There's something in the water

Last week there were lots of families pond dipping outside my office (or perhaps having a competition to see how many thousand tadpoles they could catch, it was hard to tell). Amongst the usual suspects they caught a larva that the leaders were unfamiliar with and they brought it for me to have a look at. I had an inkling that is might be a larva of one of the china-mark moths but they live inside a case made from leaves of water plants and this was free-living. I picked some lily leaves and brought it home where it now resides in a miniature pond (aka a Sainsbury's minestrone soup container!). The next morning it had cut out a piece of leaf and sewn it onto another leaf and was clearly a china-mark larva.

The larva is quite big and I suspect that it is Brown China-mark Elophila nymphaeata but I've never seen and of the china-mark larvae before so will retain it to breed through the adult.

 Keeping it in the soup container was interesting because each day there was a smattering of wet droppings on the lid of the container. The larva clearly fires its droppings upwards with some force! I suppose this makes sense in the wild as it means the water immediately surrounding the larva doesn't get polluted.

The larva has now cut out a second piece of leaf to make a case which it attached to the side of the container above the water line and it has presumably pupated.

On Wednesday evening I called in briefly at Farlington Marshes where I found a number of the hoverfly Eristalinus sepulchralis, a new species for me. It is found in marshes where there is lots of rotting vegetation or the ground is enriched with cow dung. The spotty eyes are just visible in the photo.

Also there was a fully grown Oak Eggar larva wandering in search of somewhere to pupate.

More Wood Warbler news tomorrow!

Insect days

Last Friday I had an insect day. That's what teachers get loads of days off for isn't it? Started off in a wood near Dorking where I was looking for the UK BAP Priority Species Lampronia capitella.

The larvae feed on currants and are consequently subject to chemical onslaught in many gardens. The reduction in the number of people growing currants is probably also an issue. It was saddening to read in a recent Norfolk Moth Group newsletter that an eminent lepidopterist found this species in his garden and promptly sprayed his currant bushes. What hope is there when even someone who should care is not willing to sacrifice a few currants for such a rare species?

The weather was really good and I saw lots of insects for the first time this year including the stunning cranefly Ctenophora pectinicornis. Ok, I'm willing to concede 'stunning for a cranefly'! Go on google it and check out the males antennae (males have a swollen end to the abdomen rather than a pointed end). Sadly this is the one Ctenophora that I've seen before but on Monday I found a female C. flaveolata egg laying in loose sand at Broxhead Common. Also new for the year was the impressive Wasp Beetle.

Later in the day I called in at Chiddingfold Forest and saw my first Wood White of the year.

On Sunday evening I called in to Yateley Common briefly. No Nightingales were heard but I found the larvae of Incurvaria pectinea (closely related to Lampronia capitella) which mines the leaves of birch before cutting out a section of the leaf and dropping to the ground where it feeds on dead leaves.

I also found the larval case of Coleophora hemerobiella which feeds on hawthorn. This case was fixed for pupation.

More catching up to do but need to get an early start on the Wood Warblers in the morning, assuming that it doesn't pour with rain all morning again (thanks weather men for not predicting that at all!).

Close encounters

Been too busy to post anything this week so two catch-up posts, the first covering avian things and the second (probably tomorrow) covering everything else.

Since the beginning of the month the Wood Warblers have continued to be quiet, elusive and very hard to pin down. I have found a few new nests: 'Goshawk wood nest' had six eggs when found on 1st. The male is a colour ringed bird which bred at Whitemoor (a few km away) last year. 'Wet ditch nest' found on 29th May with 5 eggs had six when checked on 2nd so she was still laying when I found it. The fact that she has 6 eggs shows that this is a first attempt, not a repeat after previous failure, so birds are still arriving. All the other nests checked were ok. This is looking very much like 2011 when predation was almost non-existent at the egg stage, rather than 2012 when they were being hammered from day one.

On 4th I checked on the Whitethroats nest found during the BTO course. It had been predated. Later I found a Chiffchaff nest with ringable young but there were just 3 of them - half what there should be. The next day I checked some other nests from the BTO course and it was rather a tale of woe. The Dunnocks were ok with 3 young ringed but the Chaffinch with eggs had been predated and the Linnet had one dead nestling, the rest presumably predated. Surprisingly, the ridiculously exposed Chiffchaff nest was ok and 4 young were ringed. The vegetation is now growing up around the nest, helping to conceal it so hopefully they will be ok.

Today I finally got back to the Forest to check on the Wood Warbler nests, change nest camera batteries, etc. Crossroads nest, Goshawk wood nest and Larch brash nest were all ok and still had eggs. Crossroads nest had had a close escape though, the nest camera showing a grass snake perilously close to the nest:

Ford nest has now hatched and has 5 young 1-2 days old. What happened to the 6th egg, I don't know. I suspect that these partial losses are due to mice but there is no camera on this nest so I'll never know for sure. Wagtail nest had 4 young just hatching and two eggs which will hopefully still hatch. I then found a new nest 'Bridge nest' which had 6 young about 2 days old. This was a pair that I saw early on in May but not since.

Sneaky nest had also hatched and had 5 young 2-3 days old. I spent a while watching what the adults were feeding to the young; 4 caterpillars, 3 craneflies, 1 moth, 1 unidentified adult insect and 2 unidentified items. As is normal at this age, the male was doing the majority of the provisioning. 

I went to check an area that I haven't looked at so far this year. No Wood Warblers but I found my first Redstarts nest of the year. It had 4 young about 8 days old and two infertile eggs (I do find that Redstarts seem to have a high proportion of infertile eggs).

It is often thought that female Redstarts are a bit dull but if the sun catches the tail in the right way, they can be stunning.
 

Gilbert's brother is visiting the site at the weekend so hopefully there will be some pictures that really do these birds justice!

I then went to check on Fir Twig Tent nest and these had also hatched, with 6 young about 2 days old. They had also had a close shave though:

This is surprising as there are very few squirrels in the Forest at the moment. The size of the young at this stage is shown below.

Finally I found a new nest (Log ditch nest). As I stepped into the ditch, the young hissed at me - always a sign that they are quite old and sure enough these were about 7 days old. Sadly there were only 2 young and 4 infertile eggs. The fact that this pair started a few days before the others makes me wonder if the poor weather at the time is the cause of the poor hatching rate - or perhaps I should spray the insects in the area with Viagra?

Woodlarks RIP

Tuesday once again provided evidence that Woodlarks just cannot cope with all-day rain. My colleagues had found a nest with a rather feeble brood of just two young and they were of a suitable age for ringing. They checked the nest at 2.30pm and the young were ok so I travelled up after work but at 6.15pm both were dead. Although the young were known to be 10 - 11 days old they looked more like 7 so the adults were clearly struggling to feed them even before the rain.

Woodlark brood earlier this year

This evening I visited Browndown - a superb area of vegetated shingle on the edge of Gosport. It's an MoD site so there's always a risk that the red flags will be flying and you can't go in but all was ok this evening. The main purpose of the visit was to look for the White Spot moth which feeds on Nottingham Catchfly and is consequently rather rare. I've only seen it once and that was about 10 years ago.

Wandering round before dusk produced my first Dartford Warbler of the year and a few plants to examine tomorrow which will hopefully produce a few new species but I couldn't find any Nottingham Catchfly (which really should be flowering by now) or the rare Little Robin which is mentioned on the notice board at the entrance and is definitely flowering on Hayling Island. Heading back out after dark with lamp and net, I soon came across a flowering Nottingham Catchfly and, upon consulting my book, found that the flowers open at night - doh! Having said that, this was the only plant I found that was actually in flower.

I was surprised that a Nightjar started churring at dusk. Ok so there is heathland on some of the shingle but it seemed rather strange to find one on this slither of land between the sea and Gosport.

I didn't see many moths and White Spot failed to show itself (although it may not be flying yet in this late year). The main species of note were a few Diamond-back Moths, showing that some migration is taking place and about half a dozen Tawny Shears - a coastal species which I don't see very often.

Browndown really is an outstanding site, I must spend more time there.

Living up to their names

Do you ever have days when you'd have been better off staying in bed? Well that just about sums up the last two days.

Yesterday I spent much of the day looking for just one nest - 'Sneaky nest'. Actually this name was coined last year when one pair completely escaped detection until the young were about one day from fledging, despite the fact that there were two other nests in the vicinity which we visited regularly. The adult birds are different this year but they are living up to the name of their territory. When I eventually saw the female drop to the ground I went to get the nest camera before disturbing her. Normally, seeing the spot where a Wood Warbler goes to ground means that you are guaranteed to have found the nest. Not this time!

Ok, let's play spot the nest.....

Now if you're really clever, you'll have spotted the ridiculously exposed Song Thrush nest, 4ft up on the right hand side of the nearest Douglas Fir (unsurprisingly it was empty). I guess you'll need a more close-up picture.

Does that help? Probably not. How about if I put the nest camera on?

I'd be amazed if you can see it even now. It isn't actually the slight dark hole that the camera is pointing at, it's just below that. Putting the camera on was a nightmare as well, threading a cable under all that junk was not fun.

The only other thing of note was a Goshawk that shot past me at a range of about 20 yards when I was sat quietly at the base of a tree.

Having spent so long on this nest I couldn't really face starting on anything else so I headed home via a quick diversion in Lyndhurst to find the larval tubes of Scythris empetrella - my 1539th moth species in Britain!

Today is best just forgotten. The only positive was finding a new colour ringed Wood Warbler of mine but even that turned out to be only half positive as the combination I wrote down hasn't been used! If it was red over white rather than white over red as I wrote then this is 'Jobi' - named by my colleague last year after a footballer of that name with whom she was somewhat obsessed. Actually it turned out to be quite appropriate to name him after a premiership footballer as he was a useless parent, making very little contribution to feeding the young!

Old habits die hard

And so do bad ones. Bad habit number one - staying up too late so you don't get up early. When I finally made it to the New Forest I wandered round a woodland block that I know to hold at least 10 pairs of Wood Warblers. The only song from any of the males was a bit of sub-song from one individual. Everything else seemed to be having time off as well and the woodland was virtually silent.

After lunch I went to install the first three nest cameras on Wood Warbler nests. One camera went on 'Fir twig tent nest' which now has 6 eggs (4 on Tuesday when last checked). This was when bad habit number two came to light - not checking stuff. I forgot that the monitor needed 8 batteries and I only had 4 with me. So I just had to point the camera in the right general direction and hope that it's ok until I change the battery in a few days.

The next camera went on 'Repeat wood nest'. Named as the pair in this wood two years ago tried again after the first nest was predated when they had young. This is unusual, they'll often try again if they fail when with eggs but rarely when they fail with young.

The camera can be seen pointing at the nest (hopefully!) but I ended up moving it back a bit as the female was reluctant to return to the nest.

The final camera went on 'Crossroads nest'. This had two eggs on Tuesday but she had six today and had started incubating so it was safe to put a camera on - I need to wait until she's incubating so I can ensure she will return to the nest when the camera is there.

The nest is under the tuft of dead bracken in the centre. The photo was taken before the camera was installed.

The bad news from today was that I'm now sure that 'Treecreeper nest' female is dead. This was the nest I checked on Tuesday that had no eggs. Well it still has none and the male is still singing strongly. It feels like the loss of an old friend as she was colour ringed last year at her first nest which was predated. She then moved a couple of kilometres and teamed up with a new male and managed to rear a small brood of three late in the season. I remember doing the chick provisioning data collection in monsoon conditions and having great respect for her efforts.

Bad habit number three - twitching. News came through during the morning of a Roller at Broxhead Common. Now I rarely twitch birds these days but it was a Roller, and I've never seen one in Britain, and it's on a site that I used to manage. Ok, so I cracked and went for it. It was fairly distant but gave good scope views and I got a few very poor record shots.

Mainly nesting

Normally at this time of year I would have spent the last 6 weeks doing lots of nest finding. No, Gilbert hasn't resorted to activities of yesteryear, these nests are found to contribute to the BTO's Nest Record Scheme and to enable the ringing of the nestlings. This year everything has been so delayed that I've only really started in the last 10 days or so. As usual, most of my attention is focussed on Wood Warblers in the New Forest but the first nest that I found that actually had contents was a Grey Wagtail that had young which were nearly old enough to fledge.

The nest was ridiculously poorly hidden so it is pleasing that the young managed to fledge the day after these photo's were taken.

Last weekend I helped run a nest finding course for the BTO. Normally we hold the course a week later but we had to switch this year because one of the other course leaders needed to hold his course this weekend. Normally that wouldn't have been a problem but this year......

In 2012 we found nearly 50 nests over the two days, the result this year was 16 and many of those were still being built. On Sunday we spent 10 hours in the field for just one Whitethroat and one Woodpigeon, both with eggs. I suspect that many species are delaying nesting due to food shortages but there is also a problem with lack of vegetation growth to provide cover for the nests. Chffchaff nests are normally well hidden but the one below was visible from several yards away (the nests are domed so what you can see is the entrance hole).

The frustration on Sunday was alleviated somewhat by looking at other things such as the Early Purple Orchids on Butser Hill and a very cold Green Hairstreak which could be picked up and placed in a better position for photography.

The biggest surprise came in the afternoon while we were searching the hedgerows along the road up to Butser when a shout went up of 'Black Stork!'. Sure enough there was a Black Stork soaring over us. No photo because I was running down the road to tell other members of the group.

On Tuesday evening I dashed round all the Wood Warbler nests in the New Forest that I'd found so far (all in the process of being built) to see if any had eggs yet. Including the two new nests that I found during the evening, I now have 8 nests; one is still empty (and a bit concerned that the female may be dead because the male was back in full song), 3 had two eggs, 2 had four eggs and two had complete clutches of 6 eggs and were being incubated.

Normally I vomit when I see tv programmes where the animals have been named (especially when you know that the named animal is probably several dozen different animals) but when Alice worked with me last year on the Wood Warblers, she bullied me into accepting names for each pair / nest and I have to admit that it makes it easier to know which pair is being referred to. At least most of the names weren't people's names (although anyone who knows a bit about the ecology of Wood Warblers will be able to guess how 'Ryan Giggs' came to be named!). So I will continue to name the nests this year as this blog becomes rather obsessed with Wood Warblers over the next few weeks.

The nest above is 'Ford nest' and is relatively well hidden (for a Wood Warbler) under the dead bracken in the centre of the picture. The one below is 'Fir twig tent' and is really exposed. Logic suggests that it has little chance of success but I will be starting to install nest cameras tomorrow so that I know what happens.