134/366 The Swannee river

13 Wednesday May 2020

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When I spotted a pair of Mute swans and their six cygnets on an inlet of the River Ely on yesterday’s exercise walk, the old song ‘Way down upon the Swannee River’ immediately came to mind. The song has nothing to do with swans, of course (it’s about an African slave longing for ‘de old plantation’), and most of you are probably too young to even remember the tune – I think it was just the combination of swans and river that made it pop into my brain. But enough of the strange workings of my mind during lockdown…. Isn’t this little family just gorgeous?!

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133/366 First Common blue

12 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in insects, nature, wildflowers

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One of the benefits of some local councils not mowing all the road verges at the moment is that wildflowers that would normally be strimmed to death are now being allowed to grow and bloom.

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Not only does this mean we get to enjoy their glorious rainbow of colours but the wildflowers’ pollen and nectar also provide a nutritious feast for all the newly emerging insects.

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And it was on one such uncut verge that I spotted my first Common blue butterfly of the year today, this stunning, pristine, little male.

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If only the councils would mow less all the time, then we’d be able to enjoy both the flowers and the insects all through spring and summer, and it would also go a little way to reversing the huge decline in insect life that’s happening all over the world.

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132/366 A sanguine sight

11 Monday May 2020

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Warning: the photos in this post are a bit gory!
The highlight – if this can be called a highlight – of my early morning local walk was this Magpie, feeding on the grass in a local park.

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Although Magpies mostly eat fruit, seeds and small insects, they are also opportunists who will quite happily scavenge household food waste, eat the eggs and chicks of other birds, and graze on road kill and other carrion. This bird had found a dead rat and was happily pulling it apart for a bloody, but presumably nourishing breakfast.

At least, I hope it was nourishing – the rat could, I suppose, have been poisoned, and I’m not sure whether that would have an adverse effect on the bird. I hope not.

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131/366 New bloomers

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by in nature, spring, wildflowers

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Here are this week’s newly flowering wildflowers …

200510 bittersweet nightshade

Bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), also known as Woody nightshade and Deadly nightshade, though my Flora Britannica assures me this is actually one of the less poisonous members of the nightshade family.

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Cut-leaved crane’s-bill (Geranium dissectum), one of the many lovely members of the extended Geranium family.

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Flax (Linum usitatissimum), a small delicate plant, with beautiful pale blue flowers. This is rather different from the plant I, as a New Zealander, usually associate with this name – see my September 2018 post Flax.

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Goat’s-beard (Tragopogon pratensis). As well as producing these glorious large sunny flowers, this wildflower, also known as Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon, has the most wonderful seedheads.

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Wood avens (Geum urbanum) – you may know this wildflower by its alternate name of Herb Bennet.

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Common milkwort (Polygala vulgaris). Discovered during my walk to Lavernock Nature Reserve earlier this week, this was the first time I’d seen this pretty little plant, though it’s very small and was almost hidden amongst the other wildflowers and grasses so it may be that I had simply overlooked it on previous visits.

One theory behind its common name is that the flowers of milkwort are shaped like udders and so medieval herbalists, following the ‘signature’ belief (that body parts can be treated by plants that resemble them), used to prescribe this plant to nursing mothers to increase their milk flow.

130/366 Spiderlings

09 Saturday May 2020

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At first sight, from several feet away, I thought this splodge on the side of a building was a dollop of bird poo … but then I noticed it was moving. So, of course, I immediately got out my camera and peered closer.

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They were spider babies, hundreds of them, of the species Araneus diadematus, commonly known as Garden spiders. Both as spiderlings and as adults, these are completely harmless, though, as so often happens, several of the trashy daily newspapers have, in the past, vilified these bunches of babies with such headlines as ‘Woman’s horror as hundreds of tiny yellow spiders erupt from a nest in her back garden’ and ‘Millions of “exploding” yellow baby spiders invade Britain’.

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When they’ve grown to adult size, these little cuties will look like those I photographed for my November 2017 blog post Wearing a diadem. You can read more about the Garden spider on the British Arachnological Society’s website.

129/366 Along the Ely

08 Friday May 2020

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Yesterday’s walk along the Ely river embankment was a mix of treats and unexpectedness. The first unexpected treat was the large number of both Sand and House martins flying low along the embankment: the air around me was alive with their close flypasts and their noisy chirruping. I’ve no photos of them – I was too intent on enjoying their proximity.

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Next up was the sight of a family of Grey wagtails, two adults and their three offspring, flitting about amongst the stones at the water’s edge.

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The Grey wagtail fledgling helps to show the size of the fish

While watching the wagtails, I noticed the water churning at various points along the river’s edge. It was being caused by large fish, feeding on the weed that’s growing on the stones just under the water. Thanks to one of my Twitter pals, Tate, I later learned they were Thick-lipped grey mullet, which can grow ‘to huge sizes’ and which are ‘mostly a saltwater fish but can tolerate fresh water quite far up rivers’.

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After unexpectedly bumping in to a birding friend and enjoying a chat to a real live person (a rare treat in these days of lockdown), my final wild treat was seeing these two Mallard ducklings, meandering along the river with their mother.

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128/366 Dingy skippers

07 Thursday May 2020

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Not only did I see my first dragonflies of the year yesterday at Lavernock Nature Reserve but I also spotted my first Dingy skippers (Erynnis tages).

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At least four of these inconspicuous little butterflies were feeding on their favourite food plant, Common bird’s-foot trefoil, or basking on the compacted earth of the tracks through the reserve, as is their wont.

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Their preferences for bird’s-foot trefoil and patches of bare ground are why these butterflies are often found on chalk and limestone grasslands, on brownfield sites and in disused quarries, amongst sand dunes and along open pathways adjacent to woodland.

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Sun, shelter and good food – it’s not much to ask for. But, sadly, the Dingy skipper is one of many declining species of butterfly in Britain, probably due to the way land is managed and to the intensification of agriculture. So, I feel very privileged to be able to observe and enjoy these lovely little skippers so close to home.

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126/366 The Lady of the Woods

05 Tuesday May 2020

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I know I already posted about seeing my first Orange-tip butterfly of the year (The ostentatious Orange-tip, 15 April) but, for those not familiar with this lovely springtime butterfly, I thought it might be useful to see a bit more detail. So, here is a typical male Orange-tip, from the top and the side. The speckling on the lower wings looks green but that’s an optical illusion – the colours are actually yellow and black.

And here’s a female from both angles. If you only see her from the top, you might confuse her with one of the other white butterflies, though the dark patches are different in all the whites, and the Orange-tip also has a distinctive wing shape.

I managed to find several eggs during a recent walk – the newly laid eggs are white but turn orange very quickly. You’ll find them on the caterpillar food plants: Cuckooflower, Garlic mustard and Honesty are three wildflowers this butterfly favours. And, for the first time ever, I found a caterpillar. This is a 2nd instar (i.e. stage) – the larvae proceed through 5 instars, progressively growing larger, until they are ready to pupate.

You might be wondering why I gave this post the title of ‘the Lady of the Woods’. Well, according to Peter Eeles’s superb publication Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies (every home should have one!), this is the name given to the Orange-tip by Benjamin Wilkes in his Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies, published in 1742.

125/366 Bonding

04 Monday May 2020

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During the past couple of weeks, it’s been fascinating to watch two Lesser black-backed gulls – presumably, the same two who nested amongst a group of neighbouring chimney pots last year – renewing their pair bonds and practising their seduction techniques. The process goes a bit like this …

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They circle each other, beaks thrust towards the sky in unison, and there’s some low bird-speak (as opposed to gull shrieking) …

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One bird (the female, I think) begs the other for food, as if it is a chick, and the second bird regurgitates a niblet of food …

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There’s more circling and beak thrusting and chatter …

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Finally, the males jumps on the back of the female, though it takes them a couple of minutes to spread their wings, tails, feathers to reach the right angle to achieve copulation …

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And this happens more than once, the male remaining on the female’s back until they’ve copulated three times during this one session …

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Once finished, he jumps off, she puts her head down and waggles her rear end, and there is more low chatter, and a little beak bumping, before they both fly off.

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