Back to the Wild for Mr Prickles

After locking up yesterday it was time to release Mr Prickles as he had made such a good recovery. I chose a piece of woodland on the reserve that was as far away as possible from any roads and badgers. It turned out he fitted very well into a bucket, which made transportation a little easier.



The release wasn't a very elegant process as he stayed fast asleep so I just had to roll him out of the bucket into some brambles to keep him hidden away until he woke up. Fingers crossed he had a good night exploring his new home.



Today has been a less successful day for Michelle 'Wildlife Rescue Ranger' as whilst unlocking the hides I found a deceased mole in the middle of the path. This is the second one in two weeks. Again, in a similar way to the hedgehog it is probably the dry weather which is the cause. The dry weather means earthworms borrow deeper into the ground and so they are out of reach of the moles tunnels.



I was quite fascinated by his very large front feet. They are perfect miniature shovels for digging through the ground.



At lunch time I met one of the children who had visited with her school during the week and had brought her daddy along especially to see the dead mole. So it was a lucky eerie coincidence that I had moved the dead mole to the grass by the pond where the other one was found!

It has been a very soggy day today but it did not put off the intrepid river explorers on the family river dipping event this morning. We went pond dipping, looked in the moth trap and splashed about in the river where we found a fantastic male minnow in his breeding colours of bright red and green - quite a stunner!

Our next family event is 'Catch the Bug' on 11th June when we will be exploring the meadow with sweep nets in the persual of grasshoppers, crickets, damselflies, ladybirds and lots more - book your place now!

Introducing Mr Prickles!

I had planned a quiet study day today. After finishing my Forest School programme at Poulner Junior School on Friday I now have until Tuesday to write up all my coursework for my Forest School Leader course. Eek!

I opened up with caution after a phone call last night from Jim saying he had had to lock a car in (remember gates close at 4:30pm) I was expecting to find a very cross person waiting to pick up their car. However all the car parks were empty....it seems we have a Houdini act on our hands!

So I carried on with the unlocking a bit puzzled. There isn't much to report. An elephant hawk moth in the moth trap was a nice surprise though! There were a lot of squirrels about, 5 under one of the feeders, I assume they are young families of squirrel. There was also a roe deer lurking in the bushes.





Then it was back to office to crack on with my studies. Until there was a knock on the door. A member of the public stood there with a bundle of spines on a plastic bag. He had found the hedgehog curled up on the edge of Ellingham Drove but still alive. An odd place to have a nap so I assumed it had been hit. Anyhow it was still asleep and not very responsive but had no obvious damage.

I rang round lots of hedgehog rescue rangers but no one was willing to accept another hedgehog. Luckily I found a good contact on the hedgehog preservation society website who was very helpful. Whilst on the phone the hedgehog started to wake up! She suggested feeding and watering it and seeing how it was a bit later on as ideally it should be released here in its home territory.

So I found the badger's supply of cat food and cracked it open and put the hedgehog who was asleep again in a box with the food. It didn't take long for its little nose to pick up the scent and it was soon gobbling down the food.



It had seconds, and thirds and then had a little nap. Then it woke up and had fourths..... and fifths!! Followed by a slurp of drink. I am starting to wonder whether it is just a very hungry hedgehog who has been struggling to find much food after all the dry weather we have had. By now Mr Prickles is getting a bit disruptive to my coursework with all his slurping and munching and suddenly he was feeling a lot better as I looked down to see him trying to climb out the box.



Hooray for Mr Prickles!



I wanted to keep an eye on him for a bit longer so I put the lid down to see if he would fall asleep. Which he did, he is now fast asleep. The Hedgehog lady said to check that he was ok I needed to see that he slept during the day and was awake at night and curled up into a ball if you poked him. Well at them moment he is sleeping so I think I will try and ring the lady again to see if I should release him! I have poked him and he curled up in to a ball.

It's noisy out there!

Relatively quiet in terms of visitors, but there's quite a din coming from around the woodland paths between the hides today - Bob mentioned great spotted woodpeckers yesterday, and they are still around today and contributing to the general cacophony of young great tits, blue tits and blackcaps all calling to be fed morsels by harassed looking parents.

Both great crested grebe families continue to do well on Ivy Lake, as are the several families of coots, including the most recent hatching on one of the "stick and lifebuoy" nesting rafts in front of Ivy South Hide.
The rather cool and windy day means that there is not much in the way of insects to report on, but there was another reasonable haul in the moth trap, including angleshades, peppered moth , poplar hawkmoth and lesser swallow prominent (pictured). Also pictured below is an orangetip butterfly caterpillar that we have been keeping an eye on. Photographed on one of its common foodplants, hedge garlic, this afternoon it has been joined by a female common blue damselfly, who pulled the usual damselfly trick of creeping around the seedpod she was hanging onto in order to keep it between her and me.

Showing the Way

The moth trap contained my first large yellow underwing of the year this morning, these moths emerge around early to mid-June in most years then promptly go into hiding until later in the summer and autumn when they have their main flight to mate and breed. On the face of it this seems rather a strange strategy, but it is one that obviously works, as they are one of the commonest moths of late summer.
There are family parties of great spotted woodpecker all over the place now and the pair nearest the centre have been initiating their young into the ways of the bird feeders. The young were sitting about on the signs waiting to be brought peanuts.

It is obviously important for the adults to teach their young about the ways of the world, such as where the food is to be found.

The woodpeckers are not the only birds after the peanuts though. Jays have trouble at this time of the year as their acorn stores are now gone, so our feeders are particularly attractive to them.

What a Catch

It actually rained today, not much but it has become such a rare event that I could not let it pass without mention.The overnight cloud kept the temperature up and so the moth catch was quite good, nothing rare but there was a small clouded brindle, a species described in the books as "common" but one we rarely see.
Being Thursday it was Volunteer Day, however we did not do a task today, instead they went pond-dipping. It is always interesting to see just what is caught and it is often not the big things that really catch the eye.

One of the most looked at finds today was this humble midge pupa.

Jim pointed out a bees nest in one of the bird boxes yesterday, at the time I could not see what species they were, so I had another look today and found they were woodland bumblebees, they way they have closed down the entrance hole is particularly interesting and something I have not seen other species of bumblebees do.

I did have one other interesting sight today, as I returned from the Ivy South hide a kingfisher flew up onto one of the dead trees in the silt pond, it had a large fish, about as long as the bird's body. After about three minutes beating it against the branch it flew off. However it was not quite that simple. In beating the fish it repeatedly turned it so as to beat it on both sides, it also held it both on each side and upright, which meant the bill was open at a very wide angle. Finally, with the fish at least stunned, it flipped as though to swallow it tail first and flew off. This meant the head was pointing straight ahead, presumably much the easiest and most aerodynamic way for a kingfisher to carry a large fish.

The Wet and the Dry

Lots of activity on the reserve today. More carp were being removed from Mockbeggar Lake, the bird ringers were in and the Lower Test volunteer team were in digging out rhododendron root and then there was the usual school group at the Centre and rather more visitors than of late. By contrast I seemed to be racing around doing lots of little jobs of no great consequence, some days are just like that I suppose.

The bird ringers had a good morning and the catch included a couple of already fledged reed warbler, this is very early for young to be out of the nest. Although it was noticeable that many were paired up and nest building well before the end of April this year, it seemed that the females arrived almost at the same time as the males this spring. I also saw at least two broods of great spotted woodpecker out of the nest today, I always used to reckon it was the first week of June before they left, so they seem early as well.

I had a brief look at the lichen heath in the morning and found a ground bug, it turned out to be Graptopeltus lynceus, a classic species of dry, open ground, most common in the Brecks of Norfolk. The heath is very, very dry at present, so dry it crunches if you walk on it, so I don't unless I absolutely have to.
Later I was out on balsam patrol, the situation looks better than last year, perhaps we are beginning to make inroads. The swampy vegetation along the Dockens Water is looking very fine indeed, lots of flowers and lots of insects. The main white flower in the shot is hemlock water dropwort, but there was also water forget-me-not, skullcap, gypsywort and yellow flag.
I also got a rather better picture of the black colonel, Odontomyia tigrina soldierfly, this one is a female.

A Big Yellow Headache

Rather little to report from the last two days. A flock of 17 dunlin on Ibsley Water first thing was certainly notable, but they did not stay long.

I have been planning how to tackle the ragwort growth, it is not going to be easy as it is further ahead than usual and so many areas cannot be done as there are still nesting birds. Of course there are those that say it should be left as a nectar source and it is true that is it a valuable nectar plant. However it is toxic to stock when dry, although they avoid it when growing as a rule. We have to try and stop it spreading onto our neighbours land and it can also become very dominant on the dry disturbed soils around the old gravel pits, which is undesirable for other reasons. The history of the site and the long-lived seed bank mean we will never do more than reduce it. Our aim is to produce a lower denser sward, which is better for nesting waders and feeding wildfowl and is harder for ragwort seedlings to establish in, but it will take many years of work. We have already made some progress on the western shore of Ibsley Water, which was chest high with brilliant yellow a couple of years ago.

Incidental to checking the shores of the lakes I retrieved the monitoring buoy from Ibsley Water, the high winds yesterday caused it to break free and it got washed up on the eastern shore, it was both larger and heavier than it looked! The great black-backed gulls will have to find another perch.

The good year for insects continues with another new for the reserve hoverfly yesterday, a bumblebee mimic, Criorhina berberina. The robberfly in the picture below was basking on the main gate as I went to lock up at the end of the day.