Where Did May Go?

~ judyheiser

There is so much to be appreciated about May and I wish that it hadn’t disappeared quite so fast. Over the course of the month the meadows have undergone a dramatic transformation and are now cheerfully clothed in oxeye daisies:

The meadows filled with blooms at the end of May

Some summer butterflies have emerged and are frolicking around amongst the flowers.

A common blue butterfly perching on what is one of my favourite meadow flowers – the delicate grass vetchling may be tiny but it certainly packs a punch in the colour department
The number of common blues this year seems finally to have bounced back to the level before the drought of summer 2022
The first painted lady of the year
Small blue butterflies are also doing well here this year
A small blue laying her eggs into kidney vetch flowers, the larval food plant for this species. In the south of England small blues will normally have two broods a year and the eggs being laid here should have developed into adult butterflies by August

May is also a busy time in the moth trap. Moths have such lovely names: clockwise from top left is the figure of eighty, waved umber, privet hawkmoth and peach blossom:

It’s the time of year when many birds are getting on with the serious business of rearing their young. We returned from France on 5th May to find that the pair of swifts nesting in the box on the side of the house had arrived back before us:

It had been a long migration for them up from sub-Saharan Africa and they spent two weeks recovering and slowly rebuilding last year’s nest. Since these birds never come down to the ground, they can only use material that they catch in mid air:

Feathers and dried grass stalks have been stuck together with saliva to bolster up the sides of what remained of last year’s nest

We spotted the first egg on 22nd May:

And a second one had arrived by 24th:

I am a bit uncertain about when the incubation of the eggs actually started but I think it was around 25th May:

Incubation takes 19-21 days and so the eggs should hatch on or shortly after 13th June

Occasionally both birds leave the nest, enabling us to see the eggs. Here you can see a swift flat fly, Crataerina pallida, on the egg at the front:

And also on one of the birds:

These blood-sucking flat flies live amongst the swifts’ feathers and in their nests:

A better photo from Wiki Commons of a young swift and one of its flat flies. Photo by I.Sáček, senior, under CC CC0 1.0

House martins have a very similar flat fly parasite, Crataerina hirundinis, and we saw these up close in 2019 when John the bird ringer caught some house martins in his mist net. The flies stay deep within the feathers when the bird is flying but come to the surface when it stops moving:

I wish I had taken a photo of these flies with my macro camera so that I can see them in more detail.

Whilst we were in France at the beginning of May, the dog was in kennels for nearly two weeks and in that time the meadows became filled with fox cubs from three separate litters. But, soon after the dog returned, all these cubs were taken elsewhere by their parents and we are no longer seeing them here.

One of the pairs of foxes that have now removed their cubs from the meadows. Its sad to have such incontrovertible evidence of the negative effect that our dog can have on the meadow wildlife
When we were in Dorset in the middle of the month, the foxes launched an attack on one of our insect hotels, dragging the inner hay out. Presumably small mammals were nesting within. We think it was foxes rather than badgers because they’d been up on the roof dislodging the tiles as well
This dark fox is the father of one of the litters but has been unable to put any weight on his right front leg for several months. The leg is surely broken or it would be better by now. He is always waiting for me to arrive with the peanuts at dusk and tries to eat as quickly as possible before the badgers charge in and monopolise everything. I wish I could do more to help him

This year’s badger cub is still here in the meadows even after the dog’s return. The weather has been so dry, though, that I am worrying about how it is getting on:

Badger cubs have trouble feeding themselves when the ground is so hard and the worms that make up 70% of their diet have gone down deep
A lovely photo of two badgers drinking

We have not been seeing many birds of prey at this time of year but a tawny owl was here in mid May:

And a barn owl has visited a few times as well:

This kestrel has caught himself a lizard:

And a crow has found a crab….

…and also a young rat:

Dragonflies are now on the wing:

Male broad-bodied chaser

And this little shrew ventured down into the shallow baking tray pond for a drink:

We found four dormice on the May tour round the dormice nest boxes that are up in our wood:

Although there were signs of them starting to build nests, there were no dormice litters as yet.

The green woodpeckers are continuing to nest in a mature cherry tree:

This next photo was a bit alarming though. I think this is a chick in its beak:

Perhaps they are removing one of their chicks that died?

But there is a loud churring noise coming from the nest hole now so there are definitely some more chicks in there. The great spotted woodpecker chicks, however, have already fledged:

A juvenile great spotted woodpecker with its red cap

Further up the same cherry tree that the green woodpeckers are nesting in, a bright yellow chicken of the woods fungus is billowing out of a disused woodpecker hole:

It’s quite a sight

I am often finding glow-worm larvae in the wood and imagine that there must be a healthy population there. I would love to someday see an adult female glow-worm glowing in the dark to attract in a male and our wood must be a good place to start, although in June this would mean visiting really quite late.

A glow-worm larva

We have a trail camera looking at a burrow in the ground and there is currently a rabbit living down there:

But at all times this rabbit has to remain on high alert because its predators are all around:

A fox cub and its mother at the rabbit hole

I finish today with a photo of one of the twenty-seven white helleborines, a type of orchid, that have now appeared in an area of the wood that we thinned out three winters ago:

It was wonderful to see so many of these elegant, special plants growing in the wood this May. We are taking it as proof that all of the hard work we do in the wood over winter is actually making a difference and is worth all of the effort.

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