Castle Ward

A sunny hot day at Castle Ward, County Down, produced a very nice mix of wildlife, tourism and garden plants.

As far as the birds went, I got a few photos of what seemed to be a second calendar year female pied wagtail, Motacilla alba yarrellii, on the foreshore below the farm at Castle Ward, with its dark grey and somewhat blotchy back, leading gradually into the black cap and a blackish rump (the latter not visible in the first photo below). I remember clearly as a child seeing what I think now must have been individuals of the European race of this bird, Motacilla alba alba in its winter quarters in Africa, particularly on the watered lawns of the yacht club and the posher houses in my then home town of Dar-es-Salaam.

I was surprised to see how brown the primary feathers in this bird were. The outer greater coverts are also browner than the inner ones indicating the mixed age of these feathers. Browning may indicate wearing of the feathers. I wondered if it was a first summer bird, as described in several websites such as http://www.birdguides.com/webzine/article.asp?print=1&a=2544  but this is said to be an unreliable characteristic after the spring, according to  http://www.digimages.info/bergri/Wagtails_MotacillaAlba&Yarrellii_DB32-4_2010.pdf.

Another option I investigated but quickly rejected, is that this is a juvenile bird, hatched this spring and moulting into its first year plumage. This bird just wouldn't fit as juvenile plumage. In addition this bird today is very similar to the bird photographed at Morfa on the 10th of April, so both are presumably first summer (2cy) birds.

This is a fairly easy bird to identify to subspecies because of the time of year. As it is summer this must I think be a residential 2cy female (?) bird of Motacilla alba yarrellii. Migrating birds of the European subspecies Motacilla alba alba are more difficult to separate in the autumn than the spring, but it is a bit too early for migrants, and the features do not seem to particularly match alba. Reference to this ID sheet is generally useful, file:///C:/Users/davidc/Downloads/THE-SEPARATION-OF-WHITE-AND-PIED-WAGTAILS%20(2).pdf.

Further information is available on  http://www.chog.org.uk/Ringing/Features/Autumn%20Wagtails%20Identification.htm  and  http://birdwatchidblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/autumn-white-wagtails-easy-id-shortcut.html

In this picture the mixed age of the greater coverts is even more obvious. The newer coverts show good broad white edges to the feathers, as yarrellii should. The bird is quite dark grey on the upper flank as well I think (does not seem to be just a shadow cast by the wing), another characteristic feature of yarrellii.

This is perhaps the best picture of the continuation of the black feathers into a blackish rump, yet another feature of yarrellii. Again I think the dark grey of the upper flank can be seen.

Further along the foreshore I came across a different bird that appeared to be a male bird just doing some early moulting - the fluffy down of the old body feathers is over the outside of the new feathers, but still the overall impression is of a very black coloured bird, a putative male. It cannot be a 1cy bird as I had first thought, because they are very much greyer.

In this picture you can also see how fluffy the breast is, and overall the bird is quite tatty. It is quite confusing because this is strictly too early for moulting.

Down on the shore, there were also Herons, Ardea cinerea, Black-headed Gulls, Chrioicephalus ridibundus scavening along the tide line and Common or Artic Terns, Stena sp., fishing out in the deeper waters along Strangford Lough. Later on in the woods, there was a Blackcap, Sylvia atricapilla singing unseasonally and Jays, Garrulus glandarius, calling. Other birds included Blackbirds, Turdus merula, Songthrushes, Sparrows,  and Woodpigeons, .

The Black-headed Gulls were largely breeding adults with no signs yet of moulting to non-breeding plumage. These are two different birds, alike as two peas in a pod.

The Grey Heron, Ardea cinerea, was too far away to see any detail.

At the Taggarts on Sketrick Island

While the post-wedding lunch went well, fuelled with Tom's work at the barbecues I was able to explore the island a bit along the two roads left and right from the causeway around half of the island's circumference.

Down at the high tide mark turning left as you come across the causeway I found a couple of plants of Lax-flowered Sea Lavender, Limonium humile, together with some plants of the much commoner plant Scurvy Grass, Cochlearia officinalis. Lax-flowered Sea lavender is frequent in Ireland, and also found in Scotland. As Common Sea Lavender, Limonium vulgare, is absent from Ireland, we don't have to worry about the complications of hybridisation, so we can be pretty sure we have the species as such. I could confirm rosettes of ascending leaves arising from a woody rootstock, each leaf with pinnate veins, and a tiny thorn at the tip (mucronate?).

The flower clusters were well separated along the stem, and I think I could also half-convince myself that the outer green bracts were slightly keeled on their outer surfaces (backs). Only one flower was sufficiently open to look down into its throat and confirm that the anthers were red-brown rather than yellow. However it was difficult to be sure that these leaves were narrower than those of Limonium vulgare without a clear side-by-side comparison. There was also a suggestion from a good website that the bracts at the stem branches should be red rather than green, but I didn't pick any of those.

This plant is also known to gardeners as Statice, and produces "everlasting" flowers. It is certainly a very attractive plant in the wild.

Next up was a single plant of what looked like Scots Lovage, Ligusticum scoticum. The leaflets seemed to be too long, but on the other hand, nothing else in the Carrot family looked to be a likely match, so that is my best bet. this is recorded in this area but is a plant of concern as its population is apparently declining. I could see linear bracts at both levels of the inflorescence, the fruit looked the right shape, and the leaflets were trifoliate and shiny.

Finally there were some small plants under the hedge of White Ramping-Fumitory, of Fumaria capreolata. The first thing to do was to measure the length of the flowers and ensure they were large enough to be this species. I could also confirm the reflexed flower stalks, and the white flowers, pinched together vertically, just before (?) the purple tips. The sepals were largely transparent, but once I understood that, it was very clear that they were ovoid structures pointing forward sitting vertically on either side of the flower. As there were no fruit it was not possible to comment on the fruit shape. This plant is said to be quite common in the Mediterranean region, but in the UK it is mainly in the S and W, and more commonly found near the coast.

Birds seen on the shoreline included Herring Gulls, Common Gulls, Larus canus, Black-headed Gulls, Oystercatchers, a Curlew, a Heron, a Cormorant (eating various prey caught by diving, including an eel), and "Comic Terns" fishing in the distance.  

Down to Whetsted Gravel pits

As I got down to East Lock I paused to check for insects and particularly hoverflies at the wild-flower seed enhanced area just north of the lock. I had by now seen several Eristalis pertinax and here was my first Sphaerophoria female of the day, hovering about the Perforate St. John's Wort, Hypericum perforatum.

There was also this very nice hairy red beetle, which I feel should really be recognizable to someone if I had the gall to put this single side view on ispot !

While I was looking at the pictures of this Lesser Stitchwort, Stellaria minor, I noticed a tiny grub, possibly a Lepidopteran caterpillar (?) on the left-hand flower.

Crossing Poor's Meadow I saw that the farmer had started to cut the grass for hay, as is the tradition. The meadow is not particularly flower rich, but may contain some Dyers Greenweed on the southern wooded margin according to the BSBI visit report.

As well as keeping the field traditionally managed, the farmer has also, by accident or design, left the broken down old oak tree as a dead wood habitat.

After Poor's Meadow I crossed the wheat crop, which was ripening well, on the clay field which contains the Shepherds Needle Scandix pecten-veneris,

Moving on to the gravel pits themselves, there was a very nice patch of Hare's-foot Clover, Trifolium arvense, on the gravelly patch down at the southern end of the causeway across the west gravel pit. This plant is locally common in the Southeast of England, particularly at coastal sites and almost always on sandy soils. I am sure this particular patch has been here for several years, annually regenerating itself from the seed, which has effective dormancy mechanisms.

These are the woolly pink inflorescences that are the most obvious sign of the plant's presence - the leaves are fairly insignificant by comparison.

Here is a close-up of a single inflorescence - you can see the tiny whitish flowers in amongst the purple hairs of the calyces, each in turn fringed with a light pink fuzz, most easily seen in outline on the side of the inflorescence.

This is an older inflorescence in the centre, with the flowers browning from the base of the inflorescence upwards. On the left-hand inflorescence. a single white "pea-family" flower is absolutely fully open.

This may be a better close-up of a fading inflorescence specifically to show the hairs arising the calyx in the centre and the fuzz on the side of the inflorescence.

These are the narrow, grey, somewhat hairy (the hairs are adpressed) trifoliate leaves, with the two pointed reddish somewhat filiform stipules.

The plant keys out on the BSBI crib sheet for the genus, http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Trifolium_Crib.pdf. It is potentially a very important plant - it apparently contains a gene affecting tannin condensation that if successfully transferred into white clover could both increase yield and also reduce both bloat and methane emissions from cattle. This is due to be commercially available in about 2025, if it comes to market.

Another plant I found, in good numbers along the paths around the gravel pits, was the Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus corniculatus, in the pictures below possibly the cultivated variety cv. sativus. This variety, often used in wild flower seed mixes differs from the normal wild plant in having a hollow stem, being more generally yellow, and is also larger and more robust than the native wild form. When I cut the stem of this plant across it was clearly hollow, so my thinking is that it should be cv. sativus. I also checked the key species-characteristic feature, that the sepals were forward pointing, and not reflexed in the bud stage as in the Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus.

In the picture below you can see the suffusion of orange in the petals at bud stage, the way the developing pod pushes the brown remnants of the corolla forward as the pod ripens and lengthens, and the generally forward pointing nature of the sepals.

I do keep on looking for the Greater Birds-Foot Trefoil, Lotus pedunculatus, but never seem to find it. This is known to be a similar robust plant which also has a hollow stem, but should be easily distinguished from corniculatus, whether sativus or not, by the reflexed sepals in the bud, no suffusions of red in the petals, and more than 5 (7) flowers in one inflorescence.

Another plant I was very glad to see today was the Common Centaury, Centaurium erythraea, which is only just starting its proper summer-long flowering season.  The flowers are a lovely pink, held on square stalks (both the pedicels and peduncles are square I think).

Part-way along the causeway I had come across a Long-Winged Conehead nymph, Conocephalus discolor, green with a dark stripe down its dorsum. I hadn't come across this insect before, and in its nymphal stages it is certainly a striking animal.

On the brambles in the hedge-line between the two western gravel pits there was what looked like an adult male (no oviposter) Dark Bush-Cricket, Pholidoptera grisoaptera, with its vestigial wings. I used this great site to try to compare the species. http://www.orthoptera.org.uk/account.aspx?ID=13 but I could not see the underside, which should have been yellow.





This is the first time I have seen the Azure Damselfly, Coenagrion puella, down here at Whetsted Gravel Pits - so I shall have to check the so-called "Common Blues" far more carefully in future. As this was also in the brambles by the big hedge between the gravel pits it may have come out of the small ditch there, as opposed to the Common Blues coming out of the main gravel pits themselves. I still believe the vast majority of the blue damsels seen on this site and around it to be the latter species.

For comparison, here is a Common Blue Damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum, seen earlier, slightly tangled in some silky fibres, sitting quite quietly on the top of a fencepost along the causeway.

One of the nastiest insects around is the Horse Fly or Cleg, Haemotopota (pluvialis perhaps) with its vicious bite. There was one on the causeway which I admired before I fully realised its identity.

To the West of Hartlake Bridge

Quite a few White butterflies around today, and if the picture below has been correctly identified, they were all Small Whites, Pieris rapae.

There were also several Comma butterflies (Polygonia c-album) along the path - I was particularly glad to see these as it seemed to me that the numbers of Commas are a bit down, in contrast to the recovery of the Small Tortoiseshells. I really cannot tell if these are the "lighter underneath and brighter on top" Hutchinsonii form that should produce a second 2014 generation in early autumn this year, as the sunlight and shade so affect our perceptions.

A little further on I found a tiny insect on a Mayweed flower that I thought might be a solitary bee. On looking at the photos on the computer screen it turned out to be Microdynerus exilis a solitary "potter" wasp that uses old beetle holes in decaying wood and whose larvae are fed on weevil larvae. It is nationally scarce, Southern in distribution, and only added to the British list in 1937.

Here is a link to a Flickr page showing the sort of hole this potter wasp might possibly be using.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pennymetal/14499206175/in/pool-wild_bees

On the Bramble flowers there was a well posed Episyrphus balteatus, a very common hoverfly indeed this year.

As usual there were a lot of Banded Demoiselles, Calopteryx splendens, around the river area.

and this is a close-up of the female on a Bristly Oxtongue, Helminthotheca echioides, inflorescence:

Tower path

Walking from the start of the access trail in the village, it is possible to turn West behind Hadlow Castle and the Tower, along a shady path that comes out on the grassy path area between Meadows North, the Fisheries pond and the ha-ha of the Castle Grounds. Here the grass is allowed to grow longer and in consequence it is a small haven for insects.

After a couple of Meadow Browns (Maniola jurtina) I saw a small skipper flying too fast and orange to be a Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus). I was pretty sure they would be Small Skippers (Thymelicus sylvestris) as it is fairly early in the season, and the Small Skipper is usually a fortnight ahead of its congener species, the Essex Skipper (Thymelicus lineola), but after I saw the close-ups of the photos I became very unsure. The antennae looked black-tipped from most angles I was able to get at, and IF at least some of the insects were males, then the scent glands were short, thin and parallel to the wing edge.

The two photos below are the same insect at different magnifications, and show what I think is a male Essex Skipper, with a short thin scent gland parallel to the edge of the wing. It is really difficult to be sure of the antennae tips.

This is the same male, demonstrating I think at least on the right antenna the deep black on the antenna tip, which does seem to extend to the underside.

This photo is of a different butterfly but it also looks very like a male Essex Skipper. I must admit I was surprised, as I hadn't thought that we had colonies in the Parish, and it looks as though this is one just under our noses.

This is another individual, but again clearly showing the black-tipped antennae

The behaviors involved in mate location, courtship, and mating are described for Thymelicus lineola . Males emerge first and patrol in search of mates, spending >50% of their time in flight. Mate location appears to be primarily visual although males do not readily discriminate between sexes, approaching conspecific males as frequently as females. Both males and females have a typical refusal display, but males are persistent in their approaches, which could explain the occasional aggregation of males around a mating pair and the recovery of two male pairs “in copula.” Male behaviour is discussed in the context of maximizing mating success, given that T. lineola females generally mate only once and sex ratios are often strongly biased in favour of males.

There were very good numbers of male Common Blue Damselflies (Enallagma cyathigerum) in the long grass area, and this one was hanging on to a Cats Ear (Hypochaeris radicata) head. It slowly bent its abdomen up in a stretching movement, for unknown reasons!

There are also a lot of Cinnabar moths, Tyria jacobaeae, and their caterpillars around. Here is a caterpillar on the flower head of Ragwort, Senecio jacobaea.

and here are two more, on top of another inflorescence cluster.

There are also starting to be increasing numbers of the common soldier beetles, Rhagonycha fulva.