My ladybird year

2023 was my first year of ladybird spotting.  It has been fascinating to learn how, where and when to find them and to be able to track down a few rarities, including 5-spot Ladybird and 11-spot Ladybird.  The picture above shows the 24 species I have seen so far, listed in taxonomic order as in Helen Roy's book.  In the same order, they are:

Heather Ladybird.  Rare but I have come across a few, including one on a gravestone, miles from the nearest heather.

Kidney-spot Ladybird.  They seem to like young ash trees and can be found not far from here.

Pine Ladybird.  Small, widespread and often not on a pine tree.  Even on apple trees in my mother's garden.

Orange Ladybird.  Quite distinctive and found in woodland and on garden trees like mine.

22-spot Ladybird.  Also easily recognised.  This one feeds on mildew.

Water Ladybird.  Previously thought to be rare in the North until people started looking.  Now it turns up in reed beds everywhere.  Very small.

Adonis Ladybird.  Another rarity.  Small but distinctive.

Larch Ladybird.  I have yet to find one in a larch tree but have seen lots in pine trees.

2-spot Ladybird.  Despite its name this one is quite variable and comes in two, four and six spot variants (the last two red on black) as well as some others that I have yet to see.

10-spot Ladybird.  A deciduous tree specialist and our most variable ladybird.  Here are some of the variations I have seen so far.  You can click on the photo for a larger view.

5-spot Ladybird.  Very rare but I was pleased to track down this one in Scotland.

7-spot Ladybird.  The ladybird of Ladybird Books and childrens' stories. 

11-spot Ladybird.  Rare.  This one was on a post at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.

Harlequin Ladybird.  Non-native but already our most numerous and widespread ladybird.  Very variable in size and appearance.

Cream-streaked Ladybird.  A conifer specialist, particularly fond of Scots pine.

14-spot Ladybird.  Common in gardens.  Very mobile and difficult to photograph.

Eyed Ladybird. The largest UK species and a beauty.

18-spot Ladybird.  A pine specialist found at the end of my road.

Cream-spot Ladybird.  Common in deciduous woodland, and on gravestones in winter.

Striped Ladybird.  Another pine specialist also found at the end of my road.

24-spot Ladybird.  A vegetarian and very small.  Very local in the north.

Red Marsh Ladybird.  Like the next two, this is one of the "inconspicuous ladybirds", all very small.   It is found in wetlands or dune grasses.

Meadow Ladybird.  A grassland specialist, this one was in my meadow.

Pine Scymnus.   I have found only two so far, both swept from pine trees.

There are more to find next year, but most are farther south.  I’ll be on the lookout.

Merry Christmas

Growing up fast on OtterCam

Last week the otter cubs and their mother reappeared on the cameras for two nights in a row.  They are a month older than their first appearance and already look bigger and more agile.

The cameras also caught an episode of the cubs play-fighting and tumbling into the water.  It is a bit disjointed because of the camera positions but fun to watch.

I also managed to retrieve a camera from the culvert after the recent floods.  It wasn't well positioned so the view isn't as good as usual but we do get a few glimpses of the cubs.  It is a bit fragmented but in the first clip the cub is scared of the culvert and retreats and the mother has to go back to collect it.  In the daytime clip later on the cubs really struggle against the current and slippery gate, even though the water level was low.

Having seen where the cubs were playing on the first video I went back to reposition the cameras but they haven't been back since.  One of the new camera angles is looking directly at a wood mouse nest hole with the disadvantage that it records dozens of mouse videos every night.  However, the camera wasn't the only one watching.

The video shows the views from two cameras separately.

I can't tell from the video whether the owl caught the mouse but I suspect not as a mouse later reappeared and the owl was back two nights later.  The second time only the top camera caught it in action but we can see a mouse in its talons as it flew off.

More news on the otter cubs in the new year.

Bohemian rhapsody

This is already a "Waxwing Winter" with large numbers of these Fennoscandian birds having arrived in the autumn and now being seen right across the country.  When they first appeared I didn't join the throngs of observers as I have photographed them before and even saw them in my garden in my first winter here.  Nevertheless, when I received a tip-off from my friend Tim W about 200 Bohemian Waxwings at the end of my road I thought I should take a look.  I walked along the road about an hour after sunrise yesterday to find no sign of them but within a few minutes the flock turned up.  They sat high in some ash trees and swooped down to the hawthorn berries in the hedge below for 10 minutes or so, then circled a few times before flying off to the east.

I still have plenty of cotoneaster berries so there is a chance they may visit my garden this winter.

News from WeaselCam

First a first.  Ever since a stoat appeared in September (but didn't go into the camera box) I have had two boxes in action all the time in the garden, with wider entrance pipes than before.  And at last a visit from a stoat - larger and more strongly-built than a weasel and with a longer, black-tipped tail.  It was only brief so I have added a slow-motion replay which makes it look even more powerful.  Note the straight border between the brown and white fur (it's a wiggly line in a weasel).

After the flurry of weasel activity in the camera box in August things quietened down a bit with nine recordings in September and four in October.  Since then it has picked up again with a weasel visit to at least one box roughly two days in every three in November and almost every day this month.  Judging by the fur patterns under the chin and the size of the weasels I think there is more than one visiting.  The first one below, in the same box as the stoat above, is longer, and probably a male, while the second is smaller and presumably female.  The colour variation is due to the camera which reacts a bit unpredictably to varying light levels and isn't easy to correct.

The weasel I am seeing most often is the larger of the two above.  He (I presume it is a male) has a distinctive under-chin mark and is different from the three individuals that appeared in August.

The weasels are confidant and inquisitive in the boxes and often have a quick look round, sometimes round behind the camera.  They are very often scent-marking as well so I expect the boxess smell of weasel, not that I can smell it.  This probably attracts other weasels but seems to be discouraging smaller mammals - the cameras now rarely see shrews, mice and voles in the daytime, only at night when the weasels are asleep (they hope).  Incidentally I have only once seen a weasel in the box after dark, with now dozens of daytime recordings.

One very windy day a lot of dead leaves blew into the box.  The weasel(s) made several visits but didn't find anything hiding.

Last week a weasel turned up with prey.  It dashed through the box in a blur twice.  There was five second gap, which I have edited out, and I added a 1/10th speed replay.  It isn't easy to see what it is carrying but whatever it is has an impressive tail.  I think it is probably a baby rat.

At the beginning of the month we had snow and I found weasel tracks in the garden - the first time I have ever seen them.  The snow was about two inches deep, so quite deep for a weasel.  As it bounds its back feet land exactly where its front feet were.

The weasel came into the box during the snow but didn't stop and was still busy hunting.  Having checked round the box they very often run back straight through like this, sometimes more than once.

News from OtterCam

After several months with not much happening, suddenly there is exciting news from OtterCam. The first evidence of new cubs was about three weeks ago, with a glimpse of two tails and a tell-tale squeak from a cub.  A week later a clear, if brief, sight of the mother otter with two small cubs.  At this young age they keep very close to her.

These cubs are small.  The previous cubs were last seen with their mother on 03 May, on which night she was seriously courting the dog otter.  Assuming she mated around then, the new cubs will have been born in early July.  They turned up on the cameras again last weekend in the snow at perhaps 22 weeks of age.  This time the family came up the bank twice, towards three cameras although the bottom camera missed the second visit.

The dog otter also went by in the snow, having a little slide down the slope.  You can see how he isn't sure about the ice and tests it before deciding it won't bear his weight.  He then dives through a hole in the ice made by an otter, perhaps him as well, about an hour before.

And on the most recent episode he caught and ate a fish.  Luckily he had just gone down into the water so the camera was already recording.  He must have caught it immediately and it didn't take him long to polish it off.

The new cubs are the sixth set I have seen on the cameras since I started following my local otters in February 2019.  I'll post more photos and videos as these cubs grow over the next few months.

BadgerCam in Ardnamurchan

This is probably the last set of images from my trip to Ardnamurchan a few weeks ago.  The trail cameras and food put out for the pine martens mostly attracted badgers.  The white flash Wingscapes camera did better with the badgers than it had with pine martens, probably mainly because the badgers didn't move around as much.

Each night the badgers stayed until all the peanuts and raisins had gone so I ended up with dozens of videos of badgers eating, all pretty much the same.  They don't have great table manners and are very noisy eaters as you can hear on this video.  The occasional flickering is caused by a second camera to the right switching off and back on.

The badgers also took a liking to the peanut butter and strawberry jam I put on a stick to encourage the pine martens to climb.  The badgers are less agile but taller and can reach without climbing.