A walk round the pond - week 23

I set off for the pond this week hoping to see my first emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) of the season and I wasn't disappointed.  I found this well-camouflaged female resting (briefly) away from the water.  I managed these photos before she resumed hunting.  She shows the less common blue female colouration - usually the abdomen is green.

There were also several males patrolling the margins of the ponds but they never rested while I was watching.  I managed just one flight shot vaguely in focus but I'll have another go next week.

I also saw a male broad-bodied chaser, now showing some blue colour on his abdomen but still not mature.

There were still lots of four-spotted chasers

and very many damselflies - large red, common blue, azure and blue-tailed as in recent weeks.

A new butterfly this week was a large skipper.  This one is male.

And a new moth was a cinnabar moth.  It is day-flying and its colours warn potential predators that it is poisonous.

Another little beast was this sawfly.

New flowers this week included tufted vetch,

hawkweed,

and this orchid which my friend Dave tells me is a pyramidal orchid.

I heard the long-tailed tits in the hedge before I saw them.  There were lots of recently fledged young in the group.

The Canada goslings are growing up fast.

They had a dabbling lesson

and then a bit of communal preening

while dad was doing a few yoga exercises.

A pair of mallards was flitting about between the two ponds but with no sign of young.

Other birds seen or heard included grey heron, green woodpecker, swallow, lesser whitethroat and willow warbler.  I also had a brief glimpse of a hare but could only see its ears before it ran off so still no photo this year.  Maybe next time.

Playing hide and seek

I have heard this green woodpecker calling in the garden over the past few weeks but this is the first time I managed to see it.  The photo shows it is a female, which was a surprise as I had assumed that only the males would call.

I hear green woodpeckers calling in the top of the tallest trees in the garden every spring but rarely see them.  They feed on ants on the golf courses in the park and nest somewhere in the nature reserve (we think).

You can listen to a recording of the green woodpecker's yaffle here.

Two-tone fox

This fox is often the first to arrive at the back door for food as night falls.  "Red" foxes vary greatly in colour and an individual's colour varies at different times of the year, making identification of individual foxes difficult unless they have other markings or injuries.  This one, however, is easy to spot.  I think the appearance is just due to an unusual pattern of moulting from a greyer winter coat to a redder summer coat but the pattern is quite striking.

I guess once the moult is completed this fox will no longer stand out from the crowd.

I think the two-tone fox is a vixen.  The last photo shows her alongside a larger fox with more normal colouring.

Broad-bodied chasers

I have enjoyed seeing broad-bodied chasers (Libellula depressa) on my local pond in the past couple of weeks but I have yet to see a mature male there.  Immature males have a similar yellow colouring to the female but when mature they have beautiful matt powder blue colour, known as pruinescence.  I saw these at Potterick Carr, a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve just south of Doncaster.

I have seen females elsewhere as well.  The first was a rather shy individual near Northampton.

I saw my first two broad-bodied chasers on just one occasion on the local pond last year.  This year there have been more and I have seen them on every visit over the past two weeks.  With luck the site will suit them (I don't think they are fussy) and their numbers will increase.  I'll be looking out for a blue male this week.

A walk round the pond - week 22

I wasn't the only one walking round the pond this week.  As I left I looked back and saw a fox on the far side of the big pond.  It was 3 o'clock in the afternoon and I guess the fox was looking for eggs or young birds.

I was hiding behind the hedge but eventually he saw me or heard the camera and made off.  I carry only a 300mm lens so the photos are a bit distant.

The geese had also spotted the fox and the parents took the goslings back onto the water to stay safe.

I didn't see the little grebes this week so I don't know how they are faring, although I could hear them calling in the reeds.  Other birds flying over included a buzzard and a curlew.

The broad-bodied chasers were still around, although still hunting away from the water.

There were a dozen or two four-spotted chasers around the ponds.

Lots and lots of large red damselflies

and common blues.

Fewer azure damselflies

and only a handful of blue-tailed damselflies.

New butterflies this week were a small heath

and a male common blue.

I did the monthly BeeWalk for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust this week, walking a 1km transect around the ponds and the adjacent bridle path.  Most bees were either common carders (Bombus pascuorum)

or red-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lapidarius).

Both the above are easy to recognise but I always carry the camera when looking for bumblebees.  Any that are black and yellow with a white tail are a bit more of a challenge.  I only saw this one for a moment but looking at the photos I can identify it as Barbut's cuckoo bumblebee (Bombus barbutellus), a parasite of Bombus hortorum, the garden bumblebee..

This early bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) was foraging on water avens (Geum rivulare).

Here is a little beast that pretends to be a bumblebee but is a hoverfly (Volucella bombylans var. plumata) and is a mimic of a white-tailed or buff-tailed bumblebee.

Another new finding this week was this sexton beetle (Nicrophorus sp).  It was resting on hawthorn but doesn't feed on flowers.  Also known as burying beetles, sexton beetles locate corpses of birds and small rodents and dig the soil away underneath them to bury the bodies.  They lay their eggs in the bodies which then provide food for the beetle larvae.  Unusually for an insect, the adult beetles stay around to look after the developing larvae.

This one is carrying a few passengers - beetle mites (Pergamasus crassipes).  They are hitching a lift to the carrion where they will also lay their eggs.  The mites don't harm the beetle and may even help it as the mite larvae eat maggots that would otherwise compete with the beetle larvae for the food.

I reckon this is pretty efficient recycling.  You can watch an amazing short time-lapse video of a sexton beetle burying a corpse here.

Fame at last

This is a photo I took five years ago and shared then on Flickr with BBC Springwatch.  It has just been selected for the Springwatch Wild Academy.  I expect most of the children watching will never see one of these but I hope they enjoy and are inspired by the photo.