Summer Wildlife

The continuing heatwave has meant seeing much wildlife has been tricky. It's been too hot to spend much time out in the countryside, for both me and the local wildlife. It's been so hot a local farm made the national press after having the earliest harvest for forty years!1

It's therefore been a case of finding wildlife in more unusual locations. For example, I was wandering home through the centre of Ringwood one evening when I stumbled upon a group of black-headed gulls looking for food. Then I noticed that one of the gulls had a much darker head than the others.

Apologies for the low-quality phone shot!

This is a mediterranean gull. As the name suggests, this species used to be restricted to the black sea and the eastern mediterranean but has expanded it's territory to cover much of Europe. There are somewhere between 550 and 600 breeding pairs in the UK with regular individuals being found amongst groups of black-headed gulls like this one. 

I popped out to the garden on one hot evening and heard something moving in the leaf litter. I had a look and was surprised to find a common toad there. 

I initially thought it odd to see an amphibian in the garden at this time of year- I was concerned that it was too hot. Toads though are actually more tolerant of dry environments than frogs and often use gardens as their habitat in summer2. They usually stay in a hollow in the ground during the day and emerge after dark to feed on ants, slugs and worms.

One morning I headed to the bathroom and was surprised to find a stunning moth sat just above the bathroom mirror. 

This is a black arches moth. It's usually a woodland species so it's somewhat surprising to find it in a suburban environment but maybe there are enough trees nearby to support it. This species is considered a pest in forests as they feed voraciously on spruce and pine needles. A single caterpillar can eat 200 pine or 1000 spruce needles and about twice as many are damaged from being bitten off. If there are enough caterpillars or other factors in play they can causes the death of trees. 

I found this impressive moth early one evening on a fence on my street. 

This is a willow beauty but despite the name this species have a number of food plants including clematis, ivy and hawthorn- exactly the sort of plants you find in suburban gardens. They rest on the day on tree trunks though to a moth a wooden fence looks the same. 

I've been out on a few evenings in the garden trying to look for moths and whilst here have been plenty around, photographing them has proved very tricky. One species I did capture was this one. 

This is a rosy footman moth. These moths are a pink colour, which is unusual for moths, and are only found in the south of the UK- they are most common nearest the south coast. 

At the start of June I was surprised when one of the BTO's tagged cuckoos, Bowie, visited my patch. Well Bowie has now crossed the Sahara having travelled an incredible 3,040 miles since leaving the New Forest on 12th June- an average of 86 miles a day3! Cuckoos are truly incredible birds. 

Finally, I have been asking for people to share their local wildlife sightings and have received some interesting things so far. I was delighted to discover that there appears to be a strong community of hedgehogs in the centre of Ringwood with several people putting out for them. 

Picture from Hedgehogs of Ringwood FB Group

Hedgehogs have seen their populations decline 66% in the last twenty years. The centre of Ringwood is a great habitat for them as there are few cars after dark and a network of alleyways which allow them to travel between gardens. Fantastic residents providing food for them is an added bonus and with numbers like this in just one garden it's clear hedgehogs are doing well here in Ringwood.

That's all for today but with some time off for the summer coming up I expect to have lots more to share with you over the coming weeks.

1: MailOnline: "Britain's earliest harvest for 40 YEARS
2: Herpetofauna: Common Toad
3: BTO: Bowie

Magnificent Moths

It's been a hot week here with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees C. For wildlife that has already had to endure a freezing winter this year it's a challenging time.

The local house martins have finally settled on their nests. They appear to be breeding very late this year but in large numbers- with the good weather set to continue it will hopefully be a good year for them.

House martins are such incredible fliers and it's so wonderful to watch them swooping around catching insects. They seem to enter their nests at incredible speeds too. It's not all plain-sailing for them though- when I was looking at the various nests under the eaves of houses I spotted a very odd looking house martin. 

This is actually a house sparrow so what is it doing in a martin nest? House sparrows will happily take over house martin nests(1). They will even sometimes attack the eggs and young house martins and harass the adults. The sparrows will even do this and choose not to use the nest themselves!

I was excited to spot this female stag beetle recently on the edge of a footpath. 

It's likely this individual was looking for somewhere to lay its eggs as that's why you usually see female stag beetles on the ground(2). Stag beetles spend much of their life underground, only emerging to breed in the summer. The adults will die off by the autumn.

The warm weather has seen lots of butterflies on the wing over the last few weeks. One of the most common species locally appears to be the meadow brown. 

The other species I've seen in large numbers is the large white. 

Both species appear to be doing well in the local area though I must say there appears to be less butterflies generally than in past years. 

The highlight of my week though has been spotting moths and I've seen some fantastic species.

Some are fairly plain looking but lovely in their own way. 

This species is riband wave, a species which is attracted to light. I found it on the edge of the window- I'd kept the light on in the hope of attracting some moths which clearly worked. There are several forms of this moth, part of it's natural variation, and this is the remutata form.

This is a similar species which I think is small fan-footed wave although there are quite a few 'wave' species which look alike. 

The next species is more impressive- a ghost moth which I found on a gate post whilst it was still light. 

Once they become adult moths, this species has no functioning mouthparts and therefore cannot feed(3). The males perform a swaying flight display at dusk which is presumably where the name comes from- I imagine it would be quite spooky. 

Another stunning moth I found was this white ermine moth. 

I found this individual on our shed after dusk which made it quite the challenge to take this photo. The pattern of the black spot varies greatly between individuals and this appears to have relatively few spots.

A find yesterday morning on a garden fence was this species:

This was a tricky species to identify but I think it's a sycamore moth. To a moth, wooden fence panels look like nooks and crannies in trees where they would normally rest up so in a suburban environment fences are actually a really good place to look for moths. 

As much as I'd love to have a moth trap, a torch and a keen eye is the next best thing! 

1: RSPB: Could our house sparrows be bullying house martins?

2: PTES: About stag beetles
3: Butterfly Conservation: Ghost Moth
4: Butterfly Conservation: White Ermine Moth

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!

Charming Chicks

Over the last few weeks chicks have started to hatch and fledge in large numbers so today's post features lots of cute baby birds.

The Bournemouth peregrine falcons laid three eggs in the end and all three successfully hatched!

Getting clear shots of the three chicks is proving quite tricky at the moment as the adult is almost always brooding them. They appear to be doing really well with the adults bringing in regular and sizeable meals. These are an experienced pair who who have excellent hunting weather since the eggs hatched so I would expect these chicks to grow up healthily. 

Meanwhile the gosling nursery field has suddenly become full of goslings. The first I spotted were the greylag goslings. 

Within two days they were joined by around thirty canada geese goslings. 

Canada goslings are fairly well developed when they hatch with their eyes open and leave the nest within 1-2 days1. In many places they form these 'gang broods' where several broods come together- I think there must be at least three here. The advantages of this tactic are clear- a predator would likely wipe out one brood with just two adults to protect it. Here though any predator would face a whole load of adults and even if it caught some goslings the overall proportion would still be lower. It's definitely a case of safety in numbers.

Very close to my house last weekend I found this very young looking fledgling. 

It's difficult to confidently identify the species but I suspect that this is probably a starling. It still looks very much like a chick with it's downy feathers and that yellow mouth called a 'gape'2. The gape acts as a target for adult birds who feel an irresistible compulsion to put food in it. Gradually the gape flange, the outer parts of the mouth, will shrink and turn dull as the bird grows older. 

This individual cannot have fledged very long before I found it and was sat in the middle of a footpath. It was extremely vulnerable there so I gently ushered it into the bushes where it would be better protected from predators, especially the local cat population, and be further away from the road. 

Another recent bird sighting was this adult grey wagtail. 

As you can see this wagtail has a beak stuffed full of what appear to be caterpillars. The fact it is holding them rather than eating them suggests that it is about to take them to it's young in a nearby nest. According to the information I've found grey wagtails are supposed to eat aquatic creatures rather than caterpillars but the latter may be easier to catch and I don't suppose the chicks are too fussy. 

Grey wagtails nest alongside a fast moving river or stream with a clutch size of between 3-6 eggs. 

Finally for today, here's one of the many butterflies which has emerge in recent weeks. 

This is a speckled wood and it seems to be common for them to lose parts of their wing. The spots look like eyes to predators, mainly birds, which then aim for the wing margin3. They may end up damaging the wing but butterflies can manage with a fair bit of damage and their body remains completely intact.

That's all for today, see you soon.

1: All About Birds: Canada Goose

2: The Spruce: Gape

3: Butterflies of Scotland: Speckled Wood

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