I knew it!

As I feared the crake had disappeared by the weekend, possibly the result of some prolonged tractor work nearby - the conspiracy theorists were out in force on that one!
I did get some reasonable views of snipe on the Saturday, but again the light made getting a completely sharp picture quite tricky. Not to mention the reeds in the way.
On the whole I'm delighted with the new camera kit. Last weekend I stuck up a 'hide' in the garden and snapped a few regulars, including a few real in-your-face shots .......
I'll have to watch that tendency to nip off the tails though!

Spotted Crake

You know how things can niggle. They just nag away in the background, leaving you feeling unsettled, and there comes a point where you have to decide whether you are going to do something about them or not.

In the last post I mentioned the spotted crake. About an hour away. The website reports kept saying 'it's still there' and the pictures proved it. But the time to see it is early morning or late evening. And it niggled and nagged. What if it was gone by the weekend? What if it was raining at the weekend?

So I gave in. Set the alarm for 4.30 am. Struggle to get up, but I made it to the reserve car park by 6.20, relieved I found the place as I had never been before - thank god for the internet. Another 15-20 minute walk to the hide, 5 minutes getting set up. Nothing to see, come on, come on - I haven't got all day you know.

And then .........................

OK the light wasn't great, and it would insist on keeping bits of grass in the way, but my new camera and lens combo coped, even keeping the focus sharp enough with a very shallow depth of field.

And I even made it into work on time.

It's the little things ............ again

It's that time of year again. Something changes in the air - a little cooler, dew appears, the leaves suddenly look tired, and the berries are coming through.


In the grass the orb spiders showed easily on sequined webs .......


and some unknown spider had taken the time to cocoon the grass.
The birds were hiding again - or miles away at Goldcliff - so I turned back to the bugs. Another unknown, but I suspect a sawfly sat with dewdrops glistening on it's back.
A speckled wood steadfastly refused to open it's wings more than just enough to give glimpse
Ivy is always a good bet to see whats around - Mesembrina meridiana,

Helophilus pendulus,

but the bindweed proved another good place (if they called it British Morning Glory perhaps we would appreciate the lovely white flowers more!). Sadly I couldn't snap this hoverfly without blocking some light, but it's still quite a nice effect as it straddles the stamens - I think they're stamens?

Meanwhile the fly with the nice personality (if you know what I mean) - Rhingia campestris had left the cowpats where they bred and were everywhere. This shot on Verbena bonariensis shows the comical, conical snout ........

- at first I though the tongue (OK, proboscis?) would come out the end, but if you look again it's going straight down into the flower. In this one on the bindweed it had swung forwards, making it look like something that would give you a nip.

Those that had visited a few flowers had a sugar coating.

I don't mind bugs - but I do miss something a bit bigger! Frustrating to know a spotted crake is in the region, but I can't get the time to go and see it. Just too far away. Maybe next weekend (but it'll be gone, I know it). Sorry about that, just had an Eeyore moment.

Urban Fox

When we moved down to South Wales after a life in the North of England and Scotland, one of the things that struck me was the prevalence of wildlife I had rarely seen previously. Badgers were everywhere, although sadly mostly roadside casualties. Buzzards, a relatively rare bird for me prior to that, were ten a penny - 12 in one field our first winter. I can remember a time in South Yorkshire listening to a birder enthusiastically telling his mate on his mobile about a buzzard on the skyline. Down here they are like sparrows.

Foxes are another I hadn't seen much of in the past - and certainly never this close up .......

You know when you have a good scratch - how nice it can feel? Here's the foxy reaction

It'd be nice to pretend these shots were the result of SAS style camouflage techniques, and patient hours, but the truth is they were taken on my way into work where the local fox pack have taken to lying on cars in the sun - or on a cold day on the warm bonnet of newly arrived commuters. I didn't even take my new camera - partly due to worry about having it lying around at work, but also because my sole lens - 300mm- might have meant I had to stand too far back!

Kinda cute, eh?

Gasteruption jaculator

Yeah, I know. Bizarre name, bizarre insect. I'd never heard of it until I came across Brian Stone's pictures on his blog in July - 24th

http://thenaturalstone.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

Under the circumstances it seemed a bit spooky a couple of weeks later that I found one in my greenhouse. Don't know a lot about them, but they use that long ovipositor to lay their eggs in the nests of solitary bees. One of the creepiest bugs I've yet seen, especially in flight with those long dangling legs - sorry about the standard of my pictures - real struggle to reach it and focus in the crowded greenhouse!

Follow-up

Quick follow up to post of July 22nd. I'm now pretty confident the unknown insect was a sawfly - just not sure which one!

The Birds and the Bees

Finally back online after major ISP problem. Then again it's so quiet at the moment it hasn't really mattered.

To start with the birds, the easy thing to say is there aren't any. Or at least those there are have been hiding from or lazing in the sun like the rest of us - didn't think I'd mention the sun in 2 successive posts this year!



So it was time to look for smaller things again.

The white-lipped snails were ............................ being snails



Also at the wetlands the common blue damsels were common and at it all over the place .........





but the black-tailed skimmer was a first for me - even if it wouldn't settle - hence the rubbish shot

The cinnabar moth caterpillars looked great in the bright light



The peacock was strutting it's stuff

and this wasp was browsing on a wild parsnip (I think). You can't really see in this shot, but this was a wasp with a long thin waist, called Mellinus arvensis - looked better in the flesh!





It preys on hover flies so this Eristalis horticola would be on the lookout ...




A crab spider was also on the hunt.

Back at home the Eurydema bug was around again, but unfortunately you can't really see the bulging red eyes at this resolution - try clicking on the picture for a bigger view.In the greenhouse a greenbottle contrasted nicely with an astilbebut my foray into entomolgy this month was about the bees which were everywhere in the garden. Again apologies if I get some wrong - just let me know:

Bombus terrestrisBombus pratorum (?)

Honey bees (on the best Helenium going - Sahin's Early Flowerer - if you like Heleniums get one!)

Red-shanked bumblebee - at first I thought it was a red tailed, never having heard of a red-shanked, but check out the red hairs on the back legs.

Then there were several types of carder bee (or maybe just 3 forms of 1. There are so many bees, complicated by the fact there are males, females and workers which all look different even within the one species). One shot (it's obvious which) reminds of the drawing in a Winnie the Pooh book where Pooh gets stuck in the honey jar. I'm not sure the last of these is a carder bee, but it might be - bit more research required.And finally the bee that became my favourite. It's a male wool carder bee - easily recognised by the gold spots on the abdomen, and also it's yellow wasp like face.
My book says the male is significantly bigger than the female (the female combs hairy plants for nest material - hence the name) and is territorial. It was. It kept going back to the same leaf shown in the top picture, resting for a minute or so and then off on a little patrol of it's patch. If it found another bee it bounced it - literally bouncing on it's back and chasing it off. I thought it was great!