Hotchpotch

This post is an assortment of things that I have photographed over the last week along with a short summary of recent ringing activities.

Woodpigeons have caught my attention again but this time it was birds that were in the top of an Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) across the road from the garden. I had noticed birds spending a lot of time there and hadn't really thought much of it as seeing Woodpigeons in a tree is hardly unusual. However, when I got my bins on them and had a proper look I could see they were eating the leaves and that was a bit of a surprise, to me at least. I knew Woodpigeons were partial to the flowers of Ash but I didn't know they also ate the leaves and they have really thinned out the leaves in the top of this particular tree.

This bird is about to swallow a piece of a leaf and you can also see that some of the smaller branches have been stripped of many of their leaves.

In this image you can easily see some of the leaves that have been partially eaten against the birds upper breast..

Another leaf is about to be eaten.

I am not into flowers in a big way but the meadow areas at the Billinge ringing site have some of the most impressive areas of Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) that I have ever seen and they are at their best at the moment. A few orchids are also flowering and while I hadn't gone looking for nests I found a Meadow Pipits while photographing the flowers.

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) 08/06/2016

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) 08/06/2016

Marsh Orchid spp. 08/06/2016, probably Southern Marsh Orchid or Southern hybrid.

Meadow Pipit nest 08/06/2016

Back at home the moth trap hasn't produced anything out of the ordinary but variety and numbers are slowly improving.

Lime Hawkmoth 08/06/2016

Ruby Tiger 08/06/2016

Green Silver-lines and Miller 10/06/2016

Pebble Hook-tip 12/06/2016

Peach Blossom 12/06/2016

Scorched Wing 13/06/2016

On the ringing front a very short ringing session at Crawford on the 9th and another there on the 12th produced combined totals as follows (retraps in brackets): Tree Sparrow 20 (4); House Sparrow 2; Greenfinch 17 (2); Goldfinch 9 (2); Chaffinch 2; Robin 3; Dunnock 2; Whitethroat 1; Great Tit 5 (1).
Tree Sparrows seem to be having a good breeding season as I have now caught 33 at Crawford in the last 10 days with 30 being juveniles.

Juvenile Tree Sparrow

Adult male House Sparrow; an increasingly scarce sight these days.
Studies have shown that individuals with larger black bibs are more dominant.

Juvenile House Sparrow 12/06/2016.
While Tree Sparrows seem to be doing ok the same can't be said for House Sparrows. They have virtually disappeared from my garden.

Juvenile Greenfinch 12/06/2016.
The extensive areas of yellow on the tail and outer webs of the primaries mean this bird can be easily sexed as a male.

I am still catching quite a few new Starlings in the garden (mostly juveniles but a few new adults too) and I have now ringed 287 juveniles over the last 5 weeks. Numbers visiting the garden should tail off rapidly now, as birds disperse and form post breeding flocks, so I don't expect to ring many more this breeding season.

Walkies 30/06/13

I have been busy at work over the past couple weeks and haven't had time to blog, not that I have had much to blog about. The dog has been feeling neglected too and hasn't had a long walk for a while. This morning there was the initial tail wagging fuss after I got up but then he gave me his miserable look in the hope of getting me to take him out for a walk.

Bryn with one of his sad looks

I eventually gave in, grabbed my camera gear and took him for a walk. It was very warm with spells of sunshine so I hoped there would be a few butterflies and dragonflies to photograph. We took our usual route towards my ringing site at Longshaw but the ponds we passed didn't have a single damselfly or dragonfly on the wing.



A happier looking dog but no odonata in this pond.

Butterflies were very thin on the ground and one of the few encountered was a Large Skipper. Large swathes of good habitat held no butterflies at all and we only recorded the aforementioned Large Skipper, 1 Meadow Brown and 3 Speckled Wood in 2 hours of searching. Some species are probably in between broods but the low numbers probably reflects the plight of our butterflies.

Large Skipper

If its been a bad year for butterflies, so far at least, it seems to be a very good year for orchids. Marsh Orchids seem to be plentiful and far more common than the Common Spotted Orchid. Marsh Orchid flowering has just about peaked but the Common Spotted Orchid was still in its prime.


Camera gear and patient dog in amongst the orchids

Common Spotted Orchid



Something gets Bryn's attention amongst the grass and orchids.

Bryn has learned to wait while I am taking photographs and will sit for long periods. As long as he is out he seems to be happy. He spotted something moving through the grass and orchids at one point. When I had a look it turned out to be a frog.



Common Frog

One insect that was prolific during our walk was a micro moth known as the Nettle-tap (Anthophila fabriciana). It flies during the day and is often found in large numbers in the vicinity of nettles, the larval food plant.


Nettle-tap on buttercup.

Nettle-tap (Anthophila fabriciana)

On our way back home I tried to get some shots of bumblebees in flight. There were several species present on a patch of flowers but the only sharp shot that I managed to get was of the back end of what I later identified as a Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum). This species was first found in the UK in Wiltshire as recently as 2001 and has rapidly colonised large parts of England and Wales. Much of the rapid colonisation of the UK has been attributed to the abundance of bird boxes which they frequently use for nesting.

Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum).

The same patch of flowers held a Silver Y. This is a migrant moth from southern Europe and one or two have started to turn up in the moth trap in the garden. Hopefully this year will be a better year for migrant moths compared with last year's washout.

Silver Y (Autographa gamma)

A more content Bryn cuddled up to his pink sheep tonight having had his 'walkies'.

A few post back ('Flaming June' posted 6th June) I mentioned that a singing bird that had really got my attention. I can now reveal it was a singing Brambling. Unfortunately it turned out to be a one day wonder and didn't hang around.