All posts by Ian Alexander

I have been in love with nature as long as I can remember. Nature photography, birdwatching, lichens, fossils, orchids, mountains, insects, everything else. Conservation, gardening at home, community gardening. I've loved it all.
Natural History

Summer Butterflies in Gunnersbury Triangle

Ringlet, a handsome species we’ve hardly seen here, increasing
A Peacock butterfly on Buddleia: once a common sight in every suburban garden, now a special treat. We used to call the Buddleia the “butterfly bush”; it would be covered in Nymphalids – Peacock, Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Painted Lady, sometimes dozens at once.
Red Admiral sunning on Birch by the small meadow
Definitely not a butterfly: a newly-emerged Southern Hawker dragonfly stretching its wings just above the main pond amongst the Fool’s Water-cress
Water-Plantain beside the boardwalk: the water table is really low for this early in the summer. Netty failed to find any new-season toadlets around the pond where she’d expect them to be. The leaves are slightly heart-shaped, but nowhere near as arrowhead-like as its cousin the Arrowhead.
Water-Plantain’s 3-petalled flower
Natural History

Skippers in Gunnersbury Triangle

Essex Skipper, dorsal view, on the north bank. The dark margin to the wings is diffuse, and the black suffusion extends tapering up the wing veins. The antenna tips seem to be dark all over.
Essex Skipper on Bramble leaf. The underside of the antenna tip is black, and again the black suffusion of the veins at the back of the wing can be seen clearly.
Distant shot across the Ramp Meadow, but … it’s certainly a Large Skipper, with those distinctive pale spots on the wings. The butterfly is indeed quite a bit bigger than the other Skippers, and the spotted appearance makes it look quite different both in flight and at rest.
This little butterfly in side view, on Ragwort, has the underside of its antenna tips brownish, which would make it a Small Skipper.
There are helpful comparison photos on the UK Butterflies Essex Skipper page under ‘Similar Species’. However, none of the antenna tips shown there look as dark as any of the Small/Essex skippers shown here.
This photo, taken on the 12th of July, shows the antenna clearly. I’d say it was the same species as the last photo, and we can see two things clearly: there’s little suffusion of black up the wing veins, and the antenna is not boldly black-tipped on the underside, both of which an Essex Skipper should have. Nor is the antenna underside specially rufous brown.

Finally on the 8th, walking round with Netty, I saw a Ringlet, its darker wings unmistakably marked with a line of little rings.

Natural History

Natural History in the Heel of Italy: 2. Towns

Palm Tree Trunk: detail of cross-section. What’s missing? There are no annual growth rings! Palms do not have that kind of secondary thickening. Instead, they have masses of tough bundles of fibres (dark brown spots) scattered throughout the trunk.
Same trunk, showing a wider view. Outside is on left. City park, Lecce
Well this really is one of those images one captures once in a lifetime. Swift, at dusk, feeding its young, in a crack in the facade of the church of San Matteo, Lecce. The flash has revealed the eye of both the parent and the young bird. Swifts hardly ever land, even sleeping in the air, and they spend as little time as possible at the nest.
Screaming group of swifts over Matera in the evening. In the early morning, many hundreds of swifts are scattered high in the sky above the town.
Lesser Kestrel, one of dozens in the sky over the 6000-year-old town of Matera. They live socially. The small thumb-winglets (in aeronautics they’d be called leading edge flaps, ornithologists call them alulae) are deployed to increase lift. They appear dark as they are in shadow. The belly is reddish, the wings pale and almost unmarked.
Social group of Lesser Kestrels in the air over Matera. (There are 16 birds in the image; you should be able to right-click and select something like ‘View image’ to see it enlarged)
Lesser Kestrel on TV Aerial, Lecce. This species too spends all day in the air, so it was a treat to see one perched. They catch insects in the air or on the ground.
Lesser Kestrel with insect prey in its claws
Aestivating Snails, Matera
Swallow atop farm cart inside cave-dwelling, Matera
Swallow on nest with young

Natural History

Natural History in the Heel of Italy: 1. Olive Groves

Ancient Olive Grove in Puglia
Ancient Olive Grove near Ostuni, Puglia. One tree here was measured at 1,400 years old.
Mating Flower Beetles on Greater Pignut
Mating Flower Beetles on Greater Pignut. The species has brown elytra, unlike the iridescent green elytra of the thick-kneed flower beetle familiar in northern Europe.
The Olive Groves harbour an attractive flora of herbs and grasses, and a rich fauna of butterflies (here, Common Blue), grasshoppers, bugs and beetles. Birdlife includes Hoopoe, Serin, Swift, and Swallow and the occasional Kestrel, and plenty of Italian Sparrows.
Scabious in Olive Grove
Mullein
Stone Grasshopper: this marvellously camouflaged insect is practically invisible unless it moves. Its bold disruptive coloration effectively breaks up its outline and misleads the eye about its shape and shadow.
Fallen fruits of grasses and vetch
Spirit of the Olive Tree? A gnarled olive trunk resembling an ancient face
Ant-Lion
Ant-lion (Myrmeleontidae), another well-camouflaged insect. This is the adult; the larva lives in a burrow, where it traps ants in a conical pit by digging the sand away beneath them.
Olive Grove pruning: neat rows of brash, and the occasional stack of logs.
Ant Road
Ant Road across Olive Grove track
Large Grasshopper rescued from swimming pool. I also saved a brown lizard but didn’t have the camera with me to record it.
Painted Lady
Scarlet Darter
Limestone boulder handsomely lichened in orange, grey, black, and white
Passenger moth, Dysgonia algira. It was easy to see when it moved but not at all badly camouflaged among the limestone blocks of the field wall.
Spider-hunting wasp (Anoplius: Pompilidae) with much larger prey, which she dragged off to her burrow, paralysed but alive, for her young to live on until they pupate
House Gecko on wall of old farmhouse (a Masseria)
Italian Sparrow with food for nestlings, waiting for a moment to fly unobserved to the nest hole in the Masseria

Natural History

Summer Colours at Gunnersbury Triangle

Thick-kneed flower beetle (metallic iridescent green and gold) on Poppy (red, pink, orange, there are plenty of colours in there!, with violet stigmas)
Crab Spider scarily camouflaged on Hogweed: whitish-green and bright red, curiously
Caterpillar of Angle Shades moth, magnificent in bright green and turquoise. Its food plants include Bramble, Hazel, Hops, Birch, and Oak, all of which are found here.
Natural History

Magpie, red in beak and claw

Caution: this article contains no blood, but one of the photographs of an insect could be upsetting to sensitive readers.

Mallow beside the ramp meadow in Gunnersbury Triangle local nature reserve
A Magpie on the prowl for prey

Magpies are rather omnivorous predators, feeding on whatever they can catch – the eggs of other birds are a favourite, along with chicks, and the juicy caterpillars and larvae of insects. Unlike foxes, which will crunch up even large beetles whole (leaving wing-cases and other recognisable body parts in their droppings), they feed selectively, eating the soft abdomen of large beetles like the Stag Beetle, and abandon the heavily-armoured thorax and head. The beetles, their bodies broken and their chances of reproduction gone, clamber slowly and pitifully about, sometimes for days.

A newly-emerged male Stag Beetle in Gunnersbury Triangle, its abdomen and left wing-case removed by a Magpie, its right wing-case and legs broken.

On a happier note, we saw a Red Admiral resting in the woods on some Ivy. The Nymphalid butterflies are all getting scarce, so it was a welcome addition to the usual suspects — Brimstone, Small White, Speckled Wood, Holly Blue — on a day without much sunshine to bring the butterflies out.

Red Admiral
The surprisingly handsome flowerheads of Hemlock Water Dropwort, in the wet woodland

Nature Reserves

On the Swale NNR

The Swale National Nature Reserve, seen here looking southwest from Shellness, is an extensive area of brackish saltings, formerly saltmarsh (top right), with a shelly beach and rich mudflats (left) beside the Swale, the channel that separates the Isle of Sheppey from mainland Kent. A Second World War blockhouse is in the distance.

To reach Shellness one has to jolt very slowly along a long, straight, dusty, potholed track, minding out for one’s shock-absorbers. The reward is a magically quiet, spacious realm of … nothingness. Wide mudflats with occasional Shelducks. Wide horizons. Long empty shelly berms above empty windswept beaches. Sea kale. Sea lavender. Sea campion. Sea everything. The song of skylarks over the wind.

A Meadow Pipit chooses a good vantage point on the lichen-covered blockhouse.

The cry of a Black-Tailed Godwit over the marsh draws my attention to an elegant medium-sized wader with its long straight bill and agile flight. On the groynes and mudflats are plenty of cheerful Oystercatchers, resting or foraging in little groups. A Little Egret flaps distinctively past.

Beside the path is a little beach, marked off with a sign, posts and a plastic rope for a “rare” colony of Little Terns. I scan it with binoculars, and am lucky enough to catch one in flight; it lands out on the mudflat, its long wings poking out past its tail, a slender sea-swallow.

Three Oystercatchers feeding on the Swale mudflats

Even as I parked up, some chunky Corn Buntings flitted overhead giving their sharp calls. They were once common in farmland everywhere. A single Swallow flew past.

Sea Campion

Along the mudflats occasional Ringed Plovers went their solitary ways. The telescope showed little groups of Shelducks in quite large numbers — perhaps I saw 50 all told. A few Black-Headed and Herring Gulls, and as always a few Starlings (convinced they were waders) visited the marsh. A sudden flock of a hundred Dunlins, wheeling and sweeping together, made me catch my breath, a glimpse of wild beauty.

Sea Beet, the origin of Spinach Beet, our favourite green leafy vegetable

Over the marsh, Skylarks kept lifting up for their song-flights, pouring out their astonishing, continuous, rich melody until they were almost invisibly high in the sky. It was impossible not to think of Shelley’s poem To a Skylark (“Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert …”), so marvellously immaterial did they seem in the wind and the bright sky.

At the little headland, bounded by a muddy, marshy creek, a Redshank flew up, piping.

This Yellow Wagtail landed just in front of me at the end of the walk, hawking quietly for flies, mostly on foot.

As I returned, a Yellow Wagtail, seemingly almost tame, walked unconcernedly along the path in front of me. I ate my picnic sitting below the dyke out of the wind, absorbing the space and sunshine, my heart full of birdsong.


Love of Nature, Natural History, Nature Reserves

A Six-Warbler Walk at Wraysbury

After a long cold spell, it again felt like spring today, and despite the cloud I went to Wraysbury, thinking that it could be a good time for warblers.

I was greeted by a pair of Cormorants on a bleached branch beside the lake. And a moment later by the first of many Blackcaps. Warbler the first.
A little way along the path, a rapid and rich warble went on .. and on .. and on – aha! A Garden Warbler. (How to tell Garden from Blackcap? “Blackcap’s Brief.” Well, good enough for a first approximation.) Warbler the second.

I walked on a few paces, and glimpsed something small and brown in the willows. Binoculars showed an unmistakable Garden Warbler – Sylvia borin[g] – pretty much uniformly coloured, or rather, so beautifully countershaded that it looks flat in sunlight, quite the clever camouflage trick.

It started to sing – and was almost drowned out by the deafening repetitive din of a Cetti’s Warbler (roughly, Chwit-i-Pit-i-Pit! Chwit-i-Pit-i-Pit!), as usual without a glimpse of the songster. Warbler the third.

I then saw my first Banded Demoiselle, indeed my first flying damselfly or dragonfly, of the year. It’s always a lovely moment. A few bright yellow (male) Brimstone butterflies skittered about or sunbathed: perhaps the butter-coloured insect is the original “butter fly”, or perhaps the name refers to the fluttering flight of the whole group – it must make them very hard for predators like birds and dragonflies to catch them, and given how common it is to see a butterfly with holes pecked in its wings, it is easy to believe that anti-predator adaptations are highly advantageous.

Other conspicuous insects were a lot of Sawflies, looking much like tiny red wasps with black-and-yellow striped tails, and numerous large Bumblebees enjoying the purple Comfrey which is abundant beside the river.

The droning chatter of a Reed Warbler came out of another Willow beside the lake: Warbler the fourth.

From across the river, just audible but quite definite, came the Chiff-Chaff-Chiff-Chaff-Chiff-Chaff song of .. you guessed it. Warbler the fifth.

Across the bridge and onto the flat scrub, and in almost the first bush was a Whitethroat singing its short simple scratchy ditty. (Presumably female Whitethroats find it enticing. Or other males find it repellent, one or the other. Maybe both, actually.) Warbler the sixth.

I reconnoitred the wood-and-scrubby area for possible Willow Warblers (they don’t inhabit willows any more than Willow Tits do), but they don’t seem to have arrived yet. Some Song Thrushes improvised their fine, repeated melodies of many different repeated phrases.

A six-warbler walk … one of the delights of May.