Grizzled Skipper at White Hill

While I was photographing a Peacock Butterfly, Aglais io, in the middle of his territory, it flew off and was almost immediately replaced by a rather nice Grizzled Skipper, Pyrgus malvae, which somewhat amazingly I recognised!

Here are a few photos of it nectaring on Wild Strawberry, Fragaria vesca, a little cropped, but a nice fresh specimen.

This species is decreasing, and this is the first individual I have seen for certain. Its abdomen looks like that of a male.

The males bask, chasing rivals in fierce dogfights, and are more commonly seen than the females. However, the females can sometimes also be spotted fluttering about, investigating possible egg-laying sites.

The small bun-shaped eggs are laid on Rosaceous plants such as Wild Strawberry, Agrimony or Creeping Cinquefoil among others. They take 10 days to hatch and the first stages feed around the edges of a silken shelter, then fold leaf edges over to make tents of increasing size. Warm wet weather in July tends to correlate with better emergence the following year.  The pretty chrysalis is found at ground level in silk webbings, most overwintering over 9 months, in warm springs a very few forming a second generation in August.

Preferred habitat is a mosaic of short vegetation, bare ground and taller plants, on land such as chalk, rough ground, railway cuttings and unshaded woodland glades and rides. Now rare north of the Cotswolds and Chilterns. 

Dingy Downs

A nice Dingy Skipper, Erynnis tages, on Fackenden Down - I wish I'd found my own, but very gratefully received anyway! This is a butterfly in trouble nationally, and I've only seen a very few, and only singles at any one time. It might be worth repeated visits to try to hit the peak.

Its not at all bad patterning when you get up close. I like the abdominal edging and the antennal stripes. This one might be a male (left hand forewing):

Its quite a hairy butterfly on the underside - I wonder if that helps it to collect warmth from the ground?

And this is a slightly better view of the underside of the wing:

This species lives in fairly small colonies, say of 50 adults at peak flight time, and is relatively sedentary, a few individuals flying perhaps a few km from the original colony. Meta-populations may not remain very effectively linked as habitats become increasingly fragmented and distant. The species is a priority species on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil Lotus corniculatus is the usual foodplant in all habitats. Horseshoe Vetch Hippocrepis comosa is also used on calcareous soils, and Greater Bird’s-foot-trefoil L. pedunculatus
is used on heavier soils.

Eggs are laid singly on young leaves of the foodplants and females choose the longest shoots of large plants growing in sheltered situations. The larvae hide in tents formed by spinning the leaves of the foodplant together and feed through the summer months. When fully grown, each larva spins more leaves together to form a hibernaculum in which to spend the winter. Pupation occurs the following spring in the hibernaculum, without further feeding.


It was great to see the cowslips, Primula veris, out

The dark blue of the Germander Speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys

Wryneck weirdness!

Had a lovely walk down to Reculver Marshes this afternoon - slow and concentrating on bird ID. over the railway line a kindly birder walked me back to where the Wreyneck was - its so easy when someone points a bird out to you!

The Wryneck is a really weird looking bird. Its colouration is all odd - the spots and streaks remind me of dazzle camouflage from WW I.

House Sparrows. Pied Wagtail. 10+ Swallows flying out to sea and along the coast. Also 14 Turnstone, some in breeding plumage, 7 Cormorants, Herring Gulls, 1 Black-headed Gull, 5 Oystercatchers. 7 Sedge Warblers, 2 or more Reed Warblers, 3+ Whitethroats, 5 Blackbirds, 3 Robins. 1 Little Egret, 2 Redshanks, 17 Mute Swan. most in one group.

Salix viminalis catkins

Returning to Leybourne I looked in particular at the catkins of the Salix viminalis plants on the south side of The Ocean. The first plants were female, and the next ones were male.

The female plant was a beauty and at least some of the catkins were still "active" despite it being nearly the end of April. This is a shot of quite near the tip of a twig, with the bud scale still closed over the female catkin, and an Andrena bee, most likely a fairly well worn male, on the right of the twig. The scale of the opening catkin to the bottom left is below, just visible!

This is a shot of a later, but still early, female catkin on the lower right hand side, showing the silky white hairs, with the female stigmas and styles starting to project out and expand into their active Y-shapes. The catkin on the left hand side of the twig, slightly out of focus, has the stigmas more fully expanded. The two catkins (immediately above and above and to the right) are just losing their scales. The twig on the left shows the pruinescence of the young twigs of S. viminalis, making them look dark grey-green before they turn shiny yellow or yellowy-green lower down the twigs.  

Here the same bee is exploring an open female catkin a little lower down the twig, perhaps getting nectar from some of the nectaries in the female catkin.

One of the odd things is the sequence of catkins opening on the twig - here you can see fully open female catkins lower down, and partly open catkins higher up, with closed catkins in between.

Salix city at catkin time

Back to Leybourne Lakes and there are plenty of willows in flower.

The Salix viminalis was fairly well over, but I did find some female catkins that were only just past their best, with styles still in place, and some male catkins still with stames emerging from the inflorescence. This timing fits with Meikle stating that this is one of the first willows to flower, from late February onwards. I don't think that it was that early this year, but I certainly was seeing the tail end of the flowers by now. The female fruits on some trees were swelling with the vestigial remnants of the styles and stigmas only just still visible. It would be interesting to go back around the site checking to see which plants are male and which are female. They would have either been planted or perhaps germinated from seed. The distribution appears to be around "The Ocean" and I would feel this is consistent with planting whips or other propagules when the site was replanted after its use as gravel pits was discontinued. I need to look elsewhere and compare this with its natural distribution along river banks in Russia as according to Meikle.

As in Meikle, the male flowers each have two glabrous stamens, up to 1 cm. long, much longer than the catkin scale. From the same source, the anthers are oblong, yellow, about 0.5 mm long and 0.2 mm wide, and all these points fit with the plants at Leybourne which I have checked.

Glossy Ibis

Glossy Ibis on West Flood, flew close-by over the road and on to the ditch towards the seawall on the East Flood.

Reculver

Wonderful afternoon, starting with a Black Redstart, followed by Swallows, a Knot and finally a couple of beautiful male Wheatears.

This is the Knot, the first time I have been really sure of seeing one. Nice combination of a shortish black bill and greenish (although I would have said yellowish-greenish) very grey overall, with the barred rump visible between the wings (rather more marked than I had imagined). The wing feathers were not scalloped as in a juvenile, but maybe there are no juvenile plumages left by this time of year anyway. The eye-stripe was obvious through the telescope. The breast markings were small elongated spots, with a few chevron marking below the wings towards the rear.

Why was this bird on its own? It was feeding by dipping its bill into the water very rapidly, quite close to the shore. This is described in BWP as pecking, "to be found 2 hours either side of high tide on sand on the upper shore" and is much more rapid (about once a second) than the normal probing down on the estuary mud.