Thursday 8th July 2016

Caves in a forest....?

Today Veronica, one of the stalwart Wednesday volunteers, and myself spent the day with Dr Simeon Jones the Conservation officer for Carmarthenshire, making up for not being out yesterday!

We started off at a confidential site checking, from a safe distance, that our known roosts of Greater Horseshoe Bats were safe and secure, all seemed well.

The sites also host one of our nicest?  spiders' the Cave Orb Spider, Meta menardi a really impressive beast.

Cave Orb Spider, (photo Veronica Haines)

Not everyone will  see this large spider, especially since it lurks about in dark sometimes damp places such as, caves!, disused tunnels, old wartime bunkers etc, but its a great sight.

Sunday 3rd July 2016

There be more Dragons.....

This morning has seen a "mass" emergence of Common Darter dragonflies from the garden pond, with eight new individuals either emerging or drying off.

Considering the pond is only 12 months old this week I'm really pleased that so many of the eggs I saw being laid in the late summer of 2015 have developed and emerged, over 30 individuals have made it to the final stage so far.

The Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum, is one of our commonest members of the Odonata Order of insects belonging to the Suborder Anisoptera, (damselflies the smaller weaker looking bedfellows belong to the Suborder Zygoptera). 

They can develop from egg to full grown dragonfly in as little as three months, given optimum conditions in the pond, although eight to twelve months is more likely.

Not all will make it to maturity with plenty of obstacles in the way of success, not least of which is the prevailing weather, high winds may result in newly emerged individuals ending up in the water where they drown.

The photos show some of the stages of emergence.

Tall emergent vegetation for the larvae to crawl up away from the water

Having broken out of the larval case, the newly emerging dragonfly,
hangs waiting to pull its head and thorax upright

This stage is maybe a few hours later when the body has distended but before the wings are fully pumped

The wings are drying ready for the maiden flight, at this stage the newly emerged

dragonflies are "water averse" and actively fly away from the water, its safer!

Two examples of exuviae, (the empty laraval cases)

 The one on the left is of the Common Darter, Sympetrum striolatum

The one on the right is of the Southern Hawker, Aeshna cyanea

Thursday 23rd June 2016

Guided Walk......

Today was another scheduled walk, with todays theme being Wildflowers, of course as usual the walk become a general look at the wonderful flora and fauna that is Pembrey Burrows & Saltings LNR.

In warm sunshine with a light WSW breeze we set off to discover the best that was on offer, clearly we thought the host of Pyramidal Orchids would steal the show but when the Butterflies appeared with Marbled White, Dark Green Fritillary, Meadow Brown, and Small Heath providing the mainstay we felt we were on to a great walk.

Dark Green Fritillary, the best shot I could get!!

The dragonflies did not disappoint with Emperor, Black-tailed Skimmer, Broad Bodied Chaser, and Common Bluet in good numbers. As usual getting decent photos proved a challenge.

After checking our second refugia of the morning we found one Slow Worm, always a treat.

A walk out towards the beach brought a confusing Orchid, either Early or Southern Marsh? I'll confirm later.

Early? or Southern Marsh Orchid

On the look our for oddities brought us into the territory of what must be the luckiest Skylark alive, this leucistic bird has been on site since Novemebr 2015 avoiding the winter resident Merlins.

Dodgy cropped shot of the leucistic Skylark, (carrying food)

A nice find was the caterpillar of the Emperor Moth, the moth  itself is pretty exciting but the caterpillar is a stunning lime green colour and quite big.

Emperor Moth caterpillar

On our final leg back to the car park we came across the best sight of the walk, two then three European Hares a normally secretive mammal, on the reserve, following years of persecution by poachers, but it looked like at least one of the individuals was a Leveret, one of this seasons young... brilliant but don't tell anyone....

European hare

On the home front I was having a cup of tea in the garden when I turned to admire the flower border, out of the corner of my eye I saw this fella trundling across the lawn, sadly, given the fact it was four in the afternoon and it didn't seem to bothered by me, I think it is probably a little unwell, although it did tuck into a few juicy Lob worms I dug up for it. Lets hope it ok as it seem to have trundled on out of the garden but I don't know how??

European Hedgehog

Saturday 18th June 2016

WWT Llanelli

Today I joined the team from the Gower Ringing Group for another session at the Constant Effort Site (CES) at WWT Llanelli.

The CES had been running for many years and provides useful data on the survival rates and suitability of the site for many species of birds, this data when added to the hundreds of other CES datasets is invaluable for the conservation of birds and habitats.

We captured and processed 28 birds this morning, not a huge number but representative of the numbers present in the monitoring site.

There were a few recently fledged birds including Robins, Chiffchaff, Wren and Song Thrush, as can be seen from the photograph below of the Song Thrush wing there is much to learn about the aging and sexing of each species when "in the hand", the need to accuracy reflected in the scientific output at the end of the season.

wing of the Song Thrush, see the orange coloured "thorn" shaped marks and

the crisp look to the plumage, all indicating a bird recently out of the nest

We also caught a Treecreeper,a delicate bird with exquisite plumage and a Sedge Warbler.

Treecreeper

Sedge Warbler

Wednesday 15th June 2016

That was a short summer.....

The warm dry weather of last week seems a long time ago as I listen to the sound of thunder outside,

Today was the Wednesday volunteers day (well it is Wednesday after all) and we went off to Morfa Berwig, the county's newest Local Nature Reserve.

In honour of the designation we set about taking parts of the on site signage down to be branded with  bi-lingual Gwarchodfa Natur Leol/ Local Nature Reserve.

Its fair to say the old signs put up a bit of a fight but we got there in the end and I'm sure they will look great when the work has been done.

"..go on just one more push Veronica"

Whilst there,  a bit of fence repair near the dipping ponds so that no one falls in!!! mmm we'll have to see on that one. By the way Veronica doesn't do all the work....

..don't bend that 6" nail please..

Saturday 11th June 2016

Late Spring, early Summer..

This afternoon I finished off the painting of the information shelter at Pembrey Burrows LNR, it was nice to hear passing visitors saying how much better it looks now, I'll post a photo when the sun is out next to show it at it's best.

I then went and had a look at the pond in field 2, specifically for Odonata, given the overcast and breezy conditions it was  no surprise just to see a few Blue Tail, albeit the type with the red thorax

Then I looked at the pond in field 3, just as the sun came out and within a few seconds there were 6 species of Odonata on the wing, Chasers, Hawkers, and Darters; the list looks like this;

Emperor, Black-tailed Skimmer, Broad Bodied Chaser, Blue Tail damsel, Common Bluet, and Common Darter.

Blue Tail (from my personal library)

Emperor ♂

Common Darter

Common Bluet, a bit fuzzy sorry

On the Orchid front the time of the Green-winged Orchids has passed and now its the Southern Marsh Orchids which are at their best, with Pyramidal Orchids really getting going plus some site scarcer species including Common Spotted Orchid and the Heleborines, these really are only just starting but in a week or so I should be able to get them to species.

Common Spotted Orchid

Thursday 9th June 2016

Morfa Berwig......

This morning at the reasonable hour I, with the help of Adam Dare, led a birding walk at Morfa Berwig, the weather was perfect with 22 species seen or heard including the star of the reserve Cettis Warbler.

We also encountered a good mix of Dragon/Damsel flies in the form of Azure Bluet, Four Spotted Chaser, Broad Bodied Chaser, Black-tailed Skimmer and Hairy Dragonfly, although the last one has a ? over it, I'm confident of one sighting but all the later ones were in fact female B T Skimmer.

Azure Bluet ( one way to identify this common species is the U shaped mark on the thorax)

Thanks to Adam once again for his help.

Later on in the day in an undisclosed location deep in the woods .......

The team putting up a nest box for Owls...

This makes it look easy.....

At "fricking last" is what I think he is muttering.... but it will be worth it, with thanks to

Carmarthenshire Bird Club and Burns Pet Foods