Author Archives: sconzani

House martins, home and away

26 Thursday Jun 2025

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Maybe I haven’t been walking in the right locations this summer, but it seems to me that I haven’t seen as many House martins this year. When I was in Weymouth, I was surprised to spot the birds shown below only just starting to build their nests on one of the old mansions along the seafront – that was on 10 June, which seemed rather late.

Last week, once I was back home again, I made a point of walking the streets where I’ve seen nests in the past. Here in the town, I saw only one nest in a street where the ledges on the houses had previously been clustered with little mud cups. Fortunately, the situation was a little better on the houses around the local marina, and I was grinning as I watched the little sweetie shown below.

This House martin had, in fact, already fledged but, rather than hunting for its own food, it was taking short flights from the nest, only to return when its parents returned with food. Sneaky!

Foxes in the garden!

25 Wednesday Jun 2025

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I’d been told by a couple of other flat owners that we have Foxes living in the woodland that borders one side of the communal garden where I now live, but I’d also been told that they are rarely seen, and the sightings are mostly late at night by those who live on the street side of the building, presumably as they’re venturing out into the town searching for food – the Foxes not the flat owners!

So, you can imagine my excitement and amazement and total delight when I looked out my window early one morning last week to see a whole family of Foxes frolicking together in the garden. From the look of them and the way they were interacting, I assume these are the male and female adults and two young cubs.

I watched them for perhaps 10 minutes before something alarmed them and the group quickly disappeared through a gap between the grass and the trees. But, within five minutes, they were out again, the adults sniffing warily around the garden edges, the youngsters climbing all over each other play-fighting. Once again, they withdrew after 10-15 minutes – I guess more people were up and about by then, pulling back curtains, opening windows, and that type of activity sent the Foxes back to the safety of their den for the day.

Even more surprisingly, I saw one of the adults just as it was getting dark the following evening, heading purposefully along the edge of the trees, heading out into the urban landscape to forage for scraps. It may even be that people locally feed them, as, fortunately, growing numbers of people are now happy to share our towns and cities with these handsome creatures.

Large whites and parasitism, part 2

24 Tuesday Jun 2025

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A week after my sighting of Large white butterfly larvae that had been parasitised by wasps (see yesterday’s blog post) I returned to the same location to see what might have changed during that time and was surprised to see six pupae, beautiful sculptural objects whose markings varied depending on how long it was since they had pupated. These can’t have been the parasitised larvae I don’t think, so there must have been a large number of larvae munching unnoticed in the grassy area below the signage they were on.

This time, as well as these pupae, a few parasitised larvae and a few caterpillars that looked normal but may still have had wasp larvae in their bodies, there was a new species of parasitic wasp in residence. They looked completely different to the wasp I’d seen the previous week and, rather than the larvae, these tiny wasps were all congregating around the Large white pupae.

As usual, I took a lot of photos and, when I got home, set about researching the possibilities. This time, my guide book offered no assistance but googling produced one probable answer. There exists a wasp that is actually named the White butterfly pupal parasitoid wasp, scientific name Pteromalus puparum, which seems the likely culprit, though this hasn’t yet been confirmed by any experts. I’m intending to revisit the site to see what’s happened while I’ve been away on my little holiday.

Large whites and parasitism, part 1

23 Monday Jun 2025

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Though I’ve been in Wales almost 10 years and was fascinated by British butterflies even before I settled here, I only saw my first Large white caterpillars in June last year. So, when I spotted several more on the large advertising signage fencing off a local building site, I was delighted … until I looked more closely (and just a warning, this is a bit gruesome!).

The larvae were surrounded by small yellow cocoons and, when I looked even closer, I could see small yellowish larvae squirming between the bodies of the caterpillars and the cocoons. It is highly likely that the Large whites have been parasitised by the wasp Cotesia glomerata. In Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies, Peter Eeles writes that the wasp

deposits between 15 and 80 eggs inside each young larva that it parasitizes. The wasp larvae feed on the layer of fat beneath the skin of their host, thereby avoiding vital organs, and, when their host is fully grown, break through the skin and pupate within yellow cocoons on or near their host.

If this wasn’t gruesome enough for one morning’s finds, I then noticed a tiny wasp amongst the cocoons. At first, I thought it must be one of the Cotesia glomerata that had hatched, but no. When I checked at home later, a quick internet image search revealed that this did not resemble C. glomerata and, on Wikipedia, I found the information that C. glomerata is itself parasitised by a couple of other wasp species, Lysibia nana [it is listed as L. nanus in British taxonomic listings] and Gelis agilis. I’ve just been reading that the female G. agilis is wingless so I’m wondering if the wasp I saw is L. nanus. As this species is rarely recorded and there are no Welsh records, I’ve sent a query to the parasitic wasp expert at the Natural History Museum; I’ll update this post if/when I get an answer.

**UPDATE** This is the response I received from Dr Gavin Broad from the Natural History Museum: ‘You are correct, your wasps are most probably Lysibia nanus. There is a very similar species, Lysibia tenax, more rarely recorded but with much the same hosts. I don’t believe it is actually a separate species and L. nanus is certainly the usual suspect reared from Cotesia glomerata cocoons.’

Swine-cress

22 Sunday Jun 2025

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After that wonderful short break away, it was back to earth with a bang; in fact, not just back to earth but in to the gutter with the pigs. Okay, not literally with the pigs but today’s wildflower is called Swine-cress, and I’ve found it growing very happily in the gutters and along the roadside, pavement and lane edges all around my coastal town.

As I’m fairly good at recognising the wildflowers I see these days, I was quite surprised to notice this little plant, whose name I didn’t know, growing so profusely. Swine-cress, which seems to have a variety of names: Coronopus squamatus and Lepidium coronopus, is a very small member of the Brassica family, an annual or biennial, with deeply cut leaves and tiny, almost unnoticeable white flowers. I haven’t yet discovered the reason for the ‘swine’ in its name so, if you know, please do tell me in the comments.

The Marbled white and the Skylark

21 Saturday Jun 2025

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Today’s blog title puts me in mind of one of Aesop’s fables. I’m sure there was one where the butterfly was tired and asked the bird if it could ride on its back but the bird ended up eating it? Just kidding! Before I sign off from my blogs about my Weymouth trip I just wanted to share two more random moments …

The Marbled white butterfly (Melanargia galathea), though common in many parts of Britain, is rarely seen in my part of coastal south Wales, so it was a special treat to see three on the wing in Weymouth. The first was a distant blur in a field in the Wildlife Trust reserve Lorton Meadows, an area that looked like it would have good potential for butterflies and wildflowers if it wasn’t for the excessive number of off-lead dogs being allowed to roam everywhere, even into the one dragonfly pond. Fortunately, Portland’s Tout Quarry came up trumps again, and I saw two more Marbled whites there, including this obliging beauty.

Seeing this stunning Skylark up close was another of this trip’s special moments. I was walking back from Portland to Weymouth and had almost reached the information centre at Chesil Beach when I heard Skylark song in front of me. I searched the sky for a couple of minutes before realising that the bird was, in fact, sitting on a bush adjacent to the track directly ahead of me.

Such a singing spot seemed odd but I wondered if there might be a nest in the scrubby area I was walking through and so this male was trying to distract me from going near that. Though I had never intended to move off the path, its tactic certainly focused my attention, and I grabbed a few photos before walking onward.

Sedge warblers

20 Friday Jun 2025

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I don’t see Sedge warblers very often; if I’m lucky, I might see or, sometimes only hear, one or two as they pass through the local area during Spring and Autumn migration. That’s my excuse for not recognising these two birds, seen on two separate visits to RSPB Radipole in Weymouth. As I could hear Reed warblers singing all around me while I was exploring the reserve, which is jam-packed full of Reed beds, I just assumed these were also Reed warblers.

Wrong! The streaking of dark and light above the eyes is a sure sign of a Sedge warbler. My more expert birding friends think that the first bird, above, is an adult, though I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t a well-grown youngster, as it was flapping its wings in the way juvenile birds do to get their parents to feed them.

The bird below is definitely a youngster; one of my friends pointed out that you can still see the gape, the yellow fleshy part at the base of its beak that is a characteristic of chicks. And it behaved like a chick: ‘My mum told me to stay right here until she got back so I’m not moving even though you’re coming along the path towards me, getting closer and closer with that black thing in front of your face, and I’m a little bit scared.’

After quickly grabbing a couple of photos, I moved past, then stopped further along the path and watched as one of its parents brought it food, and moved it to a different bush, a bit further away from the main path.

Lifer: Scarce chaser

19 Thursday Jun 2025

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Here they are, the extremely confiding dragonflies mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the Scarce chasers (Libellula fulva) (also known as the Blue chaser). They were everything you could want in a photographer’s model, perching this way and that to show their best sides; not flying off at the slightest hint of movement behind the camera; the consummate professionals!

So, I managed to get photos of a male, female and the two together in cop. The female (above) is described in my guide book as having an olive-brown thorax and ochre-brown abdomen but, as you can see, she was much more vibrant than those descriptions suggest.

The males have a black thorax and blue abdomen with a dark tip. At a glance, with those colours, they could be mistaken for other dragonflies with similar colouration, until you see their eyes, which are the most amazing shade of blue. (In fact, I’ve just decided to add in a second photo of the male so you can get a better look at those eyes.)

I saw several of these dragons at RSPB Radipole Lakes in Weymouth, which left me wondering why they are called ‘Scarce’ chasers. It seems that, where they are found (in isolated spots in the east and south of England) their populations are relatively small, so they are officially designated as rare. Indeed, in the 2008 British Odonata Red List they were officially listed as ‘near threatened’, so I feel very privileged to have enjoyed such excellent views of these stunning creatures.

Lifer: Norfolk hawker

18 Wednesday Jun 2025

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My wildlife-watching hopes for my short break in Weymouth centred on butterflies and, perhaps, a few birds that I might not see locally, so it was a wonderful surprise to see two new dragonfly species, one extremely confiding (it’ll feature in tomorrow’s blog), one elusive to the point of frustration.

The Norfolk hawker (Aeshna isoceles) was the latter and, on my first visit to the RSPB Radipole reserve, the few times I spotted these dragonflies (easily recognisable by their brown colouring and green eyes), they stayed mostly hidden, perching – when they did actually stop flying – in obscure locations, as you can see from the photos above and below.

Finally, on my last afternoon, when there were fewer people out walking after a morning’s heavy rain and I was battling my way through the extremely overgrown vegetation along the path to the northern bird hide, one of these stunning dragons posed perfectly for me.

Although called Norfolk hawkers, these medium-sized dragonflies have been expanding their range beyond the English county of Norfolk. Their preference for reed beds in swamps and ponds, along streams and ditches, means Radipole provides the perfect location for them to thrive.

Breeding Common terns

17 Tuesday Jun 2025

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My afternoon walk to Lodmoor Nature Reserve proved the perfect antidote to my five-hour journey on four different trains to get to Weymouth. And what an absolute delight it was when I arrived at Lodmoor to first hear – very raucous, and then see the Common terns and their Black-headed gull companions breeding in close proximity on two artificial islands near the edge of the lakes. (These islands are ring-fenced and fitted out with some enclosed nesting ‘boxes’ to try to offer the birds better protection during the breeding season.)

Though Common terns can be seen at certain times of year when moving on passage up and down the Bristol Channel, I’ve rarely managed to catch sight of them in my local stomping ground, so seeing them at reasonably close quarters, and with their tiny chicks just beginning to explore the world around them, was another special treat of this holiday.

Terns are magnificent aeronauts. Their skill at manoeuvring their streamlined shape through the thermal airwaves, their ability to twist and turn and plunge and lift – these fliers are a joy to watch, particularly when diving for the tiny fish swimming just below the water’s surface. And, with several tiny chicks to feed, these terns were almost constantly in the air. Many seemed to fly straight out to sea where, presumably, their prey was more bountiful but I also noticed, when walking around Weymouth’s other local nature reserve, Radipole Lakes, that the Common terns were successfully exploiting the fishing opportunities there as well.