This was a most exciting find. At the City Nature Challenge Bioblitz at Gosforth Park Nature Reserve on Saturday our visitors were encouraged to find things for identification and recording and one little girl found this!
It is a queen hornet (Vespa crabro) just emerging from hibernation. Last year was the first time hornets have ever been documented this far north, almost 100km north of the previous limit of their range. This is the first evidence that any has survived and shows there is a good chance they may establish locally. We now have to hope this queen will successfully found a new nest and that there are others. To encourage them we have built and installed a hornet nest box in the reserve so let's hope one of them likes it and moves in.
If we do see more you can be sure to read about it here.
I have been to the pond each week but I didn't post an update for the past three weeks as there wasn't much to report. We have had weeks of cold easterly winds and although last weekend was warm and sunny we are now back to cool easterly weather. Plants and insects may have been held back but the birds are getting on with things. When I arrived yesterday this was what I saw.
There are eight chicks, the same number as last year, although they have hatched a few days earlier than last year.
This one is already marked out as an adventurer and was exploring the bank on its own
while the others kept close to mum.
A coot has made a nest in the reeds and is sitting on eggs.
I did my April bumblebee walk for the BBCT and saw five bumblebees, four common carder queens (Bombus pascuorum)
and one forest cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus sylvestris). You can see she has hairy hind legs (so no pollen basket like a true bumblebee) and a pure white tail making species identification easier (I find the cuckoos a bit more of a challenge). This one is a social parasite of the early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum).
For just a moment I thought I had also found a worker tree bumblebee but on closer inspection it was a female hoverfly (Volucella bombylans var. plumata) which is a bumblebee mimic. She will lay her eggs in the nests of social wasps or bumblebees where the larvae scavenge on the debris.
I could hear chiffchaff, willow warbler, curlew, buzzard,
yellowhammer,
and blackcap.
At one point a squadron of curlews flew overhead.
Butterflies this week included speckled wood,orange tip, comma, peacock,
and small white.
Last year week 18 saw the emergence of the first large red damselflies so I am keeping my fingers crossed for next week, especially if the weather warms up a bit.
This poor bank vole is having trouble with the neighbours and can't get a moment's peace. They creep up behind him and make him jump out of his skin. First it is the shrew and then another bank vole.
It is interesting to see the size comparison between a bank vole (20-40g) and a common shrew (5-14g).
Last weekend I went to the Spetchells for the first time this year. As I expected, there were thousands of bees flying - nearly all were buffish mining bees (Andrena nigroaenea) and most were males on the look out for females. They were flying a few inches above the ground and also around every nearby shrub. It was hot and they were all very active so taking bee photos was very difficult. Here is one male who paused for breath briefly.
It is an amazing place and in some parts is almost like a lunar landscape in miniature. Each tiny chalk volcano is the home of a female mining bee. Quite how they remember who lives where is a mystery.
Here are two nest holes side by side, one tunnelled into soil and the other into chalk.
I have put together a few video clips so you can see what was going on.
The audio track is interesting as the camera picks up the buzz much more than I can hear when I am there.
I have fed the foxes almost every night for the past 18 months or so now so it has become part of their routine to call in here soon after dark. If they don't get here relatively early all the food will have gone. There is usually none left by the time I go to bed.
I don't know how many individuals there are. Some are very confident and stroll up and sit just outside the back door, eating one peanut at a time. Others are more wary and grab a mouthful of peanuts before retreating 10m to eat them, again one at a time.
I don't often photograph them these days but did take a few recent pictures.
This was the most surprising capture on a trail camera so far. I have been monitoring the comings and goings in the stone pile in the garden and had already seen common shrew, bank vole and wood mouse. Then this little beast made an appearance.
It is obviously a shrew but very different in appearance from the common shrew I had seen before. It is dark with white ear tufts, white spots behind the eyes and whitish feet. I was fairly sure it was a water shrew but I couldn't convince anyone I showed the video to.
So I decided to try to catch it. I set a Longworth trap and on the first day I caught two bank voles and a wood mouse (more on this another time). On the second day I had only a short time before going away for a few days but when I went to collect the trap there was something in it. And when I opened the trap there was my shrew. It is almost black with white underneath, white ear tufts and small white spots behind the eyes. It has white hairy feet and is very much a water shrew (Neomys fodiens). I put it in a plastic bag to weigh it and try to measure it and photograph it but it immediately tried to bite its way out.
So I put it in a large glass jug, the only thing I could find immediately that would keep it safe. The shrew ran round and round for a while but soon settled down when it realised it couldn't escape. It wasn't the easiest thing to photograph it in, or the easiest subject, but here are a few photos.
And a short video.
Then I put it back at the entrance to the stone. The shrew gave me a cold hard stare before it turned and disappeared, perhaps hoping to remind me that it has a venomous bite and will get me next time! I don't plan to catch the shrew again but I shall keep an eye on it with the trail camera. When I checked again yesterday it was still there but looking a bit more hesitant, perhaps fearing another trap. It is interesting that although it is a carnivore it takes sunflower seeds, even though casters (blowfly pupae) are on offer.
This was an extraordinary find in a pile of stones in dry woodland about 300-400m from the nearest watercourse. However, the Mammal Society website says "Occasionally they are found far from water in rough grasslands, scrub, woodlands and hedgerows, usually as young are dispersing". This one weighed 13g which is towards the lower end of the weight range and is probably young. I couldn't get accurate measurements but judging from the ruler on the photos its body length is probably about 65mm and its tail about 45mm which also puts it towards the lower end of the range for water shrews. The Mammal Society website says that mammals are some of the most under recorded species in Britain, perhaps surprising considering some of them are fairly obvious. I expect, however, that mammal observers are fewer than bird and insect observers. So I submitted my record, which turns out to be only the second one for Northumberland on their system (the red dot being mine).
The Mammal Society carried out a National Water Shrew Survey in 2004-2005 and you can read the report here. About one third of my garden is left as a completely wild wood (only ⅓ acre) for anything that wants to live there. Other things I have seen in the past, but not photographed, include weasel, stoat, woodcock and field vole.I don't know what else is lurking in there but I'll be using the trail cameras a lot more to try to find out.
After weeks of cold easterly winds it was warm and sunny today and this afternoon I saw the first red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) of the year. I spotted a male investigating the holes I had drilled in three dead sycamores by the front door. I ran for the camera and when I returned there was a female just emerging from hole she had been investigating. You can see the two horns on her face which she will use to fashion the mud she uses to build the cells in her nest.
I saw at least two females and three males. This female has pollen on her face.
This one is investigating a hole as a potential nest.
Here is a male having a brief rest. He has no horns but has a handsome white moustache.
This one is checking out a hole, hoping to find a female.
In previous years I have always seen the males emerge first and today is much earlier than the last two years. I don't know where these bees have come from as the holes in the house wall are still sealed and the cocoons in the bee house are still intact. I expect those bees will be out in the next two or three days.
