Monthly Archives: July 2017

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Herald moth brightens a day of clipping path edges

Herald Moth on Netty’s glove, whirring its wings to warm up. Its food plants are Willow and Aspen; we found it under a Grey Poplar so that’s probably what it grew up on. We found another specimen a minute later. They were cold and groggy on this cool, rainy day.
Clipping path edges: the ivy had grown over the edging poles, sometimes by a foot or so.
Love of Nature, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Thursley Common, not just dragonflies

Round-Leaved Sundew Drosera rotundifolia, an insectivorous plant
Red-topped Cladonia floerkana lichens

OK, ok, you wanted some dragonflies. There were masses of Black-Tailed Skimmers chasing about in groups at Pudmore Pond. Black Darters, Common Blue Damselflies, and Small Red Damselflies skittered about the smaller ponds. A large Hawker or two dashed past, unidentifiable, probably Southern Hawker. A Keeled Skimmer perched conveniently nearby, daintier than the Black-Tailed.

Female Black-Tailed Skimmer (doing a Tiffany Lampshade impression)
Keeled Skimmer

Among the birds, some 50 Swallows were roosting on telegraph wires early in the day. Families of young Stonechats gave grating contact calls, unlike the stone-clicking call of the adults. A Redstart flicked its tail in the bushes. Skylarks rose and sang almost too high to see against the clouds over the heathy hills, Shelley described it perfectly in his ‘To a Skylark’: “a flood of rapture so divine”.

Black-Tailed Skimmer
Natural History

Bugs Aplenty at GT!

Netty demonstrating how to use the Lazy Dog tool
Some of the Ladybirds we made for the children’s nature trail
Edita with everything you need for Pond Dipping
Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle, a wasp mimic
Jersey Tiger Moth at Chiswick Park Station, very hasty photo
Jersey Tiger Moth in kitchen, later in the week – must be thousands of them all over town, presumably
Small Skipper GT small meadow
Gatekeeper GT small meadow
Hot work debrambling the Small Meadow

On a sorry note, Netty spotted a small tuft of feathers, still attached to a bit of skin. The scrap was whitish, spotted brown, like a Song Thrush’s breast, torn off by a Sparrowhawk: probably one of the pair that nested here until last year, but must now be nesting somewhere nearby. I reflected that I hadn’t heard the male Song Thrush singing for a fortnight. What a sad bit of fluff to pick up.