Garden ladybirds

Not my garden, but my mother's, in Northamptonshire.  I had a look at the apple trees and found seven ladybird species and dozens of individuals.  They were:

2-spot Ladybird

7-spot Ladybird

10-spot Ladybird f. decempunctata

10-spot Ladybird f. bimaculata, one I haven't seen before

10-spot Ladybird f. decempustulata

14-spot Ladybird

Harlequin Ladybird

Cream-spot Ladybird

And the biggest surprise, Pine Ladybird

I don't think we have ever noticed anything other than 7-spot Ladybird before.  It goes to show, if you don't look you won't see.

The weasel wall

I built this wall three or four years ago, between the copse and the meadow in my garden.  It was inspired by Robert Fuller's walls for weasels and stoats in his garden in Yorkshire.  I built it deliberately badly, with gaps and holes and hollows and I built into it a couple of weasel nest boxes, each made from a small plastic storage box with a weasel-sized hole in the end and in the central partition.  I have occasionally seen a weasel in the garden since but I have never previously seen one near the wall, although I haven't often set up a trail camera to watch.  Since finding the weasels in my camera box a couple of weeks ago I have had three other cameras watching the wall.  At least one weasel seems to be around nearly every day but I am not sure whether any of them is living there.  It would be good to think they are living in the nest box.

Weasels hold large territories - up to 50 times the size of my garden - so it is unlikely they are here much of the time.  I have again seen all three individuals in my previous post, one larger than the other two.  I wonder if this is a female with two well-grown kits, rather than a male and two females which seems less likely.  Here one of them visits the camera box next to the wall.

This is one of the smaller weasels in the wall.

This the same animal, not knowing whether it is coming or going.  The whole episode was recorded within one minute.

This is the largest weasel exploring the box.  It doesn't like the smell of my fingers on the camera.  This is also within one minute.

I saw a weasel run across the drive a few days ago when I was standing only about 5m away. Next time I'll try to make some mouse noises in the hope it will stop and look.

Developing OtterCam

Over the last few years I have had some wonderful footage on OtterCam but I am always looking for more.  I enjoy the challenge of getting better videos, both technically and in content.  One of the limitations of trail cameras is their restricted field of view, so aiming them and predicting where the subject will be can be difficult.  I now put close-focus lenses on the front of the cameras routinely but it occurred to me that a wide-angle lens would both increase the field of view and the depth of field.  So I splashed out on a clip-on wide-angle lens for a mobile phone (£6 including postage) and sawed off part of the clip with a Dremel.  I glued a bit of wood to the top of the camera, clipped on the lens, put on an outsized rain cover and set it up to try it out. Here is the set up, with a standard camera (plus Blu-tac and close-focus lens) on top and the wide-angle lens on the camera below.

And here is the result.  I sort of had an inkling there might be something going on here but never thought it would be as good as this.  Imagine how frustrating this would have been if only the top camera was in position.  Its contribution here is just to get a slightly better view of the departing otter.  The otter really looks as though he is enjoying himself.  Is it my imagination or is he playing to the cameras?

Two nights later he was back for a repeat performance.  You can see that the field of view is now slightly wider than the light from the infrared LEDs but that doesn't really detract from the image. It also improves after four seconds when the top camera switches on so using a second camera routinely may be a good plan.

Otters have dense waterproof fur and spend a lot of time looking after it.  This rolling behaviour helps with grooming but I have never seen it before.

Wasps in the bee house

This year's new bee house has a space under the roof that I planned, in future years, to use as a release chamber.  In May I noticed a queen wasp had started to build a nest.  She flew in and out so quickly I wasn't able to get a photo of her or identify her.

Ten days later the nest looked like this.

After that I didn't take much notice, other than to dodge the wasps as they few in and out while I was photographing the bees and to think it was a small space for a wasp nest.  The nest grew to fill the space but then stopped.  A few days ago I saw a small male wasp walking about near the nest and was able to take some photos.

This is a male Saxon Wasp (Dolichovespula saxonica), an ID subsequently confirmed on Facebook.  The workers are usually on a mission but do occasionally stand about for a photo. There has been a noticeable reduction in activity of the workers recently, suggesting that the colony is coming to the end of its life.

This worker is taking a drink from a raindrop at the entrance.

At the beginning of the week I saw my first queen.  She is bigger than the workers and much bigger than the male.  I watched her walking up and down the roof and I was concentrating so much on taking the photos that I didn't notice at first that she has no wings.  This poor wasp is doomed.

This photo shows the relative size of the queen and the male.

The next day this queen was sitting on a mint leaf directly below the nest, presumably having fallen out.

I haven't seen another queen but I expect there have been others flying out while I wasn't looking.  The males also liked to sit in the sun on the mint leaves.

They spent a lot of time cleaning their antennae.

Saxon Wasps are recent arrivals from Europe, having been first recorded in South East England 36 years ago.  Since then they have spread and are now fairly widespread.  They build their nests in aerial locations, under roofs and in trees or sheds.  The nests are small and are usually empty by mid August.  When these are gone I plan to take off the roof of the bee house to see if I can remove the nest intact.

The severe wing deformity in the queen wasp is presumably due to deformed wing virus (DWV), which affects honey bees and gets noticed by beekeepers in beehives.  It also affects bumblebees and solitary bees (and obviously wasps) but usually doesn't get noticed because they can't fly.  DWV wasn't a problem in honey bees until the arrival of the ectoparasite Varroa destructor which is now almost universal.  DWV levels in honey bees are now many times higher and can lead to colony death.  There is concern that this will also lead to spill over into other hymenopteran species.  Social wasps could acquire the virus from contact with or predation on honey bees.

There is a much larger nest (presumably of a different social wasp) in the roof of my house, with over 100 wasps per minute going in and out.  I am keeping out of the way of that one but with luck I'll be able to remove it as well, although I'll wait until the winter when they have all gone.

Weasily recognised

At last.  It is almost two years since I first set up my small mammal camera box, mainly in the hope of getting video of a weasel.  After a very brief early success there hasn't been another sighting, until now.  The box is sometimes here in the garden and at others is in the local nature reserve.

Earlier this week I set it up again in the garden and in the first three days weasels appeared on seven occasions.  In fact I think there were three different animals because weasels, like many mustelids, can be identified by the different patterns in their fur.

Here are the three in order of appearance.

My small mammal camera box is modelled on a Mostela, designed by Jeroen Mos and used for small mustelid research.  Previously I was using small Victorian clay land drain pipes as entrances but after reading some of Jeroen's research I changed to larger pipes and set the box on the boundary of my copse and meadow.

The first weasel appeared three days in a row.

The second one was larger and is easily identified from the pattern under its chin.  It came and went several times, crossing the box four times in the first clip and twice in the second.

The third weasel seemed a bit more timid and retreated without crossing the box as the others had done.  I have added a ¼ speed replay to the video.

Now I am wondering if there is a family of weasels in the garden so I shall set up more cameras to try to find out.