Hoverfly

A rather nice hoverfly photographed here. I have posted it on iSpot to see if can be correctly identified.

Will update when known!

Suggestion from iSpot - Helophilus pendulus

Yellow Wagtails revisited plus Feathered Gothic Moths

Not so many today - but by parking in the field and so attracting the cattle I managed the following photos:

In the moth trap recently have been many Feathered Gothic - the feathered refers to the antennae and is what differentiates them from Gothic and Bordered Gothic (inter alia) 
The feathering is clearly visible here:

Yellow Wagtails

The last week of August has proven to be the time to look out for Yellow Wagatils. These birds are migrating south - maybe from breeding grounds on  the Marlborough Downs.
Fow the last few years I have seen them feeding amongst my cattle at West Harnham. 2 days ago (27th) I found a flock of 50 birds there. I hadn't realised that they were there until I moved the cattle forward and then the wagtails followed over the fence.
50 is quite exceptional - the highest count I've made,
Not a good photo but here are some on the bush in the middle

Down at our own meadows I found just a single bird yesterday.

Here's an obliging female Reed Bunting appropriately on a reed stem.

Down in Late Autimn

The small field of arable reversion created three or four years ago has been quite successful this year. May be no orchids as yet but plenty of other flowering plants to keep the bees happy.
Notable in the spring was the amount of cowslips now coming through.
Now in August the birds foot trefoil and Scabious  is very attractive and almost abundant!

The mirky background was due to low cloud - a sign that autumn must now be coming in! This was taken on 21/8 - and I usually predict that one of these mornings will come between the 15th and 21st - so only a day late this year.

Gadwall

Gadwall are quite secretive compared to thir cousins the Mallard. Proving the fact of them breeding has always been a challenge. Seemingly later breeders they have the advantage of more vegitation to hide within. I suspected they were breeding several years before I eventually managed to glimpse a female with young. somehow Mallards are much earier - the females always seem to make far more noise.
This last few weeks I've mange to find two pairs - one a I knew about for some time and its two ducklings are failry well grown now, but there is another - though with only one chick.
The first time I found here she flew off the ditch it was on circled around calling and then landed on the main river very alert some 50 metres away. So it was only a matter of time before I spotted any brood.
The RSPB had a useful collection of data on bird species and this is the link for the Gadwall:
Gadwall on RSPB website

Swans

Mid-July means its time for a weekend of swan catching and ringing. This year was an Abbotsbury year and therefore we went down for the roundup which takes place every two years. The high heat meant that the numbers caught of 600 rather than 8-900 was preferable not just for us but the swans as well. The final few were quickly dealt with and in the end all went very smoothly.

Our usual team place helpers then returned to the Wylye and Avon and some 85 birds were caught and processed

My 25th year of catching swans - Dave of course has done nearer to 50!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V23TkyJ7tw

Scottish Escape

My (nearly) annual visit to the Treshnish Isles has just finished. Counts of seabirds by my self and other members of TIARG have been going on since 1971 - though i only started in 2000.
Seabirds have been much in the news in recent years with starving birds and empty ledges a feature. Treshnish did not seem to be as badly hit as other north and east colonies, which is not to say that its all been roses. It certainly hasn't.
So what of this year ?  Puffins and Guillemots (the main breeders in daylight) appear to be bringing in good numbers of fish (sand-eels). however the latter seem to be late again, with most birds on eggs, or very small chicks. Its several years since we saw, during our traditional week of oocupancy at the end of June, any jumping youngsters as they repond to their parents calls and guidance to bring them off the cliff and down through the air to the sea below. When they bounce on the rocks as they fall its really quite upsetting.
The exact position we won't know until we publish the report - so I must get on and count the Guillemots from the carefully framed photographs I take to assess numbers (6-7000 birds). Older reports can be found here:
http://www.tiarg.org/

The main matter for concern is the shear scale of the visitor numbers now on the island who on 'good' days seems to swarm over the islands as oil on water. Scottish law permits open access. Not always a good thing.
Highlight? The numbers and noise from the Manx Shearwaters on changeover at one in the morning.

Flags

The yellow flag iris are superb this year.

Moth and Buntings

The moth trap is getting a little more interesting as time goes on - still dont really feel like saying summer!
This really rather attractive macro was caught on Friday night - an Alder Moth:

It was nice to see a Corn Bunting between the A30 and Pitton today - they seem to have survived the destruction of 100 acres of set aside into arable.
Meanwhile our own keep singing and seem to have reached 4 males in total.

Bastard Balm

The Bastard Balm is out and flowering nicely for a plant with such an unfortunate name!

Moths

A late (or missing) cold spring has resulted in an dirth of moths caught in my my traps, as and when I can be bothered to put one out. Single figures and evan down so a single moth has been the order of the day.
Saturday eveing i put one near the house her - a 60 watt actinic - and caught a single moth (Twin Red-spot carpet) and another up on the down with a new 20 watt compact actinic. This at least did slightly better. 7 species, 8 moths!
Pre-eminent was the Poplar Hawk-moth that was on some grass close by the trap - obviously attracted but didnt enter the trap.

A fine evening

An Ent?

End of Spring

Well the 2 pairs of Lapwing hatched their eggs - 4 and 3 chick seen respectively - so now its up to the parents to fend off the preditors.
At least 3 pairs of cornbunting are on the farm at the moment - so that s good news.
The last snipe a flushed on the 2nd of may - birds often stay until then.
Interestingly I flushed a male Teal yesterday, having shortly before seen a Hobby at close quarters.
Meanwhile the Mute Swans have mostly hatched their eggs - with two broods of 5 and one of 1 (artificially controlled?) and one yet to hatch. Dave will be pleased! 

The return of the warm weather has brought the House Martins back - they appeared earlier - instpected nests and then vanished. Perhaps they just wait for the warm weather (and a subsequent insect hatch) before laying eggs. At any rate we seem to have 4 pairs at present - a long way off the 35 of past years.

The Bluebells are just beginning to go off - but still look splendid. Another flower out at the same time is the Early Purple Orchid - resplendant in its dark purple.

Colourfull visitor

First seen a year ago as a pair - with the female subsequently appearing over the otherside of the valley (and therefore over the busy A338) was a pair of Peacocks. We assumed that the male had died. At any rate neither had been seen here again.

Then this last weekend he turns up again, spotted by Sophie and Matt. This morning he's out on our front lawn.

Just dont know where he goes too!

Herons and Lapwing

A visit to the local heronry on 28th April  - source of all the birds we see here - resulted in a count of 105 nests, down from 125 last year. Many nearly fledged chicks were seen

Earlier in the day I saw my first Swifts for the year whilst approaching Salisbury.

Good news from the down where the Game and Wildlfe Conservation Trust are monitoring the Lapwing as they have for several years now. A phone call at the end of the day reported 4 small chicks were seen. They had left the Stone Curlew plot and were on the the adjacebt grassland - hopefully avaiding the cattle up there, A bird is still brooding a second nest.

Apparently last year the G&WCT team had found a rare jumping spider - Bianor aenescens - caught in a pitfall trap for monitoring the availability of food for the Lapwing. Not that its big ehough to jump out at a human - at 3.5 to 4mm body length it will usually go un-noticed.

Visitors

Hedgehogs are something one seldom see - though our dog Lottie seems to have a pretty good nose for them and has several times brought one back for our inspection - fortunately she has a soft mouth. So it was a nice surprise to see one in the torch beam when going round the sheep for a final inspection (we are lambing at present).

Badgers are what I normally expect to see at some point, as well as foxes. Both have been absent so far. But we have had a badger raiding the sheep food in the shed. All very worrying with the large increase in TB cattle cases this January compared to last with animal destroyed up by 25%.

So here is what my camera trap caught.

Green Woodpecker

A very smart Green Woodpecker was anting on the lawn. I managed to grab my camera, carefully push open a window a small amount and one handed caught him on video. The bird was a male because the centre of his moustacial streak (ie below the bill) was red. In the female its fully black.

I

Spring arrives

After a year of regular bad weather, and the feeling that spring would never get here, at last the weather has warmed and grass is growing.
Last weekend the swallows arrived - a single on Sunday and then on monday there were 4 flying around and excitedly chattering  overhead.
2 days ago the first house martin returned. I've just been donated some artificial nest boxes for these, so must get them up pretty quickly.
Yesterday in the meadows I heard sedge warbler, blackcap and even a willow warbler for the first time.
So many spring arrivals seem to have all been concentrated into just a week - there must have been huge numbers stacked up somewhere on the continent waiting for the wind to change.
Last night I also saw my first pipestrelle bat for the season.

Movements

End of March and spring is here (really?) and so non-resident birds are moving. The winter visitors are heading north or northeast in the main, and summer migrants are starting to put in an appearance.

Down at Blashford Lakes at the weekend was a good cross over location.

Black-tailed godwits waiting to go back to Iceland (these are from the Islandica sub-species). Whilst I was there several birds had colour rings on their legs to individually identify them to anyone with a telescope. 2 birds there had been ringed right back in 1995, and a huge life history of their movements and wintering pattern built up.

There was also a large number of Shovelar present, at least 200 - a really colourful male duck, with its spectaular bill. These will soon move off to breed in a line from the low coutries to western Russia. As I've noted previously we have had a few on the flooded meadows this winter, with a single male present today.

So, at the same time as these were present flying low over the lakes were Sand Martin and a few Swallows.Why they have kept flying north when they first encountered the cold air stream hitting us at present I can't guess. I haven't spotted a Swallow over the meadows yet, but this evening there were 3 small groups of Sand Martins totalling 35 birds.

A week ago I heard a Chiffchaff calling, but this was probably an over wintering bird.

The major excitement this afternoon was firstly seeing a ringtail Hen Harrier, ringtail meaning it was either a femal or immature male. The plumage was generally brown, with the white rump,  unlike the superb grey colours of the adult male.

Then shortly after that I spot another large bird of prey, firstly moving north up the valley, and then reappearing as it worked its way south with a few circles but generally pretty direct. This was an immature Marsh Harrier. This is a bird that nearly died out in the UK, breeding in the reed beds of east Angla. Today many birds winter here, and so individuals can turn up almost anywhere, and their breeding sites now include farmland.

Not to be outdone, the other end of the farm had a pair of Wheatears, and Lapwing had increased to 3.

Grey Heron

Winter Thrushes

The end of winter will mean the departure back to Scandinavia of the Fieldfare and Redwing thrushes that have been over here for the winter.

After an absence before Xmas, except for a small group of 30 Redwing, descent numbers finally arrived in January with 320 Fieldfare I counted up on the down and 100-120 Redwing near the farm. These flocks seem to have stayed around for the intervening period - probably visiting different fields in the location as numbers were obviously the same as and when I saw them again.

However the start of this week there was a change with some 550 Fieldfares plus 50 Starling on the down and 220 Redwing at this end. They will be moving off soon I guess.

Yesterday two Lapwing made an appearance up on the Down - so I'm hoping they will stay and breed after last years rained off failure.

Mammals in passing

A Weasel crossed the road by the farm entrance yesterday.

I don't often see one of these little mammals. Much more regular is a sighting of a Stoat. However it was quite clearly a weasel - small, gingery and a short tail with no black tip.

Now the mention of mammals reminds be of the excess number of rats we seem to have at present. I took Buzz (our boxer/pointer cross) out the other evening to surprise the rats. None where I expected them - and then sounds of a commotion from inside the straw barn. Out ran a badgermuch to my and presumably Buzz's surprise. It trundled off out of the yard, sqeezing through a gate at the trott - not a fast run which I would have guessed it would have done. Raiding the bags of sheep food. The door to the main cattle shed will now be closed at night!

Winter ending?

The long winter floods are starting to recede. Duck have come and gone and returned as the snow or ice have influenced them.
Probably at a peak over the last two weeks with some 600 Teal, 400 Wigeon, 17 Shovelar and that special bird for here 3 Pintail.
I usually leave well alone so treating it as a sanctuary so numbers are difficult to guess at, and I will only walk up to a mid-point to minimise disturbance  Doing this the other day also disloged some 30 Snipe - though there must be a lot more of these beyond my stopping mark.

Up on the Down, a Lapwing has briefly been back - though its temporarily (I hope) disappeared again. Six Corn Buntings have been seen and two heard singing., joinung in with the Larks in the cold February wind.

Meanwhile an unusual sight has been a Barn Owl out in daylight at either end of the day flying over the conservation areas on and below the Down.

15th of Feb was a lovely warm day and showed the strong hint of spring - but of course it's a three month process and much cold must be gone through first!