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

Willow Emerald, Woodmouse, Volunteers in Gunnersbury Triangle

Willow Emerald Damselfly on Willow in GT. This is a new species in the UK, only having arrived from the Continent in the past couple of years. It appeared in numbers ovipositing in the GT pond in August. The species perches with its wings not fully closed together. The iridescent green is handsome when it flies, remarkably well camouflaged when perched.
Woodmouse by GT bicycle wheel
Female Southern Hawker on Broom
Tara Netty Eleni volunteers mowing Anthill Meadow (and looking at interesting specimens). We found small toads, frogs, and newts in the grass.
Natural History

Indian Summer in Richmond Park

Migrant Hawker hovering by lower Pen Pond. I was pleased to get this nice shot of one of these handsome dragonflies, one of the most delicate and shimmering of the hawkers. It was alongside Common Blue damselflies (low over the path) and a few Common Darters.
Great Crested Grebe in the warm water
Small Heath butterfly: one of many skittering low in the short heathy grassland, perching on the ground. We saw few other insects, barring a fast and wriggly Carabid Beetle.
Natural History

Hunting for the Least Water-Lily

Lochan Uvie, reputed home of Least Water-Lily

The Least Water-Lily, Nuphar pumila, is a rare plant. It’s even harder to find than it could be because it’s small, lives in remote Scottish lochs among other floating-leaved plants (generally way out across a swamp, so impossible to photograph decently), and most famously, because it hardly ever flowers.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I learnt about this tantalising little plant while visiting Wakehurst Place, the beautiful country seat of Kew Gardens. That day, it was holding a celebration of its wonderful work conserving seeds of plants from around the world in its extraordinary seed bank, and the staff were all available, full of smiles and sunshine, to greet the public, show off their array of techniques and gadgetry, and to explain their work.

Wakehurst Place Seed Bank Open Day

One of the stalls had a display about the Least Water-Lily. It was a small cousin of the Yellow Water-Lily, a common enough plant in quiet waters, but far rarer, known almost entirely from Scotland, barring a probable introduction into Shropshire.

Curious, I looked on the web to see where I might find it in Scotland, where I was about to travel. Lochan Ovie or Uvie was practically the first thing I found, and it was in walking distance of where I’d be staying. A visit, or rather a wild water-lily hunt, was in order.

The lochan was indeed wild, with a wide natural border of wet swampy grassland, and a floating zone with Broad-Leaved Pondweed, Potamogeton natans, and Water Horsetail, Equisetum fluviatile, as stated. White Water-Lilies were reasonably abundant.

White Water-Lily, Broad-Leaved Pondweed, Water Horsetail in Lochan Uvie

But there was no sign of the elusive Least Water-Lily. There was an emergent plant with clusters of three leaves: but these were definitely leaves, not the green sepals of water-lily flowers: and certainly not the rounded, floating lily-pads of the Least Water-Lily.

Some pond-skaters scooted about on the inky-blue water. Some tiny sky-blue insects seemed impossibly to have Marangoni propulsion, motoring about with no sign of legs or wings in the surface film.

Pond Skater and sky-blue insects Lochan Uvie

A huge boulder, whether from the crag across the road or left over from the Ice Age, was covered in magnificent lichens, one kind a grey-green crust with startling red apothecia.

Crustose Lichen Red Apothecia Lochan Uvie

But I still felt a little disappointed. As I was walking off, I found a Raven’s feather, a bit battered, but far too big to be a Crow’s. A Raven called cheerfully from far above, somewhere up on Creag Ddu.

 

 

Natural History

Bramshill Dragonflies

Small Red Damselfly, from the pond below
A pond at Bramshill. Reedmaces in foreground, water level well down in current drought. Succession (sere) from open water – floating pondweed – emergent plants e.g. rushes, then reed and reedmace, then willow bushes, finally birch-oak mixed forest
Black-Tailed Skimmer on his lookout perch
Common Darter: he too constantly returned to this perch
Brown Hawker female, ovipositing
The ‘beach’ on the Long Pond, Bramshill
Emperor Dragonfly on reedmaces at end of Long Pond, Bramshill. Zipping about were lots of blue/azure damselflies, common darters, and black-tailed skimmers, and a few bluetails.
The Long Pond, Bramshill – perfect dragonfly habitat. Open water with floating weed, bordered by beds of rushes, reeds, willow and alder bushes. Conifers in the background
Common Fleabane – a handsome yellow composite in forest ditch, Bramshill
Natural History

Aston Rowant butterflies of high summer

Aston Rowant, full of chalk grassland flowers and insects, the Cretaceous escarpment above the Oxford Clay (Jurassic) plain
Male Adonis Blue
Female
Silver-Spotted Skipper Hesperia comma
Sphecid digger wasp
Meadow Grasshopper, a fine insect
Harvestman cf Platybunus triangularis
Red Kite overhead … and a moment later, a Raven, calling loudly, too
Natural History

Drought, Baking Heat, Dragonflies … Thursley Common

Black Darters in wheeL The pools were very low from a month of drought, and many of the dragonflies correspondingly distant, but this pair came obligingly close.
Keeled Skimmer male sunbathing on boardwalk. Some definitely like it hot. Ask me about poikilothermy sometime, I’ll explain it to you.
Thursley Common boardwalk, bog, pools, pines, birch scrub, distant hills. A Hobby flew up, its back rather uniformly grey-brown. Seen soaring later from the side, its moustachial stripe was conspicuous.
Bordered Grey Moth, Selidosema brunnearia (a Geometrid)  in heather, its caterpillar’s favourite food
Beautiful Golden Y Moth, Autographa pulchrina (a Noctuid), hiding in heather
Robber fly on bell heather
Small Sand Wasp, Ammophila pubescens, continually in motion on a sandy path

Right at the end of the walk, a huge leaf-green Emperor Moth caterpillar (Saturnia pavonia), whorled with black tufts on each segment, walked briskly like a self-propelled cylindrical concertina across the boardwalk. Just as I grabbed my camera and leant up close, it fell down the gap between two planks and disappeared into the thick green grass below. It was a sight to behold, as long and thick as a finger.