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.

Talk on Greater Horseshoe bats at Stackpole, West Wales

After a long day at work talking to students about their Project statistics, it was great to hear Penny from North Wales talk about the very extensive research done on the Greater Horseshoe Bats at Stackpole:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stackpole/wildlife/view-page/item683965/

Slow amble around the side of the Ocean at Leybourne Lakes

The Greylag Geese are still around in numbers at the Ocean, noisily posturing to each other:

These two might perhaps be a pair, the male behind?

and Greylag Goose N3P is still at Leybourne Lakes it appears.

There was a Great Crested Grebe just off the feeding area.

These were Greater Sallow catkins, Salix capraea, by the side of the Ocean.

and these untidy ones are the male Salix viminalis trees at the far end of The Ocean, pretty much over by now. I wonder whether all the trees here are male, perhaps indicating a single scattered planting. Perhaps there are no females:

There were two Lesser Black-backed Gulls on the Railway Lake, The bird on the left might be a bit chunkier with a thicker bill, so might be the male of this putative pair. The wings seemed to me quite dark, and I did wonder whether this might be two birds closer to the over-wintering continental race Larix fuscus intermedius rather than the more typically British L. f. graellsii. Ohlsen has intermedius as being found overwintering in the South of England with graelsii being found across the whole of the country. However the detailed pattern on the wing, particularly the presence of the small but full window on P9, may indicate just two particularly dark graelsii.

This bird was seen later, on its own, and may perhaps have been a different individual to the two above. At least this one had quite a large window on P9 as well as the one on P10. That would tend to suggest that this bird is a male, but the greater overall size, beak thickness and "viciousness of look" of the males can be very difficult to be sure of unless you have males and females side by side for comparison. This bird does however look quite chunky, and the bill in particular looks very substantial. 

Lesser Black-Backed Gulls of the graelsii/intermedius types have increased greatly since the 1950s, but this contrasts with the serious decline in the nominate fuscus of northern Scandinavia, which is now threatened. 

There were also Herring Gulls on both Lakes and regularly overhead.

A blustery Mote Park with Lichens

Ramalina

There is supposed to be a very large Holm Oak there, Quercus ilex, listed In Bean's Trees and Shrubs, "Mote Park, Kent, 88 × 8 ft (1984);" but I do not remember seeing it at all! I wonder if there is a map of the Mote Park Trees? I shall have to ask Jadie.

This crustose lichen is I think a species of Lecanora, a very common species quite tolerant of high aerial Nitrogen, which Maidstone appears to be very subject to. The tan to brown centres of the "jam-tart" apothecia fruits are just visible, they should become more obvious later. This might be L. chlarotera, one of the commonest species of this very difficult complex.

 
This is the second extremely common crustose species we found, with black "jam tart" fruits and I think this is probably a Lecidiella species such as L. elaeochroma.

I think this one below is a Parmelia species, perhaps P. sulcata. The lobes of this species are stated to have distinct white lines and dots along which soralia form, and you can see the white "crinkling and dotting in this photo. The thallus is said to be rather flat, which I would not have said was obvious in the picture. The closely related P. encryptata can only be separated by DNA analysis.

This is Flavoparmelia caperata, which is said to be apple-green. I think the colouring is easier to see a) in real life, and b) from a distance. Although this is difficult to see in the image below, compare the greeny "greyness" in this particular thallus to that of the very grey lichen to the bottom right, possibly the Parmelia.

Flavoparmelia is not at all common at Mote Park, where there is probably too much N in the air for this species, and we only found this on one of the half dozen trees we looked at. The photosymbiont in Flavoparmelia caperata is thought to be Trebouxia (or Pseudotrebouxia?) gelatinosa, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/0-306-48173-1_23#page-2, which is thought to be able to produce zoospores and potentially free-living colonies, thus allowing later recombination with other strains of the fungal mycobiont http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=960512.

This large tree trunk is covered in two main lichens, one of the common Xanthoria species (one common one is X. parietina) almost reliant on high N. levels, and then a grey Physcia sp. with very narrow lobes in comparison to the Parmelia we looked at earlier.

This is I think a Phaeophyscia species, a foliose grey lichen very lobulate at the margins, next to developing thalli of Xanthoria:

Cherry or Myrobalan plum - Prunus cerasifera

The hedge-line of trees between Rhubarb and Great Court is in full blossom at present and definitely seems to be Cherry Plum, Prunus cerasifera, rather than the rarer "Wild Plum".