Acrobatic Snails

I have some good news to start with today. I’ve been watching out for weeks to see if a second Great Crested Grebe would appear on the local fishing lake. I feared that this year there was one lonely grebe. But finally I’ve seen it with a partner!

Meanwhile the Canada Geese goslings are gradually growing older. They are still crossing between the lake and the field opposite on a regular basis and are still very entertaining as they do so. You can see the front gosling here is starting to get it’s adult colours.

I’ve managed to capture some photos of some of the bigger birds that live locally. I was just heading out of the housing estate and disturbed a grey heron which was stood on a rooftop. I haven’t quite worked out why these birds occasionally come into the estate and sit on random rooves.

This evening I saw this buzzard circling around the area. It was very high up and there were obviously excellent thermals as this bird seemed to hover for astonishing lengths of time without flapping it’s wings.

There is lots of Rosebay Willowherb in the hedges on the edge of the lake and they are really popular with pollinators.

With an abundance of insects in the area there is lots of food for the local birds, like this female chaffinch:

The garden bird feeders are still fairly busy with lots of starlings and goldfinches feeding a lot over the past week.

Bird feeders aren’t just for birds though. You would have thought that this particular feeder was difficult to reach for anything other than birds:

But as you can make out in that picture it appears that several snails have found their way onto this feeder. There must be something in the mixture that they really like. It was amazing to watch this individual make its way to the food, at a fast pace for a snail.

There are also loads of blackbirds in the area at the moment. We get the odd one in the garden but they can be seen more often on the grass verges and the playing field at the end of the road.

Finally today I have a damsel and a dragon to share with you that I saw when walking by the River Avon on Sunday. There were hundreds of these banded demoiselles around.

And this is a rather worn male black-tailed skimmer dragonfly:

Butterflies and Swollen Thighs

I shall continue where I left off in my last post when I started discussing rabbits. Stand in the right place near the local fields at the moment and you can see a lot of them.

There are at least five rabbits in that photo if you look closely. The population is probably at it’s annual highest now with lots of younger rabbits around. Whilst they will breed for some time, the peak of the breeding season is over and as the weather gradually worsens and predators hunt, the numbers will inevitably reduce a little. With some many potential predators out there (for a start there’s a heron and a buzzard nesting close by), it’s no surprise this family sit up alert at the slightest sound.

On a similar theme of ordinary but still interesting, here’s our garden woodpigeon.

Whilst it is difficult to say for certain it’s the same bird, this individual appears to rather like our garden at the moment. It seems to be there most of the time you look out into the garden and after sitting from a vantage point like above it drops into the garden and eats the seeds dropped by the starlings and sparrows.

I’ve got my best photo yet of the local Great-Crested Grebe. It does seem a little reluctant to be photographed though and has been further across the lake since I bought a camera with a longer zoom. Sadly there’s still no sign of a second individual this year.

Butterflies are continuing to do well lately, especially the comma which is more numerous than I’ve ever seen before.

One of the lovely things about butterflies is that you can often observe them very closely:

Meadow Brown on my hand

In other invertebrate news, I spotted this Green Drake Mayfly (Ephemera danica). This adult will live for a maximum of four days or less if one of the many local swallows manages to catch it.

And here’s the brilliantly named Swollen-thighed Beetle (Oedemera nobilis). This is a male.

I was intrigued to spot these very odd looking growths amongst the overgrown hedges near a former railway tunnel.

It turns out that this is a Robin’s Pincushion Gall (Diplolepis rosae). A gall is an abnormal growth and this is one is caused by a tiny wasp. The plant is a species of wild rose and the grubs in the gall feed on the plant until they eventually emerge as adults.

A fungus has popped up recently near the local lake. The slugs have really had a go at it but this appears to be Amanita excelsa.

I can end today on some good news from Dorset County Council who have set out a new set of principles to protect pollinators. From the council website:

The council’s action plan consists of a range of principles that will be adopted for all relevant projects, plans and decision-making processes, both now and in the future.

Actions cover highway verges and hedgerows, the council’s county farms estate and country parks and include stopping the use of on neonicotinoids and planting more pollinator-friendly plants.

The full story can be read here.

Wildlife in Focus

On Sunday we finally got some sunnier, warmer weather and the local butterflies seemed as pleased as me about this. Meadow Browns were out in particular abundance and I saw various other species like Small Whites, Red Admirals and this beautiful Comma:

And I also managed to spot this stunning Scarlet Tiger Moth:

Due to the heat there weren’t many other creatures out in the open but I did catch this swan keeping cool in the river.

On Monday evening I was surprised when I ran into this roe deer near the fishing lake. I’ve never seen deer this close to home before (about five minutes away). It was on farmland at the edge of our housing estate. I was also surprised how confident it seemed for a deer- it stood fairly calmly and looked back at me and didn’t even run off when I eventually continued on my way.

I’ve gradually been getting more into wildlife blogging and photography. You may well have noticed that my photos are mostly of poor quality, especially if the creature I was photographing was far away. This was because I was using a really rubbish camera. Unlike many other bloggers I don’t have the budget for expensive camera equipment but I realised I could afford a new camera.

For those interested, I’ve bought a Nikon Coolpix L340- it’s hardly the best camera on the market but it’s not bad for £100. My old camera had a 4x zoom- this has a 28x zoom! This means I now actually have a half decent camera so I can capture better photos and more wildlife than before.

My first outing with the new camera was past the Canada Goose nursery. Several times this week I’ve seen the nursery move from the fishing lake to the fields opposite. They go under the fisherman’s gate and cross the gravel track where the fishermen park. It’s a fantastically entertaining sight.

 

The longer zoom means I can capture some wildlife I wouldn’t have been able to before, like this small bird. I’m not certain but I think this is a juvenile robin.

I also spotted this rabbit. I think rabbits are one of our more underrated mammals, perhaps because they are so very common. I always think that every animal is interesting whether small, like insects, or common, like rabbits or pigeons. It is estimated there are about six rabbits for every human in the UK. They were brought over from Europe after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the fact they are now so common, despite how often they are predated upon, shows how successful they are as an animal.

I’ve discussed the peregrines falcons nesting in Bournemouth but there are also a pair fairly close by in Salisbury Cathedral. They’ve had two chicks but one of the youngest, a male named Raphael, got in trouble when it tried to fledge in high winds last week. Thanks to human interaction it was kept safe and both young are now doing OK. For more on this story check out the Salisbury Cathedral news story.

Raphael [Source]

That’s all for today but I can’t wait to bring you some great wildlife using my new camera!

Dragonflies and Dartford Warblers

I think I will start today with one of my more exciting spots. Here’s a very poor photo of the bird in question:

It’s hardly my finest photography work I will admit. But that bird is a Dartford Warbler. It’s one of those species twitchers get excited about and I was pleased to see a fair few of these today. Some were very close to the path and I got a really clear view of them. They are distinctive birds so I knew exactly what they were immediately. I saw these in area of the New Forest very close to Ringwood- Google Maps calls it “Kingston Common National Nature Reserve”.

I had an excellent day up in the forest and saw a few other interestings too, in between getting soaked by a monsoon-esque rain storm. Here is a really cool funnel web made by a Labyrinth Spider:

The spider was home and retreated deeper into the funnel as I peered down to take a look. Somewhere at the bottom of that tunnel are probably some eggs.

I also found a pond with some stunning dragonflies darting over it. This one is a male Broad-Bodied Chaser.

 

And another blurry photo for which I can give a positive ID is this Emperor Dragonfly:

I thought it was about time for an update on the goose nursery I’ve been following. Here’s the nursery yesterday:

As you can see, it’s empty other than the odd rabbit. But in a field a little further along the path (and frustratingly obstructed by plants) was this view:

So it seems there are still some goslings around. I’m intrigued why the nursery has moved- I’ve been watching all week and that is definitely the case. My assumption is that whatever food source drew the geese to the original site has dried up. There are now considerably fewer young geese out on the fields. I was interested to see the younger geese out on the fishing lake and swimming in a mixed species line-both canada geese and greylag geese.

Meanwhile it has reached that time of year when our garden becomes overrun with starlings.

We easily get 20+ starlings every time the food is refilled. I guess this is because most of the nesting is done and now we the juveniles are starting to get their adult colours and are pretty much independent. Before the harsher weather comes and reduces the population we have a few months of starling chaos!

A few random things to end today. Here’s a hoverfly I spotted, Eristalis pertinax:

And I have had another fungus from my Blashford Lakes trip identified. This is a Ganoderma species. You can see some white parts on the fungus which look like they may be a different species but are actually parts which have grown this year.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and see you soon!