake today.

Regretably a lovely day was finished on a bitter note as I was unable to leave work in time to set off for a couple of nights away with my family as I had planned. Having hunteded high and low for over an hour in a fruitless search for the owner of a car that remained in the car park after the 4.30pm closing time, I took the difficult decision to leave, locking the car in the car park behind me with an appologetic note tucked under the windscreen. On a number of occasions all of the staff have come very close to doing the same thing, but we have always had the flexibility to hang around and let visitors out when they eventually turn up. Unfortunately I was unable to on this occasion so I very much hope that they were able to get home without too much trouble. The gates aren't always closed at 4.30pm on the dot, but visitors should always ensure that they are in the vicinity of the car park by that time so that they are not inconvenienced in the way that the unfortunate visitor/s today were - if we know where you are we can let you know it is time to go, but as I discovered yet again today, finding someone in a 500 acre wildlife reserve is like trying to find a needle in a haystack otherwise.

Spring Firsts and Swift Wonders

Yet another "Butterfly day", or perhaps a Damselfly Day, as the first Large Red Damsels of the year were reported today, somewhat later than usual, but the winter was a good bit colder. Orange Tips were about in good numbers and a further "first" was a Speckled Wood. As I checked the moth trap a party of Swifts were screaming overhead, a real sound of summer, in about three months most of them will be off south again, so something to enjoy while you can. Swifts are one of the marvels of our world, they live almost totally aerial life, even sleeping and mating on the wing, to watch them for a prolonged time is one of the real transporting pleasures of summer.

To return to the moths, the trap contained the usual scatter of Common Quaker, Small Quaker, Hebrew Character and Clouded Drab, along with two more new species for the year; Powdered Quaker and a Lesser Swallow Prominent, the last pictured below.
On Ibsley Water today there were: 2+ Common Sandpiper, a Dunlin, 3 Common Tern although I could not find yesterday's Goldeneye. The pair of Oystercatcher that have been hanging around the south end of the lake seem finally to have selected a nest site on the small shingle island to the east of the hide. A feature of the lakes just now is the really large number of Tufted Duck that are still around, it will be interesting to see if we have more breeding pairs than usual this year. The pairs in the picture were part of a noisy group outside the Tern hide this morning.

Most of the Black-headed Gulls are settled on the main island in Ibsley Water now, at this time of year they are really smart birds, so I make no apology for including yet another picture, I especially liked the reflections on the underside of this bird.

Nesting update: The Blackbird nest I was following is now empty, I am not sure what the culprit was but the nest was well inside a thick bramble so it was something quite small and agile. The Song Thrush sits on though as does the Mallard up a tree and the Mute Swan. The Great Crested Grebe nest outside the Ivy North hide now has a sitting birds as well. I also saw my first brood of Mallard today as well as a family of Greylag, although the last were a week or so old.

Another year careers along, I wonder will we get a "Black Tern Day" this year? If we do it could be in the next few days, perhaps even tomorrow. If it is tomorrow I will miss it, just like I did the Little Gull day, but then again I will be from dawn on Sunday and who knows what there might be then, a fine spring dawn is always a rare treat.