Summer dragonflies

I don't take as many dragonfly photos these days, mainly because I already have good photos of the species I see regularly.  I do still take record shots to convince the county recorder when I submit records and I take a few if they would make an appealing picture.  2025 has been a good year for many insects, including dragonflies, and locally we have seen good numbers of previously rare species.  Here are some of my recent pictures.

Broad-bodied Chaser.  This was the first dragonfly I saw this year and features on the front cover of the latest edition of The NHSN Magazine.

Ruddy Darter.  This is an immature male and is fairly rare in Gosforth Nature Reserve (GNR).  I like the way the wings were in focus as well.

Emperor Dragonfly, the first time I have had a reasonable photo of one on the Hepple Estate but it was a bit too close to the background to be good.  This is a male.

Brown Hawker.  We had only one previous record of a male in GNR but there was lots of activity this year.  This is a male on patrol.

And a female ovipositing.  Females were observed on several occasion over six weeks so with luck we'll end up with a breeding population in the reserve.

Another species with only a single previous record in the reserve, a Black-tailed Skimmer.  This time we had multiple males and at least one ovipositing female.  This is a male.

A male Common Hawker, also from GNR.

And mating Common Hawkers from Cragside.

A male Golden-ringed Dragonfly from Hepple.

A female Black Darter, also from Hepple.

A male Small Red-eyed Damselfly in GNR.  This species first moved north of the River Tyne last year and our reserve has the most northerly UK record.

Finally another damselfly from GNR and a new species for me.  This is a male Willow Emerald Damselfly.  The reserve has the most northerly UK record for this one as well.

The dragonfly season will soon be over.  Let's hope next year is as good as this has been.

WeaselCam on tour

One of my WeaselCam boxes has just spent eight weeks in Elemore Park in Sunderland.  The main aim was to record the local weasels although I was also hoping the camera would also see the local Greater White Toothed Shrew -  a hope that was realised.  In the first two weeks there were only a few recordings - of shrews and voles and all in daytime.  In the following four weeks the camera recorded 300 wood mouse videos, 150 vole videos and three weasel videos but no shrews.  The pattern was similar in the last two weeks - lot of mice and voles but this time there were 11 weasel recordings, although still no shrews.

To start with the weasel was very wary and was reluctant to come right into the box.  

Then it got a bit more confident.

In the last two weeks it was in the box nearly every day.

It seemed fascinated by something behind the camera (there was nothing there) often staying for 30s at a time.  At times it was jumping around like a stoat, unfortunately mostly out of view.  Here are the best bits edited from the 11 recordings.

I think this is probably all the same female weasel although it is difficult to be sure as some of the views were fleeting.  The likelihood is that the box was in her territory and she certainly got more used to it with time.  My only disappointment is that the shrews didn't show after the first two weeks - perhaps they were put off by the smell of weasel (or perhaps the weasel had eaten them all!).  The camera box is off elsewhere for a while but we hope to return it to Elemore Park for more weasel and shrew recordings in the near future.

Sparrowhawk news

It is a long time since I posted pictures of a sparrowhawk in the garden.  Last winter's bird was a bit of a dead loss because he hunted round the feeders by the kitchen window instead of sitting on the perch in the kitchen garden.  I had seen a new bird around in the garden recently and then I had a very close encounter.  When I went out to the greenhouse he was sitting in the doorway eating a robin and he panicked and flew farther in.  The only way get him out was to go round the outside to the far end.  Here he is looking through the window.

I had time to take a short video on the phone and moments later he realised he could escape and flew out through the door.

Prior to that I had noticed days when the level of seed in the feeder in the kitchen garden didn't drop so I guessed a new sparrowhawk must be around.  And here he is, posing nicely on the perch.

Sitting there was a bit obvious so he also tried hiding low down on the raised beds.

And sometimes sitting high up on the feeder support, although that's even more obvious.

This is a newly independent first year male so he is still learning his trade but there are plenty of small birds in the garden, at least there are when he's not here.

Then a couple of days ago I saw this one - a second year bird.  Sparrowhawks moult into adult plumage at the end of their first year and you can see this one has a mixture of blue and brown feathers.  He has replaced most of his juvenile plumage but the outer tail feathers and some of the body and head feathers are still brown.

And a bonus video of a sparrowhawk that appeared on one of my otter cameras, also a first year bird and probably female as it looks bigger.  I think the call in the background is a buzzard and not another sparrowhawk.

Hieroglyphic Ladybird

A second ladybird post in a row but I thought I ought to share this.  It was quite a week, starting off with the discovery of a Scarce 7-spot Ladybird.  I signed off last week's post by saying "Hieroglyphic Ladybird is top of my wish list.  Do let me know if you know where I can find one - and expect to see a photo here if I do."

And the very next morning I found one, or two to be precise.  I called in to Havannah Nature Reserve, a couple of miles from here, just to have a look around because it is a local ladybird hotspot, great for conifer specialists such as Striped, 18-spot and Eyed Ladybirds.  It is predominantly lowland heath with a lot of heather and gorse and Scots pines, a rare habitat around here, but Hieroglyphic Ladybird had never been recorded there so I wasn't at all expecting to find one.  And then there it was in my sweep net.  It was quite active so I took few photos in the net but before I could get a more natural-looking background it flew off.

It is quite a lot smaller than a 7-spot Ladybird and the colour is old gold with the markings you can see, which must have reminded someone of Egyptian hieroglyphs.  After it had gone I carried on my search and ten minutes later, to my amazement, I found another one.

Later that day Chris Barlow, a noted local naturalist and entomologist, found two more and the following day James Common, our local ladybird expert, found another so there is obviously something going on.  Until a few days ago Hieroglyphic Ladybird was the rarest, or least often reported, conspicuous ladybird in the North East Ladybird Spot.  Within the past two or three weeks there have been several records from the Durham Coast as well so things are changing.

There are also lots of Heather Beetles at Havannah, something Chris says he has never seen before, and Hieroglyphic Ladybirds and their larvae eat Heather Beetle larvae.  The habitat is right so the supposition is that this year's fine weather has encouraged the establishment of a population of Heather Beetles and the Hieroglyphic Ladybirds have found them and taken advantage.  With luck both will become established.  On Sunday I went back and Chris found another one which he kindly allowed me to photograph.

I think that's enough on ladybirds for a while so we'll have something completely different for my next post.

Scarcely believable

This was third time lucky.  I have twice before been to look for a Scarce 7-spot Ladybird without success.  As its name suggests it is rare and it is almost always found close to, but not in, a wood ant nest in woodland or heathland.  This was in Harlestone Firs near Northampton, somewhere I often went on my bike over 60 years ago.  I had found a Formica rufa nest near the sawmill before so I went straight there this time.  In the bracken and a small fir tree very close by I soon found about a dozen 7-spot Ladybirds but they were all the standard Coccinella septempunctata.  There was another nest, or part of the nest, a couple of metres away and from the bracken there I quickly had twenty 7-spot ladybirds in my sweep net.  As I checked them all one was slightly different - a bit smaller, a deeper red with larger black spots, and a slightly more domed shape.

The key to the identification is that is has four small white triangular marks underneath at the base of its middle and hind legs whereas Coccinella septempunctata has only two in the middle. It wasn't easy to photograph but was better with the ladybird in a small glass specimen tube.

The Scarce 7-spot Ladybird goes by the wonderful scientific name of Coccinella magnifica.   It is a handsome beetle and was happy for me to take a few more photos.

I also tried to get a photo of the two species side by side but the flash didn't fire as the 7-spot Ladybird (L) walked by the Scarce 7-spot Ladybird (R).  The photo was totally underexposed but it is astonishing how Adobe Lightroom can recover this image from the Olympus OM-1 RAW file.

There are still several British ladybirds I haven't found.  Hieroglyphic Ladybird is top of my wish list.  Do let me know if you know where I can find one - and expect to see a photo here if I do.

More action on WeaselCam

It has been a quiet summer but now things are warming up in the trail camera box.  After the female weasel moved her kits I was hopeful of seeing her again.  She made two brief visits to the box in one day, followed by the stoat the next day, so I put a mouse in the top pipe as a lure. When the weasel came back she could obviously smell the mouse but to my frustration, and presumably hers, she couldn't find it and eventually gave up.

A couple of days later I put in another mouse, this time in one of the bottom pipes, and it was found straightaway, but by a different weasel, this one a male.  Notice how he immediately checks the coast is clear and then looks for a second mouse before taking it away.   He didn't go far because he was back 20 seconds later for another look round.

And he was back again four more times in the next 20 minutes, obviously convinced I had hidden another mouse somewhere.

The size difference between these two weasels isn't obvious at a glance because they are so active but here is a side by side view of the female (L) and male (R) searching the bottom left pipe.

With a male weasel and a stoat around in the garden I think either or both could have prompted the female weasel to move her kits to a different nest.  I don't think they can be far away and they might yet appear on the camera. 

A stoat visits WeaselCam

Two days after my last post on the weasel moving her family a stoat again appeared in the garden and this time came into the weasel box and was captured on camera.  I had wondered if the weasel might have been provoked into the move by a stoat and I think this makes it more likely.  A stoat would be a threat to a weasel.

Stoats are generally reluctant to enter camera boxes, including mine, even though mine has extra large outside entrance pipes (160mm).  This one I think is female because of its size - a male would be even larger.

Unusually the stoat went through and then came back through the box, common behaviour for a weasel but something I haven't seen with a stoat, although there have been very few stoat visits.

The stoat looks very big compared with a weasel and gave me the opportunity to have fun with making a composite photo from two frame grabs.  This is the female stoat with a female weasel. The two animals would be more similar in colour but the lighting was different on the two days. You can see why the stoat would present a danger to the weasel.

And the female stoat with a male weasel.

A female stoat is about 250g, a male weasel about 120g, and a female weasel about 60g.  A male stoat would be about 350g.

This was by far the best view so far of a stoat in the camera box.  I hope there will be more to share soon.