A largely sunny morning, with cloud cover slowly increasing to become total by mid-day. A light south-westerly breeze.
As far as birds are concerned it remains predictably quiet. The Little Owl was showing well, and the flash pool contained five Teal, a Gadwall, and three Lapwings. The Cuckoo was calling, and I think there were two Reed Warblers singing.
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| Little Owl |
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| The Teal "flock" |
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| Gadwall |
I soon started focussing on insects, both ones I could identify and ones I could not. Butterflies seen were Small Tortoiseshell, Large White, about 10 Large Skippers, Speckled Woods, Ringlet, Meadow Browns, and Small Heaths.
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| Large Skipper |
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| Ringlet |
Sticking with lepidoptera, I had a go at photographing one of the little grass moths which get kicked up as you proceed through the long grass.
I believe the species involved has the slightly disappointing English name of Garden Grass Veneer, or in latin Chrysoteuchia culmella.
I am on firmer ground with dragonflies, and recorded both Beautiful and Banded Demoiselles, Blue-tailed, Common Blue, and Azure Damselflies, Emerald Damselflies, Broad-bodied and Four Spotted Chasers, and Emperor Dragonfly.
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| A male Banded Demoiselle |
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| Blue-tailed Damselfly |
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| Emerald Damselfly |
The fun really starts with other insects.
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| A soldier fly Four-barred Major Oxycera rara |
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| A hoverfly Helophilus pendulum apparently also called Footballer Hoverfly |
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| Another soldier fly, this time a Banded General Stratiomys potamida |
If anyone reading this knows what the insect in the last photo is, I'll be pleased to hear from them. I am guessing it is some kind of overfly. However, you may be too late because I have now added a caption giving the result of my research.
Hours of fun!
Hi Richard, have you tried the website Ispotnature.org for your mystery insect? I've just discovered the site, Loads of experts and they have identified all the ones I have posted so far
ReplyDeleteHi Nick, I think I got the correct identification today by a combination of googling, and finding a very useful flickr account by Stephen Falk (I think). I have tried ispot Nature, but I may be too impatient. I like a site called Naturespot which is based in Leicestershire. I wish more counties would do something similar. I very much enjoy your blog by the way, there are considerable similarities between our patches. Feel free to correct any potentially dodgy Moth identifications I come up with. All the best Richard
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