Saturday 16 June 2018

A walk round the pond - week 24

When the sun is shining male emperor dragonflies seem to fly incessantly, rarely stopping for breath, so I was pleased when this one paused for a moment for a quick photo.

A few minutes later I saw a female laying eggs in the middle of the smaller pond, just about within range of the camera.



This female broad-bodied chaser is now showing darker brown colouring on her abdomen as she matures.





There are still very many damselflies - common blue, azure, blue-tailed and large red.


A new butterfly this week was a meadow brown.

And a new moth - a brown china-mark (Elophila nymphaeata).  The adults I saw seemed all to prefer resting upside down.  This moth lays its eggs on the underside of floating leaves and the caterpillars have gills and live underwater.  Amazing.


Here is another striking moth.  After searching online I think it is probably a female yellow-barred longhorn moth (Nemophora degeerella), one I definitely haven't seen before.  The male's antennae are twice as long as these but sadly I didn't see one.



I don't go looking for hoverflies (people who do call it hoverating) but there are very many around the ponds and a few of them catch my eye.  This one (I think) is a male Chrysotoxum bicinctum.


This one is Volucella bombylans var. bombylans, pretending to be a red-tailed bumblebee.


I heard this willow warbler before I saw it.  Its call is a "hoo-eet" which you can hear here.  The bird looked a bit frazzled, understandable as it is working flat out to feed its young.



There are several willow warbler nests on the site and I found one of them hidden at the base of a small willow.  I couldn't see it but poked the phone in quickly and was lucky to get these photos.



Other birds I heard this week included little grebe, curlew, yellowhammer, lesser whitethroat and skylark.


I haven't seen a toad since they were spawning several weeks ago but I met this one crossing the path. 


And finally



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