Tag Archives: Cuckoo

Tree Pipits and Cuckoos!

Tree Pipit singing sweetly. Its perch has been well drilled by Woodpeckers.
Wide views over heath, hill, and woodland as far as the eye can see: Puttenham Common from Hillbury Hill Fort
The Tarn on Puttenham Common, a remarkably big body of water surrounded by beautiful Oak – Birch – Holly forest
An enormous coppice stool of Holly, a most surprising tree to find coppiced, beside the main forest track running north from the Tarn. It must be ancient to have grown to such a size.
A fabulous big moss, I think Atrichum
Another gorgeous big moss, surely Polytrichum

Thursley Common after Lockdown

Four-Spotted Chaser, resting on Heather
Southern Marsh-Orchid Dactylorhiza praetermissa
Picture-Winged Fly on sandy path
Large Red Damselfly on one of the splendid boardwalks
Main lake in Thursley’s acid bog
Bogbean flowers emerging from the main lake
Pines and Heather – simple but special, compete with a Cuckoo singing, a Stonechat, and a Dartford Warbler

Butterflies in Tuscany

Common Blue [L’icaro o argo azzurro] (Polyommatus icarus) on Lavender beside the swimming pool of the lovely agriturismo farm, Rocca di Cispiano, where we stayed in Chianti. Species names are shown in English [Italian] and (Latin).

Pool area: not an obvious place for butterflies, but the clever planting of a Lavender border made all the difference

Scarce Swallowtail [Il podalirio] (Iphiclides podalirius), a large butterfly with a distinctive sailing flight, taking nectar beside the pool
Silver-Washed Fritillary [La pafia o Tabacco di Spagna o Fritillaria] (Argynnis paphia), a handsome and distinctive species

Tuscan landscape (Chianti): hilltop farms, Vines (bright green rows), Olive trees (blue-gray trees in rows), low mixed maquis (macchia mediterranea) forest, Cypress trees on left skyline

Nine-Spotted Moth [La fegea] (Amata phegea) frequently visited the lavender border and other flowers. It was once also found in England; Chris Manley suggests that global warming might allow it to return (a possible silver lining to that cloud).
Brimstone [La cedronella] (Gonepteryx rhamni)
Hummingbird Hawkmoth [La sfinge del galio o sfinge colibrì] (Macroglossum stellatarum), darting from flower to flower each time just before I managed to focus the little camera …

Bee-fly (neither a bee nor a butterfly) half-hovering to take nectar, making a particularly loud buzz

Meadow Brown [La Giurtina o Maniola comune] (Maniola jurtina)
Red Admiral [L’atalanta] (Vanessa atalanta). It has  a chunk out of its right hindwing, showing it survived an attack.
The enormous, fearsome, but non-aggressive Mammoth Wasp, [La vespa mammuth] (Megascolia maculata), on Wild Artichoke. Presumably its sting would be serious but I can’t find any record of people being stung by this peaceful insect.

A Mammoth Wasp visiting a potted Hottentot Fig, with a wide view of the Tuscan landscape

Oak Yellow Underwing Moth (Catocala nymphagoga) on shower beside pool

The bushes by the pool attracted this Southern White Admiral [Il Silvano azzurro o Piccolo silvano] (Limenitis reducta)
Swallows  [La rondine] (Hirundo rustica) swooping over the pool at sunset. Many pairs nest in the farm buildings; there were two active nests inside our porch.

Perfect butterfly habitat a short walk from the agriturismo: meadow grass by Olive groves with Scabious (blue) and St John’s Wort (yellow). There’s a tiny Queen of Spain Fritillary in the picture!

Sloe Hairstreak [Satiro dell’acacia] (Satyrium acaciae)
Swallowtail [Il macaone] (Papilio machaon); this one at Brolio castle, but there were many near the agriturismo too
Queen of Spain Fritillary [La latonia]  (Issoria lathonia) on Scabious
Clouded Yellow [La crocea, La limoncella, Il postiglione] (Colias croceus) pair in nuptial flight
Marbled White [La galatea] (Melanargia galathea)
Probably Eastern Burnet Moth [La carniolica] (Zygaena cf carniolica) on Scabious.

Zygaena cf carniolica taking flight. The brilliant red underwings give a strong and honest warning signal of the insect’s inedibility.

Eastern Dappled White [L’ausonia] (Euchloe ausonia)

Olive Grove and Spanish Broom. Butterflies skittered about the flowery meadow below the trees.

Wall Brown [La megera] (Lasiommata megera)
A lizard, probably the Common Wall Lizard [Lucertola muraiola] (Podarcis muralis) given its dark chin, scurried along the wooden rail at the edge of the pool area.

A very battered Oak Yellow Underwing that has survived an attack by a bird

Great Banded Grayling [Circe, Satiro circe, Sileno] (Brintesia circe)
Dingy Skipper [Tagete] (Erynnis tages). There were Large Skippers about too, but their habit of perching on slender waving grasses made photography hopeless.
Painted Lady [La vanessa del cardo] (Vanessa cardui)
Spotted Fritillary [La didima] (Melitaea didyma)

Some rather fine wasps apparently attempting to mate

Although it was a bit late in the season for them, we saw half-a-dozen fireflies in the woods by the strada bianca (unmetalled road) and among the olive trees, half an hour or so after sunset.

I made no attempt to photograph birds, but a Hoopoe flew over the pool, and Turtle Doves cooed nearby. A Cuckoo called from far across the valley; a Song Thrush sang; a Green Woodpecker gave its laughing cry. White Wagtails flew up to the roof, and Italian Sparrows hopped about. Goldfinches twittered in the trees. A Sardinian Warbler raced for the cover of the trees, its black crown conspicuous; a Melodious  Warbler sang from the woods. In the night, an owl called, it could have been a Scops Owl. And of course, Cicadas buzzed and Bush Crickets chirped all day long.

Cicada exuviae, the shed skin of a wingless nymph

All photos © Ian Alexander 2018

Nightingales at Northward Hill

Northward Hill, looking over oakwood, scrub, grazing marshes, and river

Well there are some things one just has to do, even if it means braving the traffic. Nightingales, once common all over the south of England, can now only be heard in a few special places, and Northward Hill is one of them. There are some others in the southeast, like Lodge Hill, and guess what, they want to build houses all over it. Better go and enjoy the birdsong while it lasts.

A very shy Wall Brown, now a mainly coastal butterfly, the first I’ve seen for years

I was greeted by the song of blackbird, chaffinch, robin, song thrush, and wren as I walked in. A few ‘whites’ – large white, orange tip, green-veined white – skittered about as I reached the attractively rough scrub of hawthorn in full May blossom, blackthorn, wild pear, wild plum, and wild cherry, topped by the occasional whitethroat singing away scratchily.

Into the woods, with a handsome old cherry orchard on the right. Some of the oaks were straight out of Lord of the Rings, splendidly gnarled, knobbly, with massive trunks and holes to hide a good few goblins in.

Nightingale country: a fine old Oak. It looks to have been pollarded at about 12 feet up some centuries ago, so it was probably cut to that height while smaller wood was coppiced all around it.

And yes, sure enough, a nightingale obliged by singing its hesitant but amazingly rich and varied song from the thick cover. A little further, another; and a cuckoo kindly sang its unmistakable song from an oak almost in front of me, then with a ‘gok’ call flew, sparrowhawk-like, from the tree, a special sight.

Down to the hide overlooking the pool in the top photo; I wasn’t expecting more than a coot and maybe a mallard, but there were breeding lapwings chasing off the crows; breeding oystercatchers, and an avocet sitting with them; and a couple of solitary little egrets, stalking and stabbing at small fish or frogs. A redshank gave its wild teuk-teuk-teuk call and flashed its wingbar briefly.

Little Egret Stalking

Overhead a few swallows flitted about, and three swifts raced over the marsh.

The Hoo Peninsula is still a wild, spacious, lonely place, even with the swelling villages. You can see the Shard and Canary Wharf in the distance (some 30 miles); the river with its cranes and giant ships is ever-present; but the North Kent Marshes are special, as is Northward Hill with its fine old woods, still unspoilt for birds. Go and see it while you can.

 

 

Spring Migrants at Thursley Common

Eriophorum angustifolium, Bog Cotton, a plant of wild, wet and rugged places

A bright, breezy, and much cooler day (16 C, not 29 any more) was just perfect for a visit to Thursley. Perhaps many of the dragonflies decided not to fly: I saw one Common Darter and (I think) one Brown Hawker, and nothing else, so anyone who went along hoping to see the Hobbies hawking for dragonflies by the dozen will have had a wasted trip (and indeed I saw several extravagantly camouflaged types with gigantic telescopes standing about looking very bored).

But everything else was in full swing. A Cuckoo called from the pinewoods. A Curlew gave its marvellously wild, bubbling call from the open marsh. A Dartford Warbler gave me the best view ever of its rufous belly and long tail, as it sat low in a scrubby Birch, giving its rasping anxiety call repeatedly. I enjoyed the view through binoculars. By the time I remembered to take a photo it was half-hidden again.

A scrappy photo of the Dartford Warbler

A Stonechat gave its scratchy call from a small Birch, then hopped up to some Pine trees (so, a distant shot).

Stonechat on Pine branch

A few Chiffchaffs called from the woods; plenty of Whitethroats sang from the regenerating Birches that are encroaching on to the heath. A Green Woodpecker gave its fine laughing call.

Birches regenerating on to heath below Pines

So I heard three warblers today to add to the four yesterday, so seven singing warblers in 24 hours, a little bit special.

The lichen flora on the heath was quite beautiful, with Usnea beard lichen, leafy Parmelia, bristly Ramalina (all on old Heather), and elegant Cladonia potscourer, cup, and stalk lichens (three species).

Miniature elegance: Cladonia cf fimbriata, cup lichen

A Linnet sang from the top of a Birch. Goldfinches twittered and flitted about.

Dove’s Food Cranesbill, Geranium molle, (?), on dry heath beside path

Musk Stork’s-bill, Erodium moschatum, (?) on dry heath beside path

And on the path out, a Hobby leapt from a tree right in front of me, where it had been sitting watching the bog pools,  waiting for dragonflies to come out and display themselves. It flew round and up, then circled, soaring, away to the south. Perhaps it was the one the twitchers had been waiting to see flying all morning.

In the Lake District

Lonesome Splendour: looking up Wastwater to Wasdale Head, with Yewbarrow on left, Scafell and the Wasdale Screes on right
Lonesome Splendour: looking up Wastwater to Wasdale Head, with Yewbarrow on left, Scafell and the Wasdale Screes on right

It was a delight to be able to take some time in the almost miraculously preserved Lake District, the landscape seemingly unchanged from a century ago. The real changes are in the main carefully hidden away: cunningly concealed caravan parks, sensitively expanded hotels and guest houses, visitor attractions built of grey slate and tucked behind walls or trees. One change cannot be hidden: the narrow lanes carry twice, no, four times the traffic of thirty years ago, and it travels at murderous speed. Some of the young men in their shiny red cars race along the few straights and around blind bends, trusting and assuming (without thought) that the other driver knows the road as well as them,  has the same speed of reaction, and will have space to pass. Given that the other driver may well be a foreigner in a slow, bulky camper van, or old and frail, or talking on the phone, or tired, drunk or just not quite as perfect as the young bloke in his speed-wagon, this may not be justified. Pedestrians and cyclists, too, take their lives in their hands. The park authority ceaselessly balances the conflicting pressures: facilities for the millions of visitors, landscape, wildlife, jobs, houses, schools and shops for the residents, car parking (as pricey as any city in the most popular spots). They have done an admirable job.

Round-Leaved Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, and Sphagnum bog moss
Round-Leaved Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, and Sphagnum bog moss

Glaciated Landscape: Pavey Ark above Stickle Tarn
Glaciated Landscape: Pavey Ark above Stickle Tarn

The marvellously clean landscape of rock, grassland and glacial lakes appears so fresh on a fine day that it hardly seems feasible: it is sharper than a diorama illustrating geomorphology, and much more beautiful.

Foxglove in a Lake District landscape,Tarn Hows
Foxglove in a Lake District landscape, Tarn Hows

Sometimes the common flowers surprise us with their beauty. These foxgloves stood proud and tall in their hummocky landscape.

Map Lichen Rhizocarpon geographicum
Map Lichen, Rhizocarpon geographicum, on slate

The lime-green of the geographic or map lichen forms delightful maps of imaginary continents on the grey slate.

Cladonia floerkana lichen among moss, Tarn Hows
Cladonia floerkana lichen among moss, Tarn Hows

The artist Maurits Escher admired the apparently simple form of mosses and ground-living lichens like the gorgeously coloured Cladonia floerkana: but he quickly realized how complex they were when he started to draw them.

Two Common Sandpipers at Wrynose Pass
Two Common Sandpipers at Wrynose Pass

I was happily surprised to see these Common Sandpipers flying about and calling loudly: I really hadn’t expected to see them away from both forests and sizeable bodies of water: clearly, they don’t need much.

Goosander female with six spotted ducklings, River Rother, Grasmere
Goosander female with six spotted ducklings, River Rother, Grasmere

The Goosander is almost a rarity, breeding in not many thousands in Britain; but it is not shy, as this family seen from the bridge over the Rother in Grasmere demonstrates. The ducklings showed off their striking spotted pattern.

Welsh Poppies in Wasdale
Welsh Poppies in Wasdale

Natural Pattern: a rock with mosses and Map Lichen on Yewbarrow
Natural Pattern: a rock with mosses and Map Lichen on Yewbarrow

On Yewbarrow in Wasdale, we enjoyed the views of lake and mountain, and glimpsed a Golden-Ringed Dragonfly: not really mistakable for anything else, the size of an Emperor Dragonfly and strikingly black-and-yellow with incomplete rings.

Ghostly tree covered in caterpillar tent silk, dotted with telltale frass
Ghostly tree covered in caterpillar tent silk, dotted with telltale frass

Back at our guest house, Marsh Tits visited the bird feeders, almost as relaxed as the resident Blue Tits. On the Cumbrian Way, walking down to the pub at Skelwith Bridge, we saw this extraordinarily ghostly tree, leafless and covered all over with silk, lightly decorated with caterpillar frass. The poor tree had been totally defoliated by the tent caterpillars. Since I doubt the Gypsy moth has reached the Lake District yet, this might be a Processionary moth, perhaps.

Thursley Common: a Special Place

Heath landscape at Thursley with birch scrub, scattered pines
Heath landscape at Thursley with birch scrub, scattered pines

Thursley Common is one of those few, special places where the quiet visitor is almost guaranteed a beautiful experience of nature, at least if busy weekends are avoided. The area of a few hundred hectares offers several habitats, all acid: pine forest; dry sandy heath with heather, gorse and birch scrub, ideal for Whitethroats and Stonechats; acid bog with sphagnum, bog-cotton, marsh orchid, round-leaved sundew; bog pools buzzing with dragonflies; open water with teal and tufted duck.

Marsh Orchid, Round-Leaved Sundew at its foot, Thursley
Marsh Orchid, Round-Leaved Sundew at its foot, Thursley Common

Dragonfly habitat: bog pools at Thursley
Dragonfly habitat: bog pools at Thursley; in the background, white of bog cotton, birch scrub and pine forest

Over the pools were half-a-dozen swallows in a loose flock, mostly flying high, keeping a wary eye out for hobbies. Two hobbies at least flew across the heath on their long grey wings, diving at speed to snatch dragonflies low over the water. A cuckoo called from the pines; another replied cuck-uck-oo from the other side; one flew hawklike across the heath, its wings remaining almost entirely below its body, an odd and very distinctive flight pattern.

Female Four-Spotted Chaser
Female Four-Spotted Chaser basking over a bog pool, Thursley

Four-Spotted Chasers have a distinctive jizz, being generally brown, flying fast, and indeed the males aggressively chase off rivals. Today there were several pairs mating in flight; unlike many other dragonflies, they do not settle to form a “wheel”, but soon separate, the female at once starting to lay eggs, darting down to the water to dab her abdomen repeatedly.

Large Red Damselfly, Pyrrhosoma nymphula
Large Red Damselfly, Pyrrhosoma nymphula male on heather at Thursley

Large Red Damselflies were hardly in evidence near the water, but were around in small numbers on the heather, or basking on the boardwalk. Nearby, a pair of Reed Buntings blundered in and out of the bushes, the male handsome with his black head and white collar, singing his slow brief song. A Goldcrest squeaked its unbelievably high notes from the tops of the pine trees. A Tree Pipit’s repetitive but slightly random riff rang out again and again from somewhere in the same trees; the species, still marked by the book as ‘abundant’ (that’s a 2 not a 1, however), ‘breeds locally’ in places like this.

Bog-Cotton, Molinia
Bog-Cotton, Molinia

It is always a pleasure, too, to see the fluffy white seed-heads of Bog-Cotton. The thin fibres are too brittle to spin, so our native ‘cotton’ remains a symbol of wild and lonely places, from the mountains of Snowdonia to the Pennines. It’s a reminder of just how extensive the heathlands of Southern England once were, Cobbett’s “rascally heaths” famously extending all the way from the Marlborough Downs to the fringes of London. His opinion, loudly voiced in his Rural Rides, was that these unimproved lands were wasted, a sign of lack of proper agriculture. The Dig for Victory! campaign in the Second World War caused many areas of marginal land to be ploughed up, including acid heaths, alkaline chalk grassland, and neutral flowery meadows: all were lost by the thousands of acres in a desperate attempt to increase Britain’s arable production. That led, of course, to the surplus production of the Common Market years, the destruction of farmland wildlife accelerated by grants to grub out hedges, while the use of pesticides of all kinds created marvellously clean crops that even that old badger of a critical farmer, Cobbett himself, would have heartily approved of. The one small problem was that the crops were so clean that there were no wild flowers to support the bees that used to pollinate the fruit trees, the clover, beans and alfalfa, the cabbages and turnips and oilseed rape, the potatoes and vegetables that feed the nation. The cereals themselves need no bees, their grass pollen blowing in the wind: but the rest of the crops are tied to a more balanced ecology. Thus I meditated, even as I enjoyed a nostalgic glimpse of Molinia, the Bog-Cotton; and so it is that delight in nature’s beauty is tinged with sadness at the mess we’re in.

Tiny yellow clubs of Bog Beacon fungus, Mitrula paludosa, in marsh
Tiny yellow clubs of Bog Beacon fungus, Mitrula paludosa, by bog pool at Thursley

I was delighted to see the small but bright yellow Bog Beacon fungus. It appears as small clubs with white stalks, and it only grows on dead vegetation in acid bogs. Its specific name ‘paludosa’ means ‘of the marsh’. A single Broad-Bodied Chaser dragonfly scooted swiftly across a small pond.

Stonechat on fencepost of training area near Thursley
Stonechat on fencepost of Hankley Common training area near Thursley

Stonechat males displayed atop gorse bushes or fence posts, or dived into the bushes for cover, appearing nearly all black from above, with a bold white flash on each wing. Several young ones perched lower down in the gorse, much browner and more streaky than their fathers. They are rather few and far between on the Common itself; more on the training ground just across the road at Hankley Common. Like Thursley Common, the land has remained wild because the army needed it for training; so the Second World War both destroyed much of the wildlife value of our farmland, and saved some places from the general destruction.