Late Spring Sightings

It's been a warm few weeks here and much of the local wildlife has been busy in the process of breeding and raising young. I've seen plenty of fledgling birds lately such as this cute young robin.

The canada geese nursery looks to have had a successful year with many goslings still in the area. 

You can see the difference in some of the older goslings like the one at the front of the last picture- less fluffy and the black markings are starting to appear on the head. 

I managed to find what I think is the nest of a green woodpecker nearby. I kept hearing lots of noise at one tree and knew it was a nest but couldn't identify what species it belonged to. Then one day I saw a green woodpecker on the tree and saw some holes which look like woodpecker nests. With the sound on, you should be able to hear the noise in this clip.

This is what I think is probably this year's nest:

The cold winter and late spring has affected some local wildlife including the house martins. They arrived very late and are still in the process of building nests in the eaves of houses. I've yet to see any young poking out of them and I fear they may not produce any young this year. 

The BTO tagged another set of cuckoos this year and I was excited to see that one of them, Bowie, visited my patch two weeks ago. There are plenty of cuckoos not far away in the New Forest but I was surprised to see one so close to the town. Thanks to Bowie's visit a satellite view of my patch made a brief appearance on week 2 of Springwatch!

Bowie the Cuckoo (Source)

On 12th June Bowie left the UK to begin his long trip back to Africa and is well into France. You can follow his journey here.

I saw one of the Avon roe deer recently which looked absolutely stunning in it's summer coat. 

I've also seen plenty more insects this week such as this lovely blue-tailed damselfly.

I was particularly drawn to this individual due to it's bright pink thorax. The females of this species, of which this is one, have a variety of colour forms with this form known as "rufescens". 

I found several different species of longhorn beetles which are really distinctive insects.

Banded Longhorn Beetle

Spotted Longhorn Beetle

Stenurella melanura

There were lots of caterpillars out today too. Everywhere I looked there were these black ones:

These are probably alder leaf beetle larvae which means they are not technically caterpillars at all. A lot of people probably don't realise that all insects go through a similar metamorphosis to butterflies. This species was introduced to the UK in the 19th century but there were no records between 1946 and 2004. A colony appeared in Manchester in 2004 and then the species was found here in South Hampshire in 2014. 

I also saw small cinnabar moth caterpillars on lots of ragwort plants and on one plant they were quite well developed already. 

On a tree trunk there was a singular green caterpillar. 

This individual looked very vulnerable on the trunk as birds love to eat the green caterpillars. This is the larvae of a common quaker moth- this species flies in March and April so this individual will not become an adult moth the early spring next year. 

That's all for today but I shall be back next week with June's Nature News!

Delightful Durlston

The local roe deer have been much more visible over the last few weeks and I've had several close encounters with them.

It's interesting to compare these two male deer and note the differences. The top deer is probably a few years older as it has much longer antlers(1) and it's both bigger and more muscly than the lower deer. I think the bottom deer is about three years old and despite its diminutive size it was very confident. It was only a few feet away from me on the other side of a low fence and once it gave me a good stare it ignored me and carried on grazing. 

Last weekend I visited Durlston Country Park near Swanage in Dorset. The park has a range of habitats from woodland and meadows to sea-cliffs so it's a good place to see a range of wildlife. 

I found a few insects in the meadows such as this bloody-nosed beetle. 

This flightless beetle gets its name from it's unusual defence mechanism- when breathed on it secrets a blood-red liquid from its mouth which irritates the mouths of many mammals(2). 

Another insect I spotted was this dark-edged bee-fly. 

Like many species these insects have evolved to look like bees as a defence mechanism but they are actually harmless flies. Well, harmless to humans. Their larvae are parasitoids of mining bees that nest in colonies in the soil(3). The female bee-fly will hover above a mining bee area and flick eggs onto the ground. When the bee-fly egg hatches the larva crawls into the underground nest of a host bee and attaches itself to a bee grub to suck out its body fluids. I love looking into invertebrate life-cycles! 

You can spot what looks like a sting coming out of the bee-fly's head which is actually a proboscis or tongue. Like a hummingbird, these insects hover in front of deep flowers like primroses and stick their long proboscis into the flower to drink the nectar. 

I noticed what looked like cobwebs on a lot of the bramble bushes and a closer look make me realise they were webbing nest of brown-tail moth caterpillars. 

These larvae spend the winter inside the webbing nests before emerging in the spring to feed communally(4). Few insects feed on plants of more than two different families but this species has been recorded as feeding on plants from as many as 13 families. 

You really don't want to mess with these larvae. The loose hairs break off and can cause all sorts of problems for humans such as rashes, skin irritation, headaches and breathing difficulties. You shouldn't get too close to it and should wear thick gloves if you ever have to handle one. A related species which causes similar effects, the oak processionary moth, has been in the news this week due to outbreaks in London(5). 

Cows were grazing on the meadows at Durlston and I was amazed to see a brazen jackdaw use them as a feeding opportunity. 

This jackdaw was casually walking all over the cow pecking at insects that were attracted to it. The cow didn't seem too bothered (if anything the jackdaw as probably doing it a service) though it did lift its head a few times when the jackdaw got too annoying. 

I was really pleased to see some guillemots at the foot of the cliffs. 

These seabirds only come to land to breed and spend the rest of their lives at sea(6). From the top of the cliffs they look like penguins and their colour scheme is the same as penguins for the same reason- when they are swimming in the sea from below the white colour makes them blend in with the sky and from above the black colour makes them blend into the sea. 

The breeding colony at Durlston is the second largest on the south coast and also the most easterly- it's also right at the southernmost limit of their worldwide range(7).

Whilst it was a lovely visit, I was disappointed that I wasn't able to see the peregrine falcons which are regularly seen on the cliffs and the area is also a good one for spotting dolphins but I had no luck there either. 

Durlston Country Park is a great place to visit to see wildlife and somewhere I'd definitely recommend checking out. 

1: Discover Wildlife: How to age a roe deer from its antlers

2: Wildlife Trusts: Bloody-nosed beetle

3: Buglife: Dark-edged bee-fly

4: Forest Research: Brown-tail moth

5: The Guardian: Health warning as toxic hairy caterpillars take over woodlands

6: RSPB: Guillemot

7: Durlston: Guillemots

Thankful for the Thaw

Last week's snow disappeared astonishingly quickly and the temperatures shot up. There's a feeling of Spring in the air now with lots of trees suddenly coming into flower.

The "beast from the East" brought lots of birds over from mainland Europe, especially fieldfares and redwings1.

This is one of the many redwings I've seen locally recently though sadly I've yet to spot a fieldfare. It's unlikely that many of these birds will be around for much longer as they migrate back to mainland Europe in the Spring2. Lots of birds that have spent the winter in Spain and Southern Europe will stop off in the East of the country on their way further North. 

Another bird that seems to be around in higher numbers than usual this winter is the goosander. 

I've tried to find evidence that this is a national trend but struggled to find much. A local Scottish newspaper recently reported that increasing numbers of goosanders were partially responsible for poor fishing on the River Tweed3, though again that seems to be anecdotal evidence rather than scientific. Numbers certainly appear to be on the up though and I like to imagine that one day in the not too distant future we might have breeding goosander locally. 

A few other local spots now. Here's one of our stranger small birds, the nuthatch. 

Nuthatches look a little like small woodpeckers and behave like treecreepers, walking up and down trees to find items of food in trees3. Whilst most birds migrate or at least move a little in their lifetime, nuthatches rarely move far from where they hatched. They are a bit more flexible when it comes to food than treecreepers and will feed on the ground and come to feeders when they need supplement their diet. 

I also saw a green woodpecker up a tree recently. 

You might imagine that this is where you would expect to see a woodpecker but this species is more often seen on the ground where they feed for ants4. Green woodpeckers have much weaker bills than other species and therefore peck wood much less often. They don't drum to communicate like other species and rarely feed on trees, only doing so at times of low food5- which I suspect might be the case at the moment. It's also possible that they are beginning to excavate nest holes.

Whilst I am still deeply sad about the new housing estate which is shooting up on former farmland at the moment I am finding it interesting to see how the local wildlife is adapting to it. There are long metal fences along the perimeter of the site and I've previously seen buzzards using it as a perch- this weekend I saw a kestrel doing the same. 

These fences, just over human head height, are really useful for kestrels. Whilst they often hunt using their famous hover technique, they also jump down at prey from low perches. There is, at the moment at least, long grass directly below this fence which is perfect for rodents. I watched as the kestrel leapt down from it's perch though it didn't seem to be successful on that attempt. 

Here's another kestrel from a few weeks ago which was hovering in order to hunt. 

Finally, here's a few more photos from the last of the snow and the last week. 

A Feral Pigeon looking rather confused by the pile of snow atop the bird table.

Water dripping down from the eaves created these icicles on a bush under our living room window

Robin in the snow

Dunnock

The Avon Roe Deer reliably in their usual spot.

This Grey Heron was hunting amongst the high grasses on the flood plain. It looks like it may have damaged a wing but i was too far away to be able to see clearly.

That's all for today but I'll be back at the weekend with the Nature News for March.

1: The Times- Nature Notes

2: RSPB: Redwing Migration

3: Border Telegraph

3: RSPB: Nuthatch

4: RSPB: Green Woodpecker

5: Discover Wildlife: 6 green woodpecker facts you need to know

Chilly Creatures

It's been a cold few weeks here in Ringwood with temperatures rarely pushing positive figures. For our wildlife it's a huge challenge- low temperatures are always difficult and coming at the end of the winter means food is scarce. 

Last week I spotted lots of clumps of frog spawn in the New Forest, though all of it was frozen.

Frog spawn can survive freezing temperatures to some extent but it will struggle over a long period of low temperatures like we had. I suspect very few tadpoles will develop from the many clumps I spotted. 

At my workplace in Bournemouth this week I saw the car park fox for the first time in a while. 

I saw this vixen on several mornings this week in this spot. I can only imagine how difficult it must be keeping warm when you have to spend your entire time outside. This vixen was curled up in a pile of leaves in the sunshine which was probably about the warmest place she could be at 8:30AM. 

On Thursday the snow arrived. It was only a few centimetres but enough for the school I work at to be closed and some lovely views locally. 

The Avon deer didn't seem too bothered about the snow and were grazing in their usual field. 

There were lots of birds on the Avon itself- the water flows fairly fast there and that means it's relatively warm. I wouldn't like to paddle in it but it must have been better than sitting in the snow. The river was also the only source of food that was still available so it made sense for the birds to congregate there. 

Swan

Little Egret 

Goosander stretching its wings

                             

This teal was an exciting sighting as I've never seen one on my patch before. I assume it found its way to this stretch as a fairly warm and safe haven from the poor weather. 

The small birds mostly seemed to hunker down in trees. By doing this they were keep away from the worst of the wind and can take advantage of the natural heat of the trees. 

Chaffinch

 Some, like the starlings below, stuck together in groups where their combined heat helps them all to keep warm, a bit like penguins do.

On Thursday the snow became even thicker to the point we'd had more than I'd ever seen in my twenty odd years of living in Ringwood. Freezing rain then left a hard frozen surface to the snow overnight.

There were no sign of the deer today and I suspect they took shelter in one of the nearby wooded areas. The little egret meanwhile stubbornly carried on fishing as normal. 

I was also surprised to see a number of lapwings around this patch of the river, another species I've never seen on my patch before. They were all curled up trying to shelter from the elements. 

We should have seen the last of the snow, for now at least, but it will still be difficult for all these animals to survive the next few weeks. They must do everything they can to stay warm enough to survive as well as try to find food in difficult circumstances. It's likely that many won't be able to do this and populations of many species will be the lowest they've been for a number of years. 

I'll be back soon and do safe and warm in this cold weather!