Rhos and Conwy

Adult Herring Gull in winter plumage on Rhos Promenade showing characteristically streaky head and nape, but generally adult beak colour.

This is a more detailed shot, lightened to show the detail of the streaking and bill more clearly. This could well be a fourth winter bird, as opposed to an adult, because of the dark marks on the bill coupled with the adult red gonydeal spot, although this is quite arguable. Quite a thick bill, but not long, and probably still of the argenteus British race, as opposed to the nominate argentatus Scandinavian race.

There were also a number of Black-headed Gulls, Choirococephalus ridibundus, in various stages of gaining their breeding plumage around the head.

Here is a nice close up of the non-breeding head plumage, although there is a hint of the head-mask perhaps just darkening up:

In this front view you get a better idea of how wide the beak is as it vanishes into the head feathers:

A little bit later a small group of ducks quite far out to sea turned out to be Common Scoter, Melanitta nigra, rushing about and apparently busily squabbling with each other. I was so pleased to get confident about identifying them - this took me back to when I was about seventeen years old (FORTY years ago now!) and trying to spot these birds for sure off the East Anglian coast, and just thinking they were black dots in the distance!  I haven't seen any since!

I also saw one probable drake merganser flying over the sea at Rhos, but got much better views of quite a few drakes and ducks fishing and also dashing madly around on the pools at the Conwy reserve:

and here is a duck, with the two whitish face stripes fairly clear:

and another duck - amazing how the tail spreads out flat over the water - presumably helping in controlling the pitch - certainly could be useful when preparing to dive?

and then diving - it must be a really powerful shove to get her completely underwater!

This is a second duck in a dive, just a bit further in, and just showing how the arch of the body clears the surface of the water as the head goes down and in, and the tail comes up.

This is yet another duck, also diving but this one has now got almost completely under the water. It looks as though it has used its tail as a lever to arch its body downwards to start the dive, and now the tail is following the body in the angled plane of the dive, presumably as the duck paddles downwards - unless it undulates its body to swim underwater,

and another individual duck I think:

This is the slicked down look, tail flattened against the water and the head feathers slicked back as well:

and a different duck again:

and here is a very heavily cropped duck Pochard:

and a drake:

This is a different pair of Mergansers on the other lake, with the drake leading the duck out of danger!

There were quite a few duck Goldeneye, Clangula bucephala, on the reserve as well, but I didn't see any males. Note the neat orange patch at the tip of this duck's beak, wrapped over the top of the front of the bill, just behind the nail. It has to be said that it is a very odd arrangement really:

This is a Goldeneye diving - a totally different style of dive to that of the Red Breasted Mergansers seen above.

This is a very nice (the photo doesn't do it justice) drake pochard with a smaller white patch on its bill than I've seen in most photos on the web:

Siskins on the Access trail

It was a bit brighter this morning, so before I headed off to North Wales to return Nain to her home in time for New Year, I went back to the Access trail to look for the Siskins and any Lesser Redpolls that I might try to find.

I should have taken my tripod, and certainly missed it once I was on site - the lens really is too heavy to get good photos - I also REALLY need to sort out my ISO number and exposure settings to get better photos.

Here is a shot of a male Siskin, Carduelis spinus, that came fairly close, but it still looks very grainy. The size of the black bib is said to relate to the dominance status of the bird.

The black cap is made more emphatic in displays by the raising of the head feathers. Other displays include wing lowering to reveal the yellow rump and wing stripe.  Males may also make circular flights off tall vantage points with slowly fluttering wings, twittering while they do so - possibly in the breeding season? Pairing should take place over the winter period before migration. Nesting may take place in small groups of say 6 pairs, in conifers.

Siskins tend to winter in very different places in different winters, perhaps looking for different supplies of seed crops.

This is likely to be a different bird:

And this is the same bird as immediately above, but with the picture variously enhanced:

And this is a female or immature I think:

This shot from ARKIVE on the web shows the yellow stripes on the primary wing feathers of the adults? These are the characteristics said by the Barcelona/Manchester group of researchers to be both signs of independent foraging ability and also related to sexual selection by the females. You can see the major coverts to the top of this amazing photo.

This close-up shot of mine shows the secondaries and primaries each with their yellow stripes, partrly hidden I think by the greater coverts while at rest.

Duller and duller....

Very poor on the Access trail today, with no finches in the alders. However there were great tits and blue tits in the plum hedge, blackbirds in the undergrowth and hedges, a robin singing by the gipsy heap and wood pigeons flying fast around the area.

Its still very wet underfoot, as bad if not even worse than yesterday. Here is the only nearly worthwhile picture of the day, of a Great Tit, Parus major. If you look closely at the eye, you can see that the lower margin of the eye ring is actually white, the same as the cheek patch beneath it. This appears to be standard in the species. The beak appears very solid in close-up. The underbelly black stripe is nicely broad as you would expect in the subspecies newtowni, and you can see a black splodge under the tail bump as well, also standard in the species. The photo is fairly well coloured for the distance and the very poor light.

Even wetter on the Access trail

The alders turned up trumps today with about 50 small finches. I thought most were siskins, but several looked far more like redpolls, and one bird was definitely flushed pink on the underside across the breast, strongly suggesting a male redpoll.

Boxing Day on the Access Trail

Weak sunshine, and more importantly, no rain this morning allowed me to get Monty out on the Access Trail.

A small group of great and blue tits was in the Primary School section of the planted shaw, blackbirds in the undergrowth, black-headed gulls on Meadows, and two jays in the plum hedge between Court Mead and Rhubarb.

Several fieldfare were heard (and then seen along Victoria Lane), and a robin sang strongly by the three way corner. More tits, or the same ones, were found where MT 133 meets Victoria Lane, and then what I think were redpolls were both seen and heard on the alders planted by the Red Pond.

As we left two corvids chased what I thought was very likely a buzzard off to the North East. No photos today I am afraid, but a lovely walk nevertheless.

Cliffe in December

This picture is of a flock of dunlin wheeling very fast over the far side of the reserve, about a thousand present altogether on the roost I would think. This flock were put up from roosting with several hundred grey plover on the edge of the pools at high tide. 

Other waders present included well over a thousand black-tailed godwits, a couple of dozen lapwing, several ringed plover, at least one avocet, one greenshank, and several redshank.

Duck included hundreds of tufted duck, smaller numbers of Shoveller, Shelduck, Teal, Pintail, Goldeneye, Clangula bucephala, Scaup*, Common Scoter* - and a Velvet Scoter* that I didn't see! Also great crested grebe, little grebe and coot, all in large numbers. 

There may have been many more birds on the pools further over, but I didn't have time to cover the whole of the reserve.

The Scaup and Common Scoter are *new birds for me, very exciting!

The next two pictures are of the drake Scaup seen on Flamingo Pool, distinguished from the Tufted Duck by its grey back (rather than black), greenish rather than blueish shine to the head, lack of a tuft, and  

North Wales coast

There is just so much I have to learn, its endlessly fascinating, but quite scary.

I think these are maybe first winter oystercatchers, Haemotopus ostralagus, a bit more foolhardy, dark tips to the beaks, dark eyes, slightly browner (less black) backs (?), less well coloured legs (apparently quite obvious I would have said). Both have the white chin-strap of the winter plumage, one more clearly than the other. They seem to have quite short strong bills, so may be males if the sexual dimorphism is clearly seen in the young birds as well as the mature ones. The bills are quite orange as opposed to yellow to my surprise as young birds, so they are a bit confusing.

Corylus at Dene Park

Had to shift up to Dene Park today to walk Monty, and so had a look at the hazel leaves alongside the widened rides. I thought there were hazel big bud mites, Phytoptus avellanae and Phyllonorycter coryli on the upper surface of several leaves and a Stigmella type mine too long vacant to identify. 

Bewl Safety Boat and bonfire fireworks

Spent the day on Bewl Water in a very cold safety boat - but what a beautiful day! Great company from Jonathan - what a splendid chap - and a photographer as well. Pity I wasn't able to take the camera out with me, so missed out on recording all the beautiful views. Due to forgetting where I had last left my sailing boots, tried using trainers instead - worked very well indeed!

Black headed gulls in winter plumage, Herring Gulls, a couple of pair of mallard, and several cormorants.

We think because of fireworks bangs and whistles, Monty has decided it is safer upstairs than downstairs.

Autumn activity at Tudeley

I parked up  by the RSPB car park, where there was a female Eristalis tenax (pictured below) and another Eristalis, possibly Eristalis arbustorum, working some of the last of the Common Fleabane, Pulicaria dysenterica. There was also a female Sphaerophoria sp.

I left quite quickly and walked down to the sandy ride towards the heathland walk. The heather was not being as actively worked as my last visit and for example I would say that I saw a few Helophilus pendulus today, rather than many.

The Eupeodes male wandered around the patch of Tormentil, Potentilla erecta, and seemed to be taking nectar from the convex receptacle of the flowers, between the many stamens. The Rose family is often characterised by producing huge numbers of stamens with prodigious quantities of pollen in their anthers, but the more "advanced" genera also produce nectar on the gynophore, and that is what I assume I am seeing here.

Birch bashing at Tudeley

Spent most of the morning moving the birch cut earlier in the year and piled in patches around the site to a roaring fire. we probably left enough to make a habitat pile or two.

After lunch, very pleasant, we had a bit of a go at clearing the birch seedlings and bracken to try to give the heather a bit of a chance to flower and thrive. That was slow and very hard work!

Highlight of the day was the appearance on several occasions of some very tame young wild boar that came up to us repeatedly, first as a group of about half a dozen, and then as individuals, presumably expecting food!

Reservoir path at Tudeley

Its very late in the year now, and hoverflies seem few and far between. The weather was poor, with a cool breeze blowing clouds across the sky intermittently threatening rain. However I wanted to try an area that had water near by, with a chance of a few remaining flowers, as dry flowerless areas seem to make very poor hunting grounds. The reservoir path at Tudeley looked good, although ideally I would be out reasonably early in the morning, not towards the end of the afternoon.

I was looking for anything and everything: spiders, bugs, leaf-miners and fungi. I moved slowly, hoping that shyer stuff would show itself. Suddenly I saw a small hoverfly moving slowly low down in the foliage by the side of the path, and on first sight it looked as though it had a waisted abdomen, and I thought could this be my first Baccha elongata, long overdue for such a common species. So it turned out, although the photos were tricky, and it could be argued that I should stick to Baccha sp. as an ID, allowing for a split to be re-established between the two original species suspected to exist in the UK, Baccha elongata and Baccha obscuripennis. This is a female, the males may be even  more elongate!

The eyes on this fly look almost absurdly large and wide on the head, especially in comparison to the very narrow abdominal segment 2! I am so glad to see this species at last, this individual presumably being part of the known second peak in the year, which is said to be in September by S & F.

The yellow banding on the rear edges of tergites 2 and 3 are more visible in this blurry photo of the insect in flight:

The abdomen didn't seem swollen with eggs in the next photo, and I couldn't see any of the reddening of the female abdomen that often seems to be associated with such swelling.

In some of the photos on the web (although I don't get much of this from my photos except maybe this last one) it looks as though the wings are slightly spotted, with the stigma and a couple of slightly discoloured cross veins all about half way along the wings, and maybe at the tip. On the website "LifeDesks Flower Flies Syrphidae (entry by Ximo Mengual)" it quotes the following "cross-veins and extreme apex of the wing faintly clouded in some specimens", so that seems to fit.

The yellow rear edges in this photo look a bit more like spots than bands here, although this isn't supported by the photo of the fly in flight - again however there is some support from this on the LifeDesks website entry. Tergite 4 looks to have the start of some yellow at the rear of the tergite, small hints of triangles on  the lower sides. I also think I believe some yellow dusting (pruinose?) on the lower thoracic pleura.

This fly is said to be rather a shade-lover, and rather more difficult to spot than some! Having seen one I'll have to keep my eye out for some more! The habitat here certainly fitted part of the S & F habitat profile, a shady woodland ride, quite humid with nettle beds close to hand.

Ranscombe Farm with the Field Club

Myathropa florea, Eristalis tenax, Eristalis pertinax, Eristalis arbustorum, Sphaerophoria scripta, Episyrphus balteatus, Melanostoma scalare, Volucella inanis,

Interesting solitary wasps

Both Acerias on Acer

Corncockle, Nettle-leaved Bellflower, Fluellens, Ground Pine, Blue Pimpernel, Stinking Iris,

Greensand Way path down from West Peckham

Episyrphus balteatus, Myathropa florea, Melanostoma scalare, Epistrophe grossulariae, Syrphus vitripennis/rectus, Eristalis pertinax, Dasysyrphus albostriatus, Eristalis arbustorum, Meliscaeva auricollis, Sphaerophoria, Cheilosia illustrata, Chelosia sp., Common Red Soldier Beetle,

Hedge Woundwort, Black Horehound, Fireweed, Hogweed, Dandelion, Nettle, Ivy, Sycamore seedlings, Enchanters Nightshade, Alkanet, Lettuce, Coltsfoot, Nipplewort, Roberts Weed, Selfheal, Geum urbanum,

Green Woodpecker heard. Kestrel overflying Matthews Lane on way back. 

Haysden Country Park

A bright male Eristalis arbustorum photographed well with most characters seen: whitish face, bright abdominal pattern, yellow on T2 continuous with T3, pale base to hind tibia, swollen hind metatarsus, dark tip to mid tibia, dark tips to mid and front tarsi, a hint of long hairs on arista in one photo.

This picture concentrates on the swollen hind metatarsus.

Also seen were Eristalis pertinax I think, and Eristalis tenax definitely. 

To the Pheasantry and back.

Eristalis arbustorum and Eristalis pertinax, bug, Carder bee, white/buff tailed bee, honey bee, Volucella pellucens,  Episyrphus balteatus, Small White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, Holly Blue, Common Carpet, seven spot ladybird, spider.


Spearmint, meadow vetchling, vetches, water mint, water parsnip, common centaury, ragwort, yellow loosestrife, woody nightshade, yarrow, common knapweed, black horehound,                  

Back to Dene Park

I found a nice moth on the grassy meadow which I think must be a species of Epirrhoe, perhaps the Common Carpet, Epirrhoe alternata.

Interesting to see the greyish tuft of hairs on the side of the thorax of this female Episyrphus balteatus. She seems to have a swollen abdomen (full of eggs?) and to be taking pollen directly from the anther. Note also the small facial bump, the whitish frons with the small dark Y above the antennae and the longitudinal stripes on the top of the thorax.

I photographed two Eristalis and both of those turned out to be male Eristalis pertinax.