Rye Harbour

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, my summer holiday seems to have fallen into a black hole (one that involved some chainsawing though!).  Had my first visit to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve this morning - what a great place for bird watching.  Despite the grey weather we saw golden plover, ringed and little ringed plover, dunlin, yellow wagtail, little egret, lapwing, grey heron, cormorant, wheatear, linnet, goldfinch, little grebe, kestrel, and redshank (or maybe ruff).  There were a couple of other birds of prey but we had trouble identifying them - possibly harriers.

There were also some great plants at the reserve due to the interesting habitats (saltmarsh and shingle).  Here are a few:

Yellow Horned-poppy

Bristly Oxtongue

Viper's-bugloss

Bittersweet

Red valerian

Scarlet pimpernel

Here today, gone tomorrow!

Oh dear, what can I say.  Yesterday I spent a lovely 10 minutes photographing the wild flowers around the car park at Mark Cross.  Back again this morning, and gasp, what did I behold! Absolutely bloomin' nuffin!  The chumps from the local authority had just mowed the whole lot - all those lovely flowers, covered in invertabrate life, gone.  Boo hiss...

Diamonds in the rough

Had a bit of time this morning waiting in Mark Cross car park for a pickup to chainsawing.  And what better way to kill 10 minutes than to take pictures of what most people would call weeds by the road.

Knapweed & Hover-fly

Yellow-vetch (?)

Cow Parsley

Tufted Vetch

Common Knapweed

Never leave your camera at home!

The Rough with the Smooth

So I started my chainsaw course this week.  Not sure I ever thought I would be doing that but apparently its good on the ol' CV in this biz.  So far, all limbs still intact, though next week is the big daddy part of the course, 4 days of felling, yikes.  I did manage to create something from all the destruction this week:

Poplar stool a la Cally

This is definitely its best side! The other angles take "rustic looking" to the absolute extreme.

Whilst breaking for lunch, I spotted this little moth on the hedge.  I am pretty sure it is a Carpet moth and I think it may be Wood Carpet Epirrhoe tristata but I would not put money on it...

Carpet Moth?

There were also a couple of white butterflies around.  The differences between the whites are subtle but identifiable by spots and wing tips.

Small White

Green-veined White

Dont sniff the flowers too closely

Didnt have much to report last week with the poop weather and my actually doing some work for a change!  On brief exploration around my bro's garden yesterday I added a new spider id to my list - Misumena vatia. I think this is the female and as you can see it's pretty sinister looking especially with freshly caught prey!

 

It is a species of crab spider that sits in flowers waiting to ambush its ill-fated victims.  The female can be white, yellow or greenish and sometimes with red marks.  It can change between these colours to camouflage itself on the flower.  The males are smaller and less distinctive.  It didnt have any trouble carrying its prey around in its palps.

A Mere Shell of his Former Self

Today was spent surveying a wildflower meadow at Buchan.  It was a beautiful day with the constant buzz of grasshoppers and crickets and plenty of flutterbies around.

Large Skipper

Meadow Brown

Meadow Grasshopper

Meadow Grasshopper

Peacock

Ringlet

Ringlet

Brimstone

To be or not to be

There were lots of other creatures around - here are a few, mostly yet to identify...

There were some great funnel-web spiderwebs around - they look pretty cool though you just know there is some kinda nasty down there!

This was a surprise - I was taking a picture of some lichen as you do and it wasnt until I looked at the photo on my computer that I noticed there was something else in the picture.  See if you can find it...

We decided to check out the ponds for dragonflies and damselflies and were not disappointed.  Though not many stopped long enough for pictures (as they only fly on clear, sunny days).  I think this was a blue-tailed damselfly:

If you look closely you can see a hawker dragonfly having emerged from its nymph stage, warming up so that it can fly:

And here is what they leave behind after they have emerged and become adults:

Looks like somethings from a sci-fi movie!

[NB You can click on the pictures to make them bigger if you want]

Thunder thighs in Ashdown Forest

I've just started volunteering at Old Lodge in Ashdown Forest and as usual I wip my camera out whilst no one is looking.  In between pulling out birch and pine saplings on the healthand I was investigating what life resided there today.  There were a lot of grasshoppers/crickets, wood ants and spiders.  I really have no clue when it comes to species of Orthoptera but there were loads bouncing all over the place occasionally ricocheting off me as I got in their way.  Here are a couple:

where is his face?

I also saw a bright blue damsefly but could not get a picture.  It was pretty small, could have been common blue or azure or maybe southern.

There were naturally plenty of Heath family species including lots of Bilberry.  Couple of heather sp piccies:

The piece de resistance however was definitely this little chap.  It is on a thumb to give you some idea of size but notice its rather chunky thighs - possibly a keen cyclist?

Thick-legged flower beetle (male)