May. A wonderful month.

Yesterday we saw a new reptile species on the path, although a dead, bird-pecked Slow Worm does not really count especially as it was probably dropped by a bird and could have come from anywhere. But surely there have to be Slow Worms here somewhere.

The longer days and shorter nights have meant that we have started to catch the badgers out and about in daylight on the trap cameras. Until now they have been strictly nocturnal and it is lovely to now get some better images of them in improved light conditions:

No badger young seen as yet though. Perhaps they didn’t have any.

 

Now it is the turn of the Emperors to emerge from the pond:

These are Britain’s largest dragonfly, highly territorial and catching flying insects on the wing and a notable coloniser of new ponds.  Everything I have looked at about them say that the larvae are two years in the water, but clearly this is not true, or not always true, because this pond was only dug last year. There are upwards of 15 larvae, most now emptied attached to the reeds around the pond:

This afternoon we sat by the pond to have a cup of tea and to look for butterflies. This was slightly optimistic because it was softly raining at the time and the chance of butterflies was at best poor. However, our perseverance in the face of adversity was rewarded when we saw that we were in the midst of a mass synchronised emergence of Broad Bodied Chasers and thank goodness we didn’t miss it!

There were probably about ten newly emerged dragonflies waiting to go off. It had been a warm dry morning which had maybe encouraged them to come out of the water but they should have seen the forecast because it has now been raining all afternoon and it must be difficult for them to heat up and get the blood coursing through their wings so that they can fly.

Broad Bodied Chasers are early colonisers of new ponds. Our pond was filled in March last year and so it has had just one summer. I looked up their lifecycle and it apparently does usually take two years – that is the larvae are two years in water – but sometimes it only takes a year as in this case. The females are this yellow colour but the males are a beautiful smoky blue. However, the blue develops later and the juvenile male adults are yellow and so we probably have both sexes here, not just females emerging.

Here are photos of the Broad Bodied Chasers on the pond that we took last year:

The vacated larvae cases of the Broad bodied chasers are short and wide. However, there were also at least ten larvae of another type clinging on to the Irises:

Looking in our dragonfly book, these could well be Hawker dragonfly larvae, possibly the Southern Hawker and they have climbed out of the water but are yet to emerge. Its amazing to think that a very large dragonfly is about to come out of these. We will try to catch this as it happens.

In other pond news, yesterday the first Iris flower opened:

Its a lovely bloom and we are expecting a lot more by next week.

 

 

Picked up this moth in the trap last night:

 

How wonderful is this moth? A moth of calcareous habitats, it flies in late April to May and lives up to five years in captivity.

Its caterpillars look quite striking too and feed on Mulleins, Figworts and Buddleias. Not quite sure what Mulleins and Figworts look like, but will try to check them out to see if I can see the Mullein caterpillars which look like this:

Once seen, not forgotten!

One word: buttercups…

This is the meadow that we are working towards it becoming a flower meadow and it is looking stunning right now.

As we reached the second meadow, our attention was immediately drawn towards this rosette of grass that wasn’t there yesterday:

Right in the centre of the whorl was the remains of a large crab

perhaps suggesting that the foxes are foraging along the shore line.We would love to have seen it returning home carrying a large crab.

We flushed a couple of grey partridge from the long grass who the dog saw off the premises

And since it was such a lovely morning and very conducive to flopping around, we started investigating ants:

There seems to be a large variety of ants here, none of which we know anything about. Large anthills seem to spring up almost overnight whilst others, particularly in the paddock where there has been no mowing for many years, are long established and seem to have their own special ecosystem associated with them. Anyway, a subject identified for further study another day.

Such a delight to see a hedgehog on the trap camera. Never seen one before here and had presumed that there were just too many hungry hedgehog predators around.

Hopefully it got through the night because that really is a stupid place for it to hang out – the trap camera catches a pretty steady stream of foxes and badgers right there through the night, both of which would be happy to put hedgehog on their menu.

A year ago I didn’t know that there were lizards in England. Then we started finding them in the meadows and I wanted to know more. This is what I’ve discovered so far:

The Viviparous Lizard, Zootoca vivipara, is the most northerly of lizards and its range extends to north of the Arctic Circle. They give birth to live young (thats the viviparous bit) which is really unusual for a reptile and must be something to do with the northerliness because in the southernmost bits of their range they actually lay eggs as you might expect reptiles to do.

They have got very variable colour and patterning but females tend to have dark stripes on their flanks and down the middle of their backs. This would make the lizard above a male then. The males have brightly coloured undersides – yellow, orange or, more rarely, red while the females have paler, whitish underparts.

They feed on invertebrates – mainly small insects. Mate in April/May and the offspring develop inside the female for three months and she gives birth to 3-10 young in July, one every few days. The young are blackish, and we have been finding a lot of small very dark lizards under our reptile sampling squares that we have laid out around the place:

These sampling squares have actually been great – we routinely get lizards under a couple of them and have also found voles and, less excitingly, a vast number of snails.

Males reach sexual maturity after about 2 years and females after three with both having a lifespan of about 5-6 years.

So thats very interesting and probably all I need to know about them for now. We will continue to turn the squares over as we go round the meadows and see whats going on – maybe one day we will see a slow worm or a snake as well.

A lot of moths in the trap this weekend. Despite trawling through my moth books so many times that I was cross eyed, there are a dispiriting number that I cannot identify but I am creating a ‘Moth Mysteries’ photo folder and putting these queries in there until such a time as I sort them out and not let it put me off.

Of those moths that I could identify there are some beauties:

As usual, I am amazed by the attractiveness and variety of moths that fly around the meadows at night.

Got this photo this morning:

 

What is this – a chicken?

Anyway, it is being taken back to feed the cubs because, yes, we have finally seen cubs.

A couple of days ago we got this picture:

I think that must be a cub, although goodness knows whats going on.

But our final irrefutable proof that there are cubs around was the fact that the dog found one with its head caught in the fence:

 

We had just arrived at the meadows after several days away and so the cub could have been there for some time but it seemed quite feisty so I’m hoping that it hadn’t been there too long. We cut the fence and released it but it stayed for about an hour and was doing a lot of coughing.

I phoned our local wildlife rescue charity, the lovely lady who runs Fur and Feathers in Folkestone and she said that the cub needs to come in to her to be put under observation for a week because they often don’t recover well if there has been a neck ligature like that. So we went out with thick gloves and – well, possibly ridiculously but it was all we could think of – a butterfly net to catch it in. It had gone though by then- hopefully to a happy ending, but who knows.

Next time we will know – but surely there will not be a next time, that has to be a freak thing to have happened, doesn’t it?