A few short safaris around the garden

The Safari is laid up after another hand operation at the mo so we've not been able to get out into the wider world and we've only just about been able to manhandle the small macro lens. For much of the time we've been incapacitated the weather has been pants, more like the middle of March than the end of June...and yes our heating came on early morning on 2nd and 3rd of July - that shouldn't happen, it's supposed to be summer!!! But for a few short days the sun shone and the wind didn't blow too hard.

A couple of days before going into hospital we were up early and spotted two Coal Tits on the feeders, an adult and a juvenile, where had they come from they don't nest nearby, and were the first of the year here and only our fourth record at our new Base Camp. They left to the south and we weren't expecting to see them again but a couple of hours later the juvenile returned on its own.

After all the bad weather the warm sunny days brought out a multitude of insects in the garden. Solitary bees have been very few and far between this year, indeed our 'bee hotel' has no occupants at all, so it was good to see a tiny Furrow Bee, one of the Lasioglossum morio group of very similar species that need more than 'normal' macro photos to identify them to species level. This one is in a Common Catsear flower.

Another one resting on the nearby fruit bushes had alraedy been busy collecting pollen. It's having a drink of something too, nectar?

Also on the fruit bushes was a black and orange blob which on closet insection turned out to be a ladybird, of unknown species as it hadn't yet aquired any spots, which had just emerged from its nymphal skin - we've never seen that before

Also nearby were several froghoppers were secreted in the base of the leaves, probably Common Froghoppers.

When we say nearby we do mean very close by as the vegetated part of garden is only about 40 feet long and twenty wide. At the back of the garden there are some overhanging twigs and small branches from our rear neighbours garden which we are very thankful for as they provide landing sites for 'our' House Sparrows; and Coal Tits - see above! Our neighbours to the left have 'inherited' that awful plastic grass and have no living stuff at all, our neighbours to the right have a well vegetated garden but we are separted by the thickness of two garages. An unknown neighbour feeds the local Grey Squirrels all manner of good things which they bring to our lawn and flower boarders to cache for later.

As much as we don't like Grey Squirrels and would much rather there was a local population of Red Squirrels, which is never going to happen, we do prefer them to next door's (left) plethora of flamin cats, they've got a sh*t load of them...and most of them do their sh*t in our garden digging up our cornfield annual meadow in the process - we hate them and so does the Mutt.

Moths have been in very short supply this year, we've only had the trap out twice and caught precicely nowt. Now that we're incapacitated it's not likely to come out for some time so we've tried wine ropes for a change - this plan has gone awry as an mothds they atrract will be on the wing long after we've gone to bed seeing as how it's mid-summer, we'll keep them refreshed and as the days shorten see if anything is attracted to them. Mothing is no restricted to finding dayflying species or chancing upon roosting ones. Our dayfliers include the tiny but lovely Mint Moth, shame they aren't the same size as a Red Admiral butterfly.

Our other dayflier is a much more specialised species and is listed as Nationally Scarce, the Currant Clearwing.Despie the bad weather most of the year we found our first one on exactly the same day as last year - allowing for the 29th of February - how mad is that. We usually see just one or two basking on the Blackcurrant bush's leaves.

But this time found one sucking nectar from the adjacent Blackberrry flowers. We weren't sure if they were one of those species who's adults have no mouthparts and can't feed - obviously not!

We even found a pair mating - it's amazing what you can see if you lurk around the shrubbery for long enough!

Still taking random pics of whatever settled long enough to focus on w got a Broad Centurion, one of the Soldierflies. There mere many more of these in and around our little mini-meadow than in the shrubbery.

There are very few large hoverflies about and  we were pleased to get a shot of Myathropa florea, the ammusingly nicknamed 'Batman' Hoverfly.

Bumble bees do our head in, we never seem to be able to get a good pic, is it because they never stay still and their eyes are so black and lacking contrast with the rest of their head you often don't get a highlight in them...and then theres the identification nightmare of some very similar species. This one is Buff Tailed Bumble Bee.

While concentrating on this bee something much smaller under a leaf beneath the flowers caught our eye

It looks like an aphid crossed with some other type of true bug. We only got this one shot and can't tell if those thick black things are part of its forelegs or antennae. It's obviously actively moving, it moved quite quickly, normally aphids sit fairly still...any ideas anyone? 

Just a bit too high up in our Apple tree we found an old favourite Pimpla rufipes on the hunt for moth caterpillars to parasitise.

Meanwhile back lower down we saw another ladybird emerging from its nyphal skin

The Bramble flowers were pulling in most of the insects including this Common Yellow Faced Bee, you can just about see a bit of the yellow face in the top pic. They are miniscule compared to the nearby bumble bees, only 5mm long at most.

The Bramble and Blackcurrant  bushes' broad leaves make idea look out perches for a variety of flies including the very numerous Greenbottle, Lucilia sericata

And another similar species we don't know the name of which is a stunning bronze colour. We don't recall seeing this one last summer.

Could they be male and female? If so why have we never seen the bronze ones before??? The do have a greeny sheen in some lights but in dull conditions they are definitely bronze.

As alluded to earlier most of the hoverflies were seeing are the smaller species and even then not that many of them. We think this one is Syritta pipiens...about 8mm long.

Out on the hunt for hoverflies was a species of predatory wasp Ectemnius cavifrons with it's distinctively weird antennae

Another predatory wasp we came across turned out to be the Nationally Scarce Gorytes laticinctus.

Look at those eyes! What and how do they see compared to our eyes, we're sure we wouldn't recognise the seen in front of us if we could see through their eyes.

It's munching an unfortunate victim

Thi species has apparently been expanding its range northwards this century and we've added a dot to the most up-to-date map, the second most northerly so far and the most northerly on the western side of the country, the most northery being on the other side of the pennines somewhere around the York area. We're sure they're overlooked and there are many more to be found well to the north of us - eyes peeled folks!

What a fantastic couple of days on safari no more than 50 feet from the back door. Look after the little things and they'll look after the bigger things. And we all need to start looking after the little things, there's an Insect Apocalypse underway and if they go down they'll take us with them. Something many of us can do is as easy as not mowing some of your lawn. Take part in #NoMowMay, follow it with #letitbloom injune and then our new hashtag #HelptheBeesflyinJuly. We keep a mown edge around our wildflower area so you can tell it's managed and supposed to be like that. With the aid of a paper bag we go out in the local parks and countyside areas and collect wildflower seed to sow once we've cut the meadow at the end of the summer making sure we let  the hay dry and any seeds fall to the ground before raking it up and composting it. The more different species you have the better as some will flower in some years and not others, a wider diversity will mean it won't look the same two summers running and that's part of the excitement - what's going to come up this summer?

Yellow Rattle, being a hemi-parasite, is good for reducing the vigour of the grasses and we would recommend getting some in your meadow.

Those few days were the end of summer, it's now back to unseasonally cold, sometimes wet and very very windy the latter being very damaging to the garden. Please can we have some warm calm days back please...the sooner the better.

Where to next? Our hand is recovering from the operation nicely so we might be able to get a bit further afield next week - physiotherapy appointments permitting.

In the meantime let us know who you've discovered hiding in plain sight in your outback

Down, up, around and back - Part 1

The Safari met up with IH who drove us down to Southampton for a watery safari aboard the good ship Borealis as part of the Ocean Wildlife Encounters team of wildlife guides helping the guests enjoy and identify the marine life seen from the ship during the week's cruise. Our route would be a circumnavigation of Great Britain (the geographic island) and visits to the Outer Hebrides and Shetland (not part of the geographic Great Britain).

Before we boarded the ship we had a day to fill down on the south coast, where better to spend it than the RSPB's fabulous Arne reserve full of crazy invertebrates, all the UK's species of reptiles and some great birds we don't see up north and a site neither of us have visited before. We got our reserve map and some directions of what to look for where from the very helpful staff at the reception area and set off full of eager anticipation of what the day might hold. what unusual (for us) wildlife would we find? Blackbirds and Blackcaps sang as we ventured down the path, nothing unusual so far then. A small bird on the path in front of us caught our attention, it seemed to be pecking at something - a Coal Tit, again not unusual. BUT what it was doing was deffo unusual and something we'd not heard of before, the thing it was pecking at wasn't a substantial caterpillar but a pile of Fox droppings. No, it wasn't eating it but teasing out hair presumably to line its nearby nest. We've not seen that before and nor had we even heard of such behaviour before. That's the wonder of nature there's always something new to discover and even 'commonplace' species can surprise you.

By now any hint of sunshine was disappearing and a cool wind started to blow probably ruling out any chance of finding any reptiles although we did keep our eyes peeled along the sides of the paths for Adders and Common Lizards in the Bracken. Sadly we had no joy. 

We wandered up to the viewpoint to get our bearings and have a scan of the habitats we were about to traverse. Among the Heather on the heathland we came across a couple of day flying moths which we didn't recognise. They turned out to be a species we don't see around Base Camp nor our regular safari haunts, Common Heath.

Lunch was taken in the hide overlooking Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island, no we couldn't see their famous Red Squirrels from there. We did however see a different unusual (for us) mammal, a couple of Sika Deer were sheltering under the woodland fringe very distantly across the saltmarsh to our left. Another top spot by IH. There wasn't much birdlife on offer in the creeks below us but a couple of keen youngsters told us they'd seen a tern further out, they though it might have been a Sandwich Tern, but did they know there's been a Forster's Tern from America in the area for quite some time? Another birder told us they'd seen one of the re-introduced White Tailed Eagles earlier in the morning. We had to make do with a pair of Ravens on the beach.

The weather deteriorated as we continued our stroll around the reserve, getting colder and duller all the time. Hearing a Cuckoo brightened our spirits but everything else was keeping well hidden. And then the rain started and by heck did it come down! We made it to the cafe just in time to avoid a severe soaking. The next hour and more was enjoyed looking out of the windows while drinking hot brews washed down with ice cream. It wasn't all bad though, a Cuckoo flew right over our cafe window and we had five species of finches visiting the feeders, there may have been six but when we stood outside the check for Lesser Redpolls, possibly seen from inside, none showed up. Eventually the rain stopped and we headed to the extensive heathlands were we heard a Woodlark flying overhead and a little later one singing. We caught up with the keen youngsters who tried their best to get us onto a Dartford Warbler that they'd found not long earlier. It wasn't to be but eagle eyed IH did return the favour by getting them onto a pair of Woodlarks on the other side of the path. We were too early in the day, and possibly the tear, for any Nightjars to be on the wing but the area in front of us did look bob on for them. There wasn't much else about apart from a couple of Stonechats and after the rain a lot of Biting Midges! So back to Southampton it was before the rain started again. 

Somewhat annoyingly we joined the ship the following lunchtime (always a good time to board a cruise ship) in lovely sunshine - why couldn't it have been like that yesterday?? We met up with the other half of our OWE team, MK and SB.

  
Once introductions, lunch and ship's formalities were over it was time to don our 'uniforms', take up postion on deck and make ourselves known to the guests. The first thing we noticed was the huge number of small Ladybirds all over the back, sorry stern - we have be all nautical now - of the ship. Most of them appeared to be 7-Spot Ladybirds and they had probably been attracted to the ship's lights overnight. A couple of dozen Brent Geese were on the mudflats on the other side of the river and we also saw Peregrine, Raven, IH found a Wheatear and one of the guests had seen an Osprey...not bad before casting off!

Mid-afternoon we set sail down the Solent with clear skies, warm sunshine, a calm sea and a sackful of eager anticipation of what the voyage might bring.

We got out on deck early in the morning to thick fog! A full 'sea day' like this wouldn't be much cop!!!Thanfully it soon cleared and we began to see numbers of Gannets, Manx Searwaters

and Fulmars. We had three bucket list 'species' to see while aboard. we missed the first of these which was seen from during breakfast from the restaurant, Basking Shark - dohh would have been a Lifer! The calm sea was a boon for spotting and we soon started seeing Common Dolphins and Minke Whales. We almost got a pic of the latter. How can you miss something so big?

The lack of wind wasn't conducive to seabirds flying, they like wind they can glide rather than waste energy flapping so many of them were just loafing around chilling out in the sunshine on the sea. A pair of Gannets even used the down time to do a bit of courting

Kittiwakes have been having a hard time recently with Avian Flu taking a severe toll on them and climate change changing the distribution of their favoured prey species making them harder to find so it was good to see some of last year's youngsters among the adults.

Some off the Cornish coast in deep hazy mist we passed a pirate ship, or is it just a Spanish galleon?

Further into the Celtic Sea we came across large rafts of becalmed Manx Shearwaters

which had no option but to scutter out of our way as we got too close

Steaming northwards between Pembrokeshire and the Irish coast a small pod of Common Dolphins came towards us.

After reviewing these shots we realised we'd be better with the shorter lens for cetaceans, particularly fast moving ones like these. The field of view on the long lens was just too narrow to be able to keep finding them when they were close enough to fill the frame, the shorter lens with its wider field of view would have stuck with them and given the opportunity to see more of the spread out pod although given a smaller image when they were closer...that was our theory, would it work? We hoped so and as we travelled on towards the southern tip of the Isle of Man we had plenty of guests eagerly watching the sea for any hint of action.

Unfortunately we had no more cetacean sightings just more becalmed seabirds.

The sun set among developing Mammatus clouds at the end of a grand day at sea.

The day's final tally was 38 Common Dolphins, 12 Minke Whales, 4 Grey Seals, 3 Harbour Porpoises, 3 Bottlenose Dolphins and 2 Risso’s Dolphins (which we missed) plus the Basking Shark and two stowaways, a Collared Dove and a Chiffchaff.

The following morning we awoke parked up in Belfast lough.

Right next door to the RSPB's Window on Wildlife reserve and a bloody huuuggge wind turbine rigging ship.

Where to next? Belfast and beyond coming up in Part 2.

 

In the meantime let us know who's come over all becalmed  in your outback.