Ringwood Wildlife Diary: 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.