Four-spotted Chaser

I have spent a couple of days and have walked a good few miles of river bank already this year looking for the more unusual dragonflies and in particular the Club-tailed Dragonfly. There have been a couple of sightings on the Arun and I know where to look for them, or at least I thought I did, but so far nothing. There have been a few possibles at a distance but nothing that I could photograph or really be certain about.

Instead I have had to fall back on some of the more common and more easily photographed species. In particular the Broad-bodied and Four-spotted Chasers. At least they put down occasionally and allow you to get a bit closer.

Four-spotted Chaser

Broad-bodied Chaser

I am hoping that it is just everything being a bit late this year. The eastern side of the country has been cold and very windy for a couple of weeks now but with the sun coming out and the temperatures going up, things should start to improve. It is odd though, that the much smaller and weaker flying Damselflies seem to be about in good numbers.

Common Blue Damselfly

Blue-tailed Damselfly

Blue-tailed Damselfly in teneral state just after emerging

Azure Damselfly

Common Blue Damselfly

Common Blue in mating heart

I am not sure on the one below. I think it is probably a Common Blue female.

Dragonfly hunting has been a bit disappointing so far and with spring seeming to be squeezed into shorter timescales this year I am running out of time to see all my targets.

Glanville Fritillary

I made a return visit to Hutchinson Bank today to see how the Glanville Fritillary colony was progressing. When I visited in 2014 the colony was only just becoming established and despite an extensive search I could only find one butterfly, a female. Today I saw somewhere in the region of fifteen to twenty of them. I am told that the transect is showing twenty four and that we have not yet reached the peak emergence.

This is the rarest of the UKs butterflies with only this colony and one on the Isle of Wight. It is on the northernmost edge of its territory and a bad winter, parasites, or other threats could see it become extinct in this country.

Attempts, by persons unknown, have been made to establish other colonies. These have been at Sand Point in Somerset, Avon Gorge, and Wrecclesham in Surrey, probably using stock imported from the continent. All these colonies seem to have died out, although they are not declared as such, until they have completed three clear years without sightings being made.

There have also been short lived colonies at Hurst Point and other locations on the Hampshire coast but these could well have been seeded by migration from the Isle of Wight.

The population of the Isle of Wight colony fluctuates wildly. This may be due to bad weather or perhaps the impact of parasites that exist alongside the colony. Parasites that at the moment do not appear to be present at Hutchinson Bank.


At the moment it looks like another bad year for the IoW with very few sightings being made so far. They should recover, weather, if that is the cause will improve and it is rare that a parasite wipes out its host completely. If anything should happen to it, at least we now have Hutchinson Bank as a back up holding UK stock.


Update: Good news - fifty plus Glanville Fritillaries reported on Compton Cliffs on the 29th May.


Are the Hutchinson Bank Butterflies real or "plastic"? Well the colony seems to be self sustaining with eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis and imago all being found at the site. However, there is a butterfly house and breeding program to provide a back up to the site. 

Evidence of natural breeding at the site is shown below.

With plenty of the caterpillars food plant on the site it looks as though next years generation are safely on their way.


See my blog of May 2014 to find the story behind the naming of the Glanville Fritillary butterfly.

and below my first Small Blue of the year

Small Blue

See a recent blog by the warden for the site, also a Martin, for some more great pictures and in particular for a shot of an aberration ab.wettei. It would be worth going back just for the chance to see one of these.

Stilt Sandpiper

Stilt Sandpiper is a new bird for me. So today, I was happy to spend a couple of hours at Pennington Marsh, watching one foraging on the floods at the back of Fishtail Lagoon. It is certainly an odd looking bird. The books say it looks a bit like a Dunlin or a Curlew Sandpiper and I suppose that it does, although for me, the first bird that came to mind when I saw it, was a Ruff with a long bill.

Photographing the bird was difficult. It was too far away. I took about a hundred pictures and each time I pressed the shutter release I knew it was another wasted effort but I had to get a record shot of some sort. You just hope, that when you get them home on the computer screen, you find something worth keeping.

The next shot shows a size comparison with a couple of Dunlin. You can see that the legs are long but the bird seemed to prefer the deeper water for wading and feeding and I could not get a clear picture of them.

The picture below shows some of the identifying features. Long legs; slightly down curved bill; white rump; wings long, uniform brown above, with no wing bars and a pale trailing edge; white supercilium; and barred breast.

Great bird to see. I just wish that I could have got a clearer picture of it.

A quick walk around the marsh gave me the usual mix of birds but I also found a couple of male Garganey hiding in the long grass.

Waiting for the Gadwall to stop preening and pose for a picture -
but what is that in the reeds behind

Eventually one of the Garganey came out for a quick swim around

On the way back home I took a detour through the New Forest. I usually only go there in the winter, when it is a lot quieter. Stopping at Marks Ash Wood, I went looking for an old tree that used to regularly have a Tawny Owl perched up in it. I new exactly where to look for the tree but it was surprisingly disorientating, trying to locate it with all the leaves on the trees.

As I approached the tree there was a lot of noise from small birds mobbing some form of threat. My arrival must have been the final straw for the Owl, which promptly flew off, pursued by a small flock of harassing birds. Nice to know the tree is back in use but I will leave it until the winter before I have another look.

Next stop was the Milkham Inclosure. I often see reports of Crossbills from here so it was worth a quick look. There were no Crossbills that I could see but I did get two Cuckoos calling as they flew over my head. My first actual sighting of the year. It was just a pity that my camera was safely packed away in the back of the car.

 Eyeworth Pond is always worth a quick look. I usually go there for close views of  the small birds. They come in to feed on the seeds that local people put down for them. However this time I was hoping that the Mandarin Ducks had produced some offspring. They had, but mother duck was keeping them safe on the far side of the pond, close to their usual cover under the trees.

Also present was one of my old favourites. There were three of them but he seems to be on his own now. They may not be on the British List of birds but I still like them.

Muscovy Duck

and a nice Collard Dove waiting patiently for someone to feed it.

A nice day out, finally caught up with my first Cuckoo of the year and a life tick with the Stilt Sandpiper. Can't be bad!

Damselflies

I had a late start today and ended up visiting a number of local sites. The objective was to see a Common Cuckoo. This was really driven by seeing the Great Spotted Cuckoo at Portland earlier in the week and then realising that I was yet to connect with a common this year.

For a bird that has such a distinctive call and often perches out in the open during the breeding season it is proving surprisingly difficult to find this year.

As far as the objective goes it was unsuccessful. I heard three possibly four Cuckoos but did not manage to see any of them. Nor were there many other birds around. Fortunately I had taken the macro lens with me and I did come across a few Damselflies although strangely not a single Dragonfly. 


Banded Demoiselles were the most common. Nature produces some amazing colours and the metallic blues and greens on these insects are truly stunning.

Banded Demoiselle - male

Banded Demoiselle - female

There were a few "blue" Damselflies around but the only one I managed to photograph was this Azure

Azure Damselfly

 and there were also a few Large Reds

Large Red Damselfly

Butterflies were much in evidence with Orange Tips, Peacocks, Red Admirals, Brimstones, Tortoiseshells, and a variety of whites on the wing.

Green-veined White

The Cuckoo will just have to wait for another day.

Marsh Fritillary

With our trip to Portland this morning delivering a life tick on the Great Spotted Cuckoo we moved on to Cotley Hill in the afternoon for the Marsh Fritillaries. 

They have been lost from the South East and I think that Cotley Hill is now the nearest place to home, where we have a chance of seeing them. Last year we arrived too late in the season and the butterflies were past their best. Although they are a weak flyer, they seem to damage easily and worn specimens take on a greasy appearance. One of the old names for them is the Greasy Fritillary.

This year we were looking for newly emerged specimens and we seem to have timed it just right.

 

In most of the country the Marsh Fritillary inhabits damp wet areas but in a few places on the downs like Cotley they exist on dry grassy slopes. Given that it can survive on such varied habitat it is difficult to see why it is in such serious decline.

 

You need sunshine to be able to find them. As soon as the sun goes behind the clouds the Marsh Fritillary drops into the grass and will often bury itself deep out of sight.

 

 

 Last year we had them nectaring a lot more but I expect this early in the season they are more intent on finding a partner for breeding.

It was the Marsh Fritillary that had drawn us to Cotley Hill but it is a good site for other butterflies as well. We saw Grizzled and Dingy Skippers, Common Blue, Green Hairstreaks, Meadow Brown, and a couple of Wall Brown.

Female Common Blue - perhaps unusual in tending more towards the blue/grey than the usual brown

Grizzled Skipper

Dingy Skipper

Wall Brown

Wall Brown

Some great pictures of the Marsh Frits and a new first for me. The first time I have produced two blogs from one day out. It's so much easier when you have interesting subjects and you manage to get some good pictures.