I'm not the most committed moth trapper, and can run my light trap a couple of times in a week, or a couple of months between sessions! I ran my light trap about a week ago, and not since (I know shame on me), and caught just fourteen moths of seven species, but Nutmeg, Hypsopygia glaucinalis and Mouse Moth were new species for the garden, so I was pleased about that.
During the past week, Gail and I made two visits to the Quay on the Wyre, to see if we could catch up with a few butterflies and plants. I think the real reason was so that Gail could pick some Blackberries, so I'm looking forward to an apple (from our garden) and blackberry crumble, or such like.
Our first visit was fairly early in the morning, so just a handful of butterflies were on the wing; six Small Whites, two Common Blues and two Red Admirals, and a day flying Silver Y moth. The tides were very high earlier in the week, around the 10 metre mark, which means that they go out along way, and areas of mud that aren't regularly exposed are exposed. This attracted 97 Oystercatchers, 19 Redshanks, 160 Herring Gulls, eight Lesser Black-backed Gulls, three Great Black-backed Gulls, two Grey Herons and a Little Egret. And a walk along an estuary in August wouldn't be complete without a calling Whimbrel.
There's still a few Swifts about, and we had three during our walk, but the best bird was reserved for our return leg, when we flushed a Great Spotted Woodpecker from some scrub on the quayside. Not a scarce bird by any means, but a new bird for us for the site, and it made our morning! This is the beauty of working a patch, and staying local. That 'Great Spot' gave me the same kicks that I used to get four decades ago, when I had a spell of chasing rarities, and driving hundreds of miles across the UK in pursuit of said rarities.
This got me thinking about a brilliant, thought provoking blog post from Steve Gale on his excellent blog North Downs and Beyond. He wrote a blog post entitled What did you do during the climate crisis?, and it is well worth a read. You can read it by clicking HERE
Our second visit to the Quay was just a couple of days ago, and it was on a very hot, but blustery, afternoon. We were hoping for a few more butterflies, but the 15 mph south-easterly wind restricted them to just four Small Whites, two Common Blues and two Red Admirals.
We'd just set off, when all the wreck nesting Swallows started alarm calling, and there must have been a good thirty of them in the air shouting at the top of their hirundine voices. And the cause of all this commotion, was a male Sparrowhawk that had dared to flap-glide across the Swallows air space. The Sparrowhawk was duly escorted to the other side of the quay, and peace and quiet returned.
We had our highest count of Little Egrets for some time, with two feeding along the river's edge, and a flock of eight flying downstream towards the mouth of the estuary. At the far end of our walk, at the mouth of the estuary, is the former fishing and ferry port of Fleetwood, and very handily is an ice cream parlour selling Walling's ice cream. In our opinion, you would struggle to find a better ice cream than Walling's, and with a choice of over 40 different flavours it's virtually impossible not to call, particularly on a hot afternoon. I availed myself of two scoops, raspberry swirl and strawberry, and Gail, who isn't as greedy as me, just had one scoop of raspberry sorbet. After this essential pit-stop, we were ready to walk back. Our walk back was quiet, but we did have an adult Mediterranean Gull in the quay. A nice end to a pleasant, if not a hot and sweaty stroll.
Wednesday morning dawned with conditions conducive to ringing, so Gail and I found ourselves at the Nature Park at 5:30 am, under 1 oktas cloud cover, with a 5 - 10 mph west-north-westerly wind, putting a couple of nets up in the reedbed and scrub. As we were putting the nets up, some early Brown Hawkers were up and about crashing through the reeds. It's amazing how much noise these large dragonflies make as they move through the vegetation.
Brown Hawker
The Starlings were up earlier than usual, so the 700 that we observed exiting the roost, was probably just the last birds leaving. Five Little Egrets went over early, and they were probably exiting a roost as well. They were heading in a north-westerly direction, so were probably heading to feed on the Irish Sea coast.
A few House Martins and Swallows, a Great Spotted Woodpecker, and a croaking Raven was probably it from a pure birding perspective. We ringed 18 birds as follows (13 being warblers):
Cetti's Warbler - 2
Whitethroat - 5
Blue Tit - 1
Great Tit - 2
Sedge Warbler - 1
Wren - 2
Chiffchaff - 3
Willow Warbler - 1
Reed Warbler - 1
At the end of the week Gail and I were doing our weekly shop (why are you telling us this I hear you ask), and we bumped into Barry and Ellen. Barry is one of those all round brilliant naturalists, and I tend to only bump into him once a year or so. I have known Barry for about 47 years, and when I was a young birder, he was very encouraging to me, and I am forever grateful for that. Anyway, I digress. we were chatting about birds, birders, naturalists, inverts and plants, and Barry asked me if we ever visited Larkholme Grasslands, to which we answered no, even though it is only five minutes from home! He told us that there was a good selection of insects and plants there, so on Friday afternoon we went to have a look.
Larkholme Grasslands is a Biological Heritage Site (BHS), known as a County Wildlife Site (CWS) in other parts of the UK, and it was restored in 2018 when the sea defence work in the area was completed.
It was a hot afternoon when we visited, but the blustery north-westerly wind meant that any butterflies were keeping low, and we just had five Common Blues, a Small White, a Meadow Brown and two Small Coppers (one of my favourite butterflies).
A lot of wildflowers have gone over now, but we had species like Lady's Bedstraw, Common Knapweed, Bird's-foot Trefoil, Oxeye Daisy, Chicory, Scentless Mayweed, Purple Loosestrife, Field Scabious, Common Vetch, Creeping Cinquefoil, Red Clover, Sea Campion, Ribwort Plantain and Yarrow to name but a few, but I think you get the picture.
There are two small ponds on the site, and in the first one there were at least 80 Pond Snails sp. At the second pond we had three Common Darters, and at least three Emperor dragonflies. There was at least one female Emperor ovipositing, but the view of her was always slightly obscured by vegetation, so I couldn't get any pictures. And the two battling males, well, they were just too fast for me. Gail and I spent several minutes stood by this pond marvelling at these large, metallic blue and green dragons. I like the way that Emperors seem to be inquisitive, as they will often come and have a look at you when you stand for some time, and these two boys were no exception. Like the Brown Hawker of Wednesday, these large dragonflies crash through marginal vegetation as well, and you often hear them before you see them.
Common Darter
We walked back to the car park with calling Whimbrel and Sandwich Tern as a backdrop. The car park is next to the coastal farm fields that I like to bird regularly when I can, and I remembered a visit a number of years ago now, with the late Eric Greenwood, who besides being a lovely man, is probably the best botanist that I have ever known. My signed copy of his Flora of North Lancashire sits proudly on my book shelf.
During that visit from several years ago he was pointing out to me some Strawberry Clover that can be found just behind the sea wall. It isn't rare by any means, in fact in his book, Eric describes it as 'occasional', occurring in 28 tetrads. Anyway, Gail and I had a look, and sure enough there it was flowering away in the same place that Eric had pointed it out to me all those years before. It's a funny looking flower, and I always think it looks more like a raspberry than a strawberry!
I've got two nesting bird checks to do tomorrow, and then I have a meeting Tuesday morning, and then the rest of the week is free. So hopefully, we'll be back out several times during the week.
I'm beginning to really like the good people of the University of Sussex as I read about another great piece of research they recently carried out alongside Butterfly Conservation. There is widespread concern about the decline in wild pollinating insects like bees and butterflies, and the researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that moths are particularly efficient night-time pollinators.
Throughout July 2021 they studied ten sites in the south-east of England, and found that 83% of insect visits to Bramble flowers were made during the day. While the moths made fewer visits during the short nights, only 15% of the visits, they were able to pollinate the flowers more quickly.
The researchers concluded that moths are more efficient pollinators than day-flying insects such as bees! While day-flying insects have more time available to transfer pollen, moths are making an important contribution during the short hours of darkness.
The study also highlighted the importance of Bramble, a shrub widely thought of as unfavourable (not by us) and routinely cleared, when in fact it is critical for nocturnal pollinators. So now that we know that moths are important pollinators, we need to ensure that Bramble, and other flowering scrub plants, are encouraged to grow in our parks, gardens, road verges and hedgerows. So, leave some Bramble in your garden if you can please.
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