Holborough Marshes

A very pleasant walk around Holborough Marshes, starting off in warm sunshine, getting gradually cooler and just caught by the first start of the rain as we approached the car at 6:30 p.m. Then off to Pam's for lamb champ chops cooked by Paula, with Monty smelling strongly of the marsh ditchwater. Nightingales singing strongly!

In the narrow strip of woodland leading out to the river wall just at the start of the reserve, there were four Speckled Wood, Pararge aegeria, all of them that I saw likely to be males. They were in apparently obvious territories, from ground level to about waist height, and I saw one duel. One was already quite battered, and it seems that each individual adult only survives for approximately one week, perhaps feeding off honeydew up in the canopy. These will have over-wintered as chrysales. There will also be over-wintering caterpillars, an almost unique scenario amongst butterflies to have these two options, which still have to form chrysales and which will then be on the wing from sometime in May in their turn, peaking in June. It was impossible to tell if there were three spots or four spots on the top of the hind-wing in these insects.

This is the same butterfly's head in close-up, demonstrating the irridescent hairs:

While photographing the Speckled Woods, the camera caught the underside of a Greater Celandine leaf, Chelidonium majus, with its long thin silky hairs:

Here are the flowers of the Greater Celandine, with the same silky hairs, this time on the outside of the sepals.

One of the high points was a female Gooden's Nomad Bee, Nomada goodeniana on a Dandelion flowerhead (Taraxacum officinale) - apparently they seem to be seen on these quite often . The lack of any red on the abdomen, the unbroken yellow bar on T2, the yellow tegulae, the yellow tubercules (many on this specimen) all point to this species. The orange antennae have no black on them and have only 12 segments, the eyes are reddish rather than green spotted and the abdomen has only 6 tergites, so this is a female.

In this side view the pattern of yellow bands on the tergites and sternites of the abdomen can be seen, as well as the long mouthparts seeking the pollen or nectar in the capitulum.

Nightingales at Leybourne

11 Nightingales together with Whitethroats, Sedge Warbler, Willow Warbler, Chiff-chaffs, Blackcap, Cuckoo, Blackbirds, Robins, Swallows, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe, Black-headed Gulls, Herring Gulls, Blue Tits, Great Tits.

What a lovely spring day, even if a bit cool and breezy.

My first leaf beetle of the year (how slow I am) on Salix caprea.

There was a nice chunky Andrena, quite possibly Andrena flavipes, on the Goat Willow, Salix caprea. Prominent abdominal hairbands make it one of the few of the reasonably identifiable Andrena species, long dark hairs on the last segment. I think I should knock the aperture down from f5.6 in these sort of shots to at least f16 to improve the depth of field, even if it means upping the ISO significantly.

This is a bivoltine bee, March-June and July-September, so the timing of the date today is good support for the ID. The bee is highly polylectic, but of course Salix is a fairly predominant pollen source at this time of year.

There was also an Eristalis species with clear abdominal lines as well, possibly .

Hamstreet Woods NNR

This was a great visit to the NNR with Phil to share my enthusiasm for both wildlife and photography.

Underneath a decaying log I found a disco fungus in the Ascomycetes, probably Mollisia and maybe Mollisia cinerea.

And a little further along the decaying wood there was a large red mite, very still!

There was a nice little white Springtail as well, but too out of focus.

On the top of a nearby stump was a possible Slime Mould, perhaps Lycogala terrestre.

On some of the birches we saw later there were some hoof or tinder fungus brackets, Fomes fomentarius, very common wherever there are Birch, or Beech further South I understand:

There were a few burrows about 15 mm diameter by the side of the main path. A large beetle perhaps?

Through the middle of the woods we came across some Wood Bittercress, Cardamine flexuosa, with 6 stamens in the flower and a lusher "jizz" to it than the Hairy Bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta.

Here is a nice photo of a Primrose, a Bluebell and a Wood Anemone all together!

There were also a few violets:

For birds, there were Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Nuthatches, robins, Blackbirds, Songthrushes, Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, Green Woodpeckers, Jays, Jackdaws, Woodpigeons and a Sparrowhawk circling high above the wood.

We saw one of the less than a dozen mature Wild Service or Chequer trees in the Woods, and bemoaned the lack of young trees there. The bark is wonderfully craggy and beautifully if discretely coloured:

It has NOT moved from Sorbus into Torminaria, so remains Sorbus torminalis.

The hornbeam is breaking buds and the leaves are expanding rapidly.

Oare Gunpowder Works on the first really hot day of the year!

A wonderful wander round the Country Park full of munitions production archaeology and natural history. Three Peacock, two Brimstone and four female Orangetip (?) butterflies. A nesting pair of Bluetits, Sparrowhawk, Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs, Chaffinches, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Green Spotted Woodpecker, Woodpigeons, overflying Herring Gulls, Black-headed Gull.

Yellow-legged Mining Bees, Andrena flavipes ( a guess!), Lasioglossum poss calceatum, Episyrphus balteatus, Sphaerophoria sp.,

Ivy-leaved Speedwell, Veronica hederifolia, was in at least one spot in the ancient (rather dominated by sycamore) woodland, quite a common plant generally across most of the country, an early introduction by man (intended or not) and I think a very nice little plant to see. It is a "winter annual", probably germinating in autumn, spreading by seed. As the fruit ripens it bends downward, allowing the ants to collect the seed, attracted by the scent of the associated oily appendage.

Single small light lilac pink flowers with long stalks in the leaf axils, heart-shaped sepals (not always easy to see), petals short so said to be almost hidden in among the (claimed to be) slightly larger sepals, leaves with short stalks, veins only from base of the 5-7 lobed leaf, not from a central midrib, therefore "palmately veined leaves" (the only speedwell like this I think), small, softly hairy low-spreading plants, photos attached. Like the other Veronicas it has now been reclassified from the Scrophulariaceae (Figwort family) into the Plantaginaceae (Plantain family).

There are actually two recognised subspecies, ssp hederifolia (2N = 54) and ssp lucorum - aka sublobata (2N = 36), with different chromosome complements (Tetraploid and Hexaploid, as the seed is fertile?), I tend to think this is the latter, with longer flower stalks and lilac flowers with pale anthers which is rather less common, but typically found in woodland rather than arable/verges, although I think you really need it in fruit as well to give it anything like a reasonable guess (BSBI have an excellent online plant crib)! This subspecies does not seem to be recorded in this NBN 10K square.

Broadwater Warren with Tree Pipits and Woodlarks

A really nice quiet relaxing afternoon at Broadwater, much less windy than yesterday but not that much warmer. Tree Pipits definitely identified today, so I was reassured about my identification of them yesterday.

ID points include the clearly visible eye ring, the clear pale sub-moustachial stripe, the strong bill, pinkish legs, very curved (short?) hind claw, the change from the strong broad streaking on the breast to fine streaking on the flank, the whitish belly in contrast to the buff chest and flanks.

Clear dark centres and pale fringes to the feathers make the median coverts stand out very clearly.

This bird was singing its heart out:

Dungeness with ducks, grebes and geese.

I was very pleased to see a female Goldeneye on the left viewing from the Dennis hide, and then delighted to see a small group flying across the front to the right in front of the old lighthouse, which I just managed to catch with the Sigma lens.

I talked a bit about the male displays and the overall lifestyle in another blog, Goldeneye at Cliffe Pools.

It was really nice to see the Great Crested Grebes fairly close in to the front of the hide:

There were good numbers of Northern Shovellers, Anas clypeata, all across the Burrowes Pit. In this individual the whitish channel of feathers between the chestnut ones above the leg can be seen. I have looked for it online, and detected it in a number of other examples, where the thighs are thrust forward. However I have to say that I don't understand exactly what is going on here. Could it be the down feathers beneath?

A closer view:

A view of the white channels from the rear! You can also see the tail pattern of the central dark area with the surrounding white feathers to the side of the tail.

There are four species of Shoveller ducks in the World, the Northern, Anas clypeata, that we are familiar, the Cape, Anas smithii, from (mainly) Southern Africa, the Australasian, Anas rhynchotis, from Australasia (!), and the Red, Anas platalea, from South America. They are all in the genus Anas, and I assume that they all have a common origin - perhaps!

The shape of the bill is to do with the feeding diet. The bill is used to filter tiny animals such as Cladocerans, such as Daphnia, and Ostracods out of the water. This is a very specialised diet, and one of the major problems is that Cladoceran populations crash in mid-summer, leading to significant weight loss over the summer in the Shoveller males, and even apparently death in the females, and perhaps the young, despite their attempts to turn to alternative sources of food. The males cope at least in part by really great efforts to build up reserves by intensive foraging earlier in the year, and then minimising their foraging when their diet is scarce, apparently remaining in hiding, somewhat unseen.