Sunny Gardens at last

At last spring really seems to have arrived, and I spent nearly an hour in the College Broadview gardens just along a 10 metre long section of path looking at the insects in the afternoon sunshine, as well as listening to the birdsong in the background.

The first insect I put up to ispot was a pretty white-tufted small bee that turned out to be Melecta albifrons, a kleptoparasite usually of Anthrophora plumipes the Flower Bee. Melecta females are generally black in contrast and are supposed to look for the Anthophora aggregations and dig down to the nests to lay their eggs on the surface of Anthrophora's cells.

when the Melecta egg hatches out (one day before the Anthrophora eggs?) the Melecta larva which has fierce mandibles attacks the Anthrophora eggs and any other Melecta eggs and larvae, and the one surviving larva feasts on the Anthrophora food store until the Melecta adults emerge the following spring to repeat the whole process.

The pictures below are of he single male insect seen, apparently sunning itself on the variegated holly leaves by the garden design studio.

Also found nectaring off the Muscari, grape hyacinth, by the path were one or several Bombylius major, the Common Bee-Fly, again checked for species just in case.

A quiet and muddy Dene Park

Late on in the afternoon I took the Western boundary path of Dene Park and had a look at the boundary features of the different paths and component woods. Birds singing included Great Tits, Blue Tits, Long-tailed Tits and Robins. Magpies and Wood Pigeons were also noted.

Working on the convention that at a wood boundary there should be a bank with a ditch to the outside of the bank (so that the ditch spoil gets thrown inwards onto the woodsman's property) the boundary on the outside of the wood appears to be facing outwards on the inner side of this track!

The sign that claims the track as Fairlawne property is therefore apparently accurate, at least at this point! Here is a traditional hornbeam stub a little further along the same bank, where the bluebells appear more profuse or earlier on the bank itself than on the lower ground further into the wood.

I followed the track around, which dog-legs around in a curve to avoid the acute straight lines of the property boundary of the forest lodge. The ditches would seem to indicate straight lines to tie in with the existing outer fence boundaries of the property - in other words the track and the current wood edge seems to have seeped out from the sharp angle to form a more gentle curve and "fill in" the corner of the Fairlawne field. The bank along the second line is lined with oaks, not sweet chestnut.

I then followed the track further on the drive along the edge of the old wood and around the corner, with what may be a newer section of wood to the outside of the track which included sweet chestnut, a sallow and, further on, some planted horse chestnuts. The sallow bark is very broken up, but attractive in its own way,

This planting contrasted with the section to the inside of the track, which had chestnut coppice and then some quite good beeches in it further along. The older section had a good really substantial wood bank fronting on to the track, but without a good line of edging trees, just a boundary to the sweet chestnut coppice. I wonder why this bank is so sharp and deep as it drops down to the track.

In the horse-chestnut section of the wood to the outside of the track, there was a half-buried branch of unknown origin. This is typical habitat for the scarlet elf cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea, which I stumbled across on my second traverse. It had about five fruiting bodies visible, generally a bit worse for wear due to the ravages of time and maggots. I don't think this fungus has been officially reported as present at Dene Park as yet - its not on the species lists I have seen to date.

This fungus, sensu latu, is found across the Northern hemisphere, and is frequent in the UK from early winter through to early spring. The scarlet inner surface, broken edge, outer tomentum and short stipe were all found, but the spores with their elliptical fruiting bodies and oil droplets are microscopic and were not sought today. I must get that microscope up and running!

The Horsechestnuts themselves looked to be in deep trouble, perhaps from a combination of Cameraria, likely rabbit damage and possible blight.

The tree's bark above this is in a terrible way, cracking and peeling away,

and this is an interesting sap run on the same or a different horse chestnut, which could attract some hoverflies later in the year perhaps,

Still further along, the track becomes a bridleway and again there is a bank to the right hand side indicating an original wood boundary.

On the track something appears to have ripped off a few twigs with sallow catkins. I wonder what could have been responsible? Earlier on there was also a collection of freshly broken open and chewed up sweet chestnut fragments on the mossy ground.

A cooler Whetsted on Thursday

A few bumblebees were around but not as many as on Sunday last. Here is a poor picture of a Queen Bombus hortorum, I think, the only species I saw today.

There was also what I think is a blurry solitary bee seen later when I had a closer look at the photos

Plum blossom at Great Court

There was a robin singing in the Green Lane Wood just beyond the footpath junction. Is there a ring on its leg - I couldn't see it in a couple of later photos? The buds on this tree looked ready to break and there was plenty of Pleurococcus algae or look-alikes on the branches. There were a very few patches of lichens also visible.

The weather was still pleasant and the plum blossom was well out along the hedgerow. Its interesting to see the gradual unfolding of the sepals and petals to reveal the cluster of stamens with their tawny anthers, the lovely white of the petals and the eventual reflexing of the sepals. There is a single stigma and style in there as well!

The bumblebees were working the blossom well. Most seemed to be Bombus terrestris, like this individual with a thick necklace of parasitic mites. I think you can see its tongue seeking nectar. There doesn't seem to be any pollen in its leg pollen baskets.

There were quite a few Blue-tits deliberately seeking out the blossom. These may have been taking the pollen (internet sources, and also a couple of anthers were caught on camera "flicked" into the air) or the nectar (Birds of the Western Paleartic source). It looked more like nectar, but this needs further investigation.

And there was also a bullfinch or two moving more quietly and deeper in the branches.

Sallows and shovellers at Whetsted

It was a lovely warm afternoon and the sallows in the hedgerow between the gravel pits looked very promising. The insects seemed to be making their specific choices of the ripest or tastiest trees, and some were therefore much more popular than others, which appeared deserted.

Just beyond the first of the three big oaks, a sallow was attracting honeybees, filling their leg baskets with yellow pollen:

Moving on to other sallows in the row, as well as quite a few more Honeybees, Apis mellifera, I found three species of bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, rupestris and hypnorum. B. hypnorum, the tree honeybee is a very new species to the UK, having arrived since 2000, on the back of a significant expansion of its range in Europe. As this is a new species for me I had it checked out on ispot, and David Notton from the Natural History Museum, and Stuart Roberts from BWARS, amongst a few others, kindly confirmed the ID.

There was also a bee-fly, Bombylius major, hovering as it fed.

Dene Park birdsong in the spring

You get a really clear feel of the layout of the wood at this time of year as you can through the wood for long distances with no, or very little, brush getting in the way.

Singing birds included wood-pigeon, robin, songthrush, blackbird, chaffinch, great tit and blue tit, accompanied by drumming (and squawking) Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, Carrion Crows and Pheasant.

There were bumblebees and some hoverflies on the first sallow catkins I came to but I saw no others, only midges, for the rest of the walk. The moss was jewel-like, the honeysuckle was starting up in leaf and the bluebells were up, promising a fine show in only a month or so.

A Blue tit, Cyanistes caeruleus ssp obscurus was producing a slightly unusual song, and I tried to convince myself (using Xeno-canto) that evening that it was a Coal Tit, Periparus ater ssp britannicus, but the trill is only given by the blue tit.

Happy birthday to me

What a very nice day with much better weather than the forecast had promised. After a leisurely lunch at PizzaExpress and a very pleasant walk down the High Street in Tonbridge, Monty and I set off for a walk around the Access trail and down by the river.

I took the audio recorder with me and made some rather poor quality recordings of the robins, tits and thrushes singing and calling in the woodland and hedgerows. The Greater Spotted Woodpecker was also active mainly in a tall tree along the Green Lane.

A few Queen Bumblebees were seen, but no hoverflies yet, although I carefully checked all of the first of the plum blossom and the sallow pussytails.