Bad news if you are a water shrew that is, but maybe good news if you are a heron. The trail camera saw two shrews being eaten by a heron last year and another a few weeks ago in a blog I wrote for the Natural History Society of Northumbria. Then last week the heron(s) caught and ate nine water shrews in six days at only one camera position. I thought water shrews were uncommon but there must be a healthy population to sustain that level of predation. Or at least there was.
And a bonus heron video. Last month I posted a video of a heron that caught a frog that put up a good struggle and eventually got away, probably not unscathed. This time the heron caught a toad. The toad's defence is to swell up and produce a foul-tasting and perhaps toxic secretion from its back. The heron seemed to realise pretty quickly and dropped the toad before trying to wash the taste away.
After that I think the heron will stick to water shrews, while there are any left.
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.
Something strange happened today - or didn't happen - it didn't rain! So it was a good day to visit the pond again, 14℃, calm with intermittent hazy sunshine. After all the rain we have had the margins of the ponds were squelchier than ever. There were still several toads spawning in the shallows.
Mrs C-G was still sitting on eggs.
Mr C-G was pacing around like a nervous expectant father.
There was no sign of the swans. Their nest was empty but intact. I don't know whether they have moved on, or whether something has happened to one of them, or if they were just away for the day. Other birds I did see were a drake mallard,
little grebe, chiffchaff, buzzard, crow, chaffinch, and moorhen. I could hear the bubbling call of a curlew on the Carr across the road. The first bumblebee I saw was a tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) on the gorse.
A couple of willows were in full flower and were humming with dozens of bumblebees, too late for my first bumblebee walk two weeks ago.
Most of them were tree bumblebees.
There were also several buff-tailed bumblebees (B. terrestris), most a bit out of reach of my lens.
Blackthorn was in flower in the hedge but I didn't see any insects visiting the flowers.
The forecast is good for the coming week so I'll be back to see what has changed. I hope the swans will have returned.
My plan to walk around the pond each week fell at the first hurdle, mainly because of the weather. However, I was only a day late and at least it wasn't raining. The ponds are very full after all the recent rain and have spread their margins. The swans look as though they have more or less finished building their nest in the reeds on the small pond but there are no eggs yet.
The Canada geese have a nest on a small island in the larger pond and the female is sitting on eggs.
There were several toads in the margins but I didn't see any toad spawn.
This one was trying not to blink in case I was a heron.
Some of the other birds I saw included yellowhammer,
woodcock, grey heron, chiffchaff, and a pair of little grebes. On the way in I also saw a brown hare but it was too quick for me to get a photo. Maybe next time.
