A trip out of county to the Chilterns.

 Earlier this month we travelled up to Buckinghamshire and stayed in the Chilterns, a beautiful chalk downland area with splendid trees and red kites galore.

This red kite was sitting beside a chapel at NT Greys Court and spent the day just circling and landing and watching all the visitors in the hope of picking up a snack to eat. They have a very distinctive call, and when you first here them they are like someone whistling their dog!

I was lucky enough to be pointed in the direction of a very rare flowering plant, the Chiltern gentian which is mostly only found in Buckinghamshire ( where it is the County flower), Hertfordshire and interestingly, recently discovered in Wiltshire. A plant of chalk downland it is very pretty but quite small and very easy to overlook.

Being early autumn now there were quite a few fungi to be seen and this Shaggy Parasol was one prominent one. Whilst they generally like woodland, this one was in the middle of a field!

Whilst not exactly wildlife, we had an interesting visit to the Chiltern Open Air Museum where a number of buildings have been saved from destruction. They have been painstakingly taken down and bought to this site and rebuilt and it is a fascinating place to view old dwellings, functional buildings like toll houses etc.

Long distance shots

The local bird life has been quiet recently, partly because after the breeding season many birds will be moulting into their new feathers and this can take up to five weeks to gradually moult and then regrow a new set of feathers. They are very vulnerable to being caught by predators at this stage of their lives so they tend to keep out of sight as much as they can.

In the garden there have also been fewer birds at the feeders as natural food is still plentiful, so it is always good to see something a bit more unusual from the kitchen window, such as this grey heron, which appeared yesterday flying in over the gardens in Pole Rue and then landing unexpectedly in a big conifer tree behind the houses.It remained there for well over an hour and then flew off, but I saw it again this morning flying towards the churchyard. Perhaps it has its eye on someone's garden pond?!

Last week we took a short trip down to Devon and had the chance to have a short walk on the cliff top at the RSPB Labrador Bay Reserve near Shaldon. This site has been specifically managed to encourage the rare Cirl bunting and it has been very successful, with over 25 breeding pairs now frequenting the local stubble fields and hedgerows. I was delighted to see quite a few feeding on the grain amongst the stubble and managed to get these pictures when they flew up into the hedgerows. They are similar in appearance, and indeed related to yellowhammers, and these photos of young, or female birds are not a great example, but having heard their call as well I can confirm they are Cirl buntings!

 

A distant kestrel was patrolling the cliff top too and it landed on a tree several hundred yards away, very well camouflaged in the reddish brown leaves.

Whilst none of these pictures are great shots, it was lovely to be able to do some bird watching again  after a long break from my favourite hobby due to the recent restrictions on travel.

Did you take part in the Big Butterfly Count 2020?

I've just realised that I had started this post at the end of July and never published it (where has the time gone!) so with a bit of a tweak here it is!

The Big Butterfly Count organised by the Butterfly Conservation Trust began on Saturday 17th July and ran until Sunday 9th August. 

Here are a few of the butterflies I have seen recently, mostly in and around Combe St Nicholas and been able to photograph with my phone. Some of them are notoriously tricky though as they barely land.

Marbled whites, which particularly like tall grassy unfertilised areas, are on the wing at the moment.

Watch out for them flying over the mound at Underway Meade.

The first picture shows the underside and the second one the open wings from above.

The beautiful comma butterfly with its distinctive scalloped wings is often seen on woodland edges and feeding, as here, on blackberry flowers and they will also feed on rotting fruit in gardens later in the season. 

This one below though was probably trying to find minerals and salts from the road surface which it needs to find in order to maintain a healthy life and which it can't get from nectar.

There were large numbers of Gatekeeper this summer and plenty in Underway Meade along the woodland edge. Often mistaken for Meadow Brown, it has orange patches on both fore and rear wings. It also has the double white pupils in the eye spot which distinguishes it.

An easier butterfly to identify which is also on the wing now is the Speckled Wood. They appear as early as march when they tend to be paler and then right through to October when they appear darker. As the name suggests, they like woodland and again are found in good numbers in the meade.

I have seen a few Small Tortoiseshells this summer but not as many as usual. They are colourful butterflies and can be mistaken for painted Ladies but haven't got the dark patch in the end of the wing.

Watch out too for Peacock butterflies, especially on sunny days, feeding on buddleia, so well named with their big eyes like on a peacock wing!

Whilst butterflies are colourful this summer has seen an influx of Jersey Tiger Moths and they are beautiful when in flight with their bright orange underwings. When they settle they are also beautiful with striking black and white pattern on the upper wings.

I was lucky to also get this photo of the underside of the Jersey Tiger moth when It landed on our front window!

National Insect Week

Last week was National Insect Week, held every two years to encourage people to be more aware of them and their importance to the world around us. There are 24,000 species of insect in the UK alone so it seems appropriate to post a few pictures of a variety of insects that I have seen recently in my garden or around the local lanes.Often dismissed by people as a nuisance or uninteresting, they are vital to the ecology of our world.

I disturbed this delicate looking White plumed moth as I did some weeding in the garden. It would normally be flying at dusk but soon resettled on some teasels which are coincidentally providing some bindweed with a climbing structure. Interestingly the food source for the caterpillar of  this moth is bindweed!.

 

There are plenty of hoverflies about at the moment and this one, a Marmalade hoverfly I believe, is quite well camouflaged on this marigold as it feeds.

Bees are working hard at the moment pollinating our crops by gathering nectar and pollen and they home in on any flower that can offer both. We may curse the brambles that invade our gardens and seem to grow very quickly overnight but the flowers are a welcome sight for bees and other insects. Also, come August / September, we get the benefit of foraging for the blackberries for autumn fruit pies!

Grasshoppers and crickets are more often heard rather than seen, but it is worth looking out for them in long grasses if only to see how impressively high they can jump! This is a cricket, identified by its long antennae, the grasshoppers usually having short antennae. Unfortunately it didn't stay still long enough to get a side view to see if it had any markings to work out what type of cricket it was. In researching some information about grasshoppers and crickets I have discovered that it is possible to use a bat detector to determine particular species that make sounds at different frequencies just like bats do. Next time I go looking for them I will take my detector with me!

An unexpected encounter

During a walk one warm evening this week along the lane towards Slade Cross something shot across the road. Was it a mouse or a vole? Unusually, instead of disappearing into the undergrowth as we approached like most small mammals, it lingered on the edge of the tarmac allowing a close up view.

It was a vole, but was it a Field Vole or a Bank Vole? They are quite difficult to tell apart but

the reddish brown fur and length of the tail, at least 50% of the body length, makes me believe it to be a Bank vole as the Field vole is a grey brown colour and its tail is only 30% of its body length.(But I am happy to be corrected!).

It was quite bedraggled and on closer inspection its rear left foot appeared to be being dragged behind it, so perhaps it had escaped from the clutches of a cat or even an owl. This didn't seem to hamper the speed at which it moved though and it continued to dash from one side of the lane to the other for quite some time, seemingly oblivious to us and our dogs presence as you can see from this short video clip.

People living nearby said they had seen a vole earlier that day feeding under their bird table and it to had a damaged foot so despite that it seemed to be able to fend for itself quite successfully! We felt privileged to have been able to get such good views of it, it's amazing what you can see just walking locally.

Glorious pink!

As summer gets going and the weather warms up, different wild flowers are emerging. 

Knapweed is looking lovely and will attract plenty of insects. It will appear in meadows and even on your lawn if you don't mow it for a few weeks!

More spectacular though are the Pyramidal orchids which can be found in a few places around the parish at the moment. Their name is a very good description of the flower head, especially before it fully opens and makes it one of the easier orchids to identify.

Rosebay willowherb, another summer flower often seen on our roadside verges is making lovely splashes of colour now. The seeds are specially adapted with tiny parachutes which blow on the slightest breeze and therefore spread the flowers range. Also known as fireweed as it germinates after fires.

 

The Field scabious, whilst not such a vivid pink, but lilac with a hint of pink, is also flowering now and deserves a mention. This plant was used to alleviate plague sores and other skin conditions, which is probably where it got its name from!

Looking down not up!

I have a tendency, as a bird watcher, to look up and not down, so sometimes I have to remind myself that there are lots of things going on below eye level that are worth watching out for.

Recently, especially on the sunny days, there have been numerous butterflies on the wing and the Meadow Brown in particular have been emerging in good numbers.Walking across any longer grassy areas will disturb them and they will fly away from you in an erratic way before landing again and invariably closing their wings.

If you are lucky they may start to feed holding their wings at least partially open, but they rarely stay in one place for long!

Other more obliging butterflies that will settle and that I have seen recently have been Red Admirals

and Small tortoiseshells.

The warm weather has also seen the beautiful day flying Hummingbird Hawk-moth making an appearance, especially in gardens like mine with valerian growing in them. These large moths have migrated from the Mediterranean during the spring and there are even records of them returning south in the autumn!

This year I have noticed more dog roses in the hedges than usual and the blooms seem to attract insects, often in good numbers, like these colourful hoverflies that seem to be having a non socially distance gathering!

This week on my daily walks I have been keeping a close eye on nettles by the roadside and been rewarded by the sighting of lots of seven spot ladybirds. Of the 46 ladybird species now found in Britain only 26 are readily recognisable as ladybirds and the seven spot is the most common.

Unfortunately another non native lady bird, the Harlequin, invaded the UK back in 2004 and are now thought to be causing problems to our native breeds. Along with sightings of our seven spot I have also seen larva (below) of the Harlequin ladybird. These ladybirds are variable in colour and are often more noticeable in the autumn when they gather in large numbers, often on windowsills indoors, looking for somewhere to spend the cold. Last year I believe they congregated in the local church tower! 

The humming, or buzzing if you prefer, of bees on sunny days as they busily gather pollen and nectar is a joy and they seem to like the perennial geraniums in my garden so I can spend time trying to identify them. Not always that easy as they are, as the nickname says, "busy bees"!

So, I hope I have demonstrated that looking down, or at least sideways, and not always up in the air, is really worthwhile!