17 Saturday Aug 2019
Posted in flowers, nature, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Field scabious, Knautia arvensis, scabious, wildflowers
Most of the scabious I see in local parks and reserves is Devil’s-bit but there is a small area of Field scabious (Knautia arvensis) at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. The insects love it for its nectar and the birds, in autumn, for its seeds. Can you see what’s lurking on the stem?
11 Sunday Aug 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly migration, Clouded yellow, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park
For those who don’t live in Britain, we’ve had some wild weather over the past few days, with torrential rain at times and some very high wind gusts. I was starting to go stir crazy so, as soon as it began to clear around midday today, I headed out for a walk.
I was wondering if I would spot anything unusual the wind had blown in … and I did! This blast of sunshine, a Clouded yellow, an occasional migrant to our shores, was flying around in the east paddock at Cosmeston.
01 Thursday Aug 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
2019 Painted Lady influx, British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly migration, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Painted Lady, Painted Lady migration
I’ve been pondering what the most descriptive collective noun might be for a group of Painted Ladies? Apparently, for butterflies, there are several possibilities including swarm, flutter, flight and kaleidoscope. The latter appeals because it conjures well the vision of a mass of beautiful, ever revolving colours. I thought of a ‘pleasure’ of Painted Ladies but the double entendre is a little tacky.
Then, one of my Twitter acquaintances came up with ‘privilege’, which is just perfect, thank you, Martin. Because it certainly was a privilege to see 27 of these gorgeous creatures as I walked the fields at Cosmeston yesterday (and I’m sure there were a lot more than that). We’re not getting the thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) that have been arriving along England’s east coast in recent days, but it’s still a lot for this area and it was an absolute delight to see so many.
22 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Green woodpecker, juvenile Green woodpecker
Two visits in a row I’ve seen this juvenile Green woodpecker and its parent in the same area at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. (You can tell it’s a juvenile by the dark streaking on its face and underparts.)
it was checking out a Nuthatch further up the tree
It’s a small fenced off area where not too many people venture but that makes it all the more attractive to me. The lack of frequent foot traffic means it’s a good place to observe birds and butterflies, and I guess the adult woodpecker has also realised it’s a safer place for its offspring as the juvenile begins to make its own way in the world.
the adult Green woodpecker
This is not the only juvenile Green woodpecker in the park at the moment. After seeing these two the other day, I also heard a lot of yaffling in another location and, as I approached, saw four Green woodpeckers fly up from the ground into the neighbouring trees. Whether that was two adults and two juveniles, or one adult and three juveniles, I’ve yet to discover.
19 Friday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, juvenile Long-tailed tit, long-tailed tit
A pack of juveniles they may be but I saw no delinquents here.
These are the cute little bundles of fluff known officially as Long-tailed tits, and yesterday, at Cosmeston, I followed a flock of perhaps 40 of these, with an assortment of Great and Blue tits and Chiffchaffs, all young birds, as they were feeding.
Following a shrubby fence line, they pecked about amongst the low trees and bushes, and also ventured out into the field of wildflowers, perching precariously on the stems of tall umbellifers while surveying the surrounding plants for small insects and caterpillars.
It was a great delight to watch them and, being young, they were not as wary of my presence as adults might be, so I managed to get some reasonable photos.
18 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
#365DaysWild, British flora, Cirsium acaule, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Dwarf thistle, thistle, wildflowers
During today’s walk around Cosmeston I spotted a plant I’ve not seen before – or, at least, I’ve not consciously noticed before. It’s so easy to just walk over the things growing under your feet – although, in this case, if you were walking barefoot you couldn’t help but notice it!
It’s the Dwarf thistle (Cirsium acaule), and it’s easily identifiable as its single flower almost completely lacks a stem – the gorgeous purple flower sits right on top of a rosette of wavy and spiny edged leaves.
This thistle prefers to grow in low grasslands, particularly on calcareous soils, so it does tend to be quite localised but can be found in England as far north as Yorkshire and in south Wales.
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
British moths, clearwing moth, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, day-flying moth, moths, Six-belted clearwing
Believe it or not, this amazing creature is a moth, an aptly named clearwing moth – you can see parts of her wings are not covered by scales so are transparent. She is a Six-belted clearwing (Bembecia ichneumoniformis) and I know it’s a female because she only has five belts, i.e. five yellow stripes on her abdomen – the males have six.
I discovered her completely by chance – I was scanning the ground at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park for butterflies and happened to notice her stripes. Cosmeston actually has the perfect habitat for these moths as they like chalk and coastal grasslands and quarries, and their caterpillars like to munch on Common Bird’s-foot trefoil, which grows locally in abundance. I’m amazed, then, that there have been very few locally recorded sightings – maybe everyone who spots them thinks they’re wasps or bees.
These are day-flying moths and the adults are on the wing between June and August, so I’ll be on the look out for more of them over the coming weeks.
30 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, aberrant butterfly, aberrant Meadow brown, British butterflies, butterflies, butterfly, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Meadow Brown, pathological aberration
I feel like I should be apologising for featuring butterflies three days in a row but this little butterfly is so interesting that I just had to share it. There are a ton of Meadow browns flitting around the wildflower fields at Cosmeston right now and they mostly look like this – or, at least, the females do.
So, I think you can see why the butterfly in this next photo caught my eye. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a really clear shot of it, as it kept flying further into the flowers and I didn’t want to trample them, but you get the idea. Thanks to a tweet from UK Butterflies, I now know “This aberration is referred to as ‘pathological’, where wing scales fail to pigment – thought to be caused by some type of damage (physical or chemical) to the pupa. Asymmetrical examples are known too where only 1 wing is affected.” Isn’t it fascinating?
26 Wednesday Jun 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, Black-tailed skimmer, British dragonflies, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, dragonflies, dragonfly
I was just saying to someone the other day that I haven’t been seeing many dragonflies this year and what happens? The very next time I go walking at Cosmeston, I see several.
These two Black-tailed skimmers were the most obliging, as they tend to station themselves along the pathways through the wildflower fields, rising up as you get near them and then re-settling a little further along the path. If you watch where they land and you’re slow and quiet as you approach, you can get quite near them.
25 Tuesday Jun 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Moorhen, Moorhen chicks
On April Fool’s day I reported on the hatching of five Moorhen chicks in one of the ponds at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. Nearly two months on, I’m delighted to report that all five of those chicks are still alive and thriving, and they now have a brand new bunch of five siblings, their parents’ second brood of the year. Raising them is a real family affair, as the older siblings help to feed and look after their little brothers and sisters. And there’s still time for the mum and dad to have yet another brood. I’ll be watching.
