This August we had been watching a wasp spider at work in the meadows, efficiently catching and despatching her prey. Then, one day, she disappeared from her web. In our somewhat limited experience it is not until early September that these spiders leave their webs for the last time and construct an egg cocoon nearby before dying. But perhaps our spider had been eaten by a bird? They do mimic wasps as protection, but they are big spiders with a body length of up to 20mm and would make a very nutritious snack for a bird.

We managed to find another wasp spider nearby to watch instead for a while, until she too disappeared. This set us off hunting systematically through the grasses to see if we could find a third one to observe. We had only ever seen a maximum of four wasp spiders in previous years but we hoped we might be lucky. Well, it turned out that we were indeed in luck because we found a further 147!

I am not sure if it is a particularly good year for these spiders or if we just hadn’t looked well enough before. One thing is for sure, we now have our eyes in for where to find them – they need a bit of air space, such as around a woody plant or in a natural cup in the grass as here:

Wasp spiders, Argiope bruennichi, originated in Mediterranean regions but have gradually spread across Europe and were first discovered in the UK around Rye in Sussex in 1922. Since then they have advanced over the south of England and are also edging northwards.

The webs are placed low to the ground in tall grasses, all the better to catch invertebrates such as grasshoppers and flies. Sometimes the spider does such brisk business that she has more than one prey item in her web at a time. In this eventuality, she will wrap them up to immobilise them and then hang them at the edges of her web until she has time to deal with them:

She wraps prey extremely fast because multiple strands of silk come out of her spinneret at the same time:

We will start to cut the meadows next month and our normal practice would be to leave the grasses around a wasp spider web to protect her egg cocoon. But this year we are going to have to have a rethink because there are wasp spider webs over much of the meadows and we can’t leave it all uncut.

Our son and daughter-in-law visited last weekend along with two of their friends who are entomologists. One of them is particularly fond of beetles and found this large weevil under a tile:

But unusually there was also a weevil in the moth trap this week. It is a peculiar looking thing with its antennae emerging halfway down its long snout, or rostrum. It is either an acorn weevil (Curculio glandium) or a nut weevil (Curculio nucum). To tell the difference I’d have needed to get a better look at the end of its antennae:

I am continuing to get good-sized catches of moths in the trap. This beautiful moth is the blood-vein and is one of my favourites:

But it was the Portland ribbon wave below the was the moth highlight of the week. Although this species breeds in Dorset, it is a rare immigrant elsewhere in the country. There were only four records of this moth in Kent last year, yet I had four of them in my trap this week:

There is always a lot of wild carrot, Daucus carota, growing in the meadows and the flowers are much loved by insects:

Once the flowers go over, spiky seeds start to form and the heads close up into a ball:

They form protective purses, offering sanctuary for all sorts of interesting things

There is so much wild carrot in the meadows that these seed heads become quite a feature of the ecosystem at this time of year:

Our visitors started gently prising some of these seed heads open to see what could be found within. The caterpillars of the carrot seed moth, Sitochroa palealis, develop in these protected areas. On the left below is a young caterpillar, and an older and darker one on the right:

I have noticed this adult carrot seed moth around the meadows this summer:

Last year I found a different caterpillar in the seed head although I don’t know what it is:

Our daughter-in-law also found us a new species of ladybird for the meadows in one of the seed heads

There are always lots of small spiders to be found in there too, such as this tiny Xysticus crab spider:

Once the wild carrot seeds fully ripen, flocks of goldfinch will arrive in the meadows to start feasting on them and I am looking forward to that:

Both Johns were back bird-ringing in the meadows on Bank Holiday Monday, although very few birds were around. They hypothesize that the clear skies and gentle winds meant that the migrant birds had taken advantage of the lovely conditions and flown straight over the Channel to France. They did ring this young blackcap though:

As they waited in vain for some birds to turn up, they took a photo of a pair of mating migrant hawker dragonflies on the net pole:

A way to tell that these are migrant hawkers is that glass of white wine just behind the wings and in the middle of the photo below:

One of the trees in the orchard has two stems of different pear varieties grafted onto a single trunk. The Doyenné du Comice pears ripen first, and earlier in August this half of the tree was heavy with gorgeous-looking fruit:

We were looking forward to harvesting them until Dave noticed that they had in fact all disappeared. One lonely Doyenné du Comice remained on the tree:

Where had they all gone? We suspect we know the answer to this because we have these extraordinary photos of this tree from a few years ago:

I was sorry to have lost the fruit, but I was much more upset to have missed the opportunity of getting further photos like this of our arboreal foxes.

However, there are still plenty of conference pears left on the other half of the tree, although these are rock hard at the moment. I have diverted three trail cameras across to keep the tree under close observation because, once they start to ripen, the foxes will no doubt be after these too:

So sadly there were no lovely ripe pears remaining, but our visitors picked some of the apples and processed a mixture of eating and cooking apples to produce some deliciously intense apple juice:

I always like to think of our hedgerow fruit being there to help the birds through the hungry times ahead. But there is so much this year that they also collected some sloes, rose hips and blackberries to take home with them:

They accompanied us on the August tour round the dormouse boxes in the wood last weekend too when I hoped to be able to show them a dormouse. We found seven of these lovely animals in total:

The highlight was finding a family in box 28. The eyes of this little one were only half open so it was around 18 days old:

The schools are back next week and the season is fast drawing to a close. It has been a long and memorable summer but now we’re happily looking forward to the joys of autumn. Soon the meadows will be having their annual cut, the bird ringers will be here catching exciting birds and the woodcock will be making their way back to the wood for winter.

With the bird breeding season now largely over for another year, many warblers have started their migration south. John, one of the bird ringers, spent a morning in the meadows hoping to catch and ring a few of them as they moved through. He was pleased to get three species of warbler:

As normal, all these are young birds that have fledged this year. It is thought that the adult birds fly straight over to France without stopping and don’t end up in the bird ringers’ net.

John also sent me some photos he took while he was ringing in the wood recently. This is the wing of a juvenile great spotted woodpecker that was caught on 17th July. All the primary flight feathers are splayed out here and can be seen to be a bit tatty and less solidly black than the secondary feathers, which are bunched up and closer to the bird’s body. He can tell that all these primaries – comprising both the longer and the shorter feathers – are still juvenile feathers:

Because the bird was now ringed, he could tell that he had caught it again twelve days later on 29th July. Once more he has splayed out the primary flight feathers:

This time, although the longer primary feathers are still the juvenile feathers that the bird grew in the nest, the shorter of the primaries are now the smart, blacker adult feathers. So in just twelve days these feathers have been shed and seamlessly replaced. It is easy to think that bird ringing is only about putting a ring on a bird’s leg, but so much other important data about the birds age and status is being logged and reported as well.

The tail of the great spotted woodpecker is also interesting. The central shafts of the tail feathers are thick and sturdy giving the bird a really stiff tail. This is useful since it uses its tail as a third point of contact against the tree trunk, forming a stable tripod.

A photo of a green woodpecker in the meadows this week shows the young bird on a perch. That stiff tail is so adapted to pushing against the trunk of a tree that, when there is no trunk, it looks most uncomfortable:

The feathers of this tawny owl in the wood all look a bit of a mess in comparison to the woodpeckers:

Last weekend I attended a study day at Tyland Barn, the Kent Wildlife Trust headquarters near Maidstone. The class was on the identification, biology and ecology of bumblebees, led by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

The course was for intermediates but we ran through the Big Seven common bumblebees anyway. I was grateful for the recap because I’ve always found bumblebees difficult:

Cuckoo bees and the rarer bumblebees were also covered in some detail. It was all completely fascinating and I learned a lot – now I’ve just got to remember it and put it into practice.

It tends to be the long-tongued bee species that are struggling in the UK. These bees are constrained by needing flowers with long tubular shapes to be able to feed. When I got back from the study day, Dave and I had a think about how we could introduce more long-tongued bee-friendly plants both into the garden and native plant species into the meadows.

The ruderal bumblebee, Bombus ruderatus, is a rare bee with a long tongue that we saw in Walmer Castle grounds back in June. It was feeding on Stachys, or lamb’s tongue:

In fact the Stachys had all sorts of invertebrates using it and it seems to be a bit of a garden superstar. I subsequently planted three Stachys plants in the garden here, but I’m now wondering if this is enough.

We have a giant echium, Echium pininana, growing in the garden most years. This dramatic biennial puts up flower spikes that are over three metres tall, forming a skyscraper mass of small purple trumpet-shaped flowers. It flowers for months and is very popular with bees:

It’s a fantastic resource for all sorts of pollinators but I don’t think its trumpet flowers are deep enough for the rare long-tongued bumblebees:

Out in the meadows there is already a lot of knapweed and a large area of comfrey in the allotment – both of these plants have tubular flowers. But we think there could certainly be more honeysuckle scrambling over our hedgerows and we will plant some plugs this autumn.

The ringed female kestrel has returned to the meadows and we are seeing her every day:

She was ringed here as a young bird in September 2019 and is now six years old:

We feel so honoured that she is still here in the meadows all these years later.

So far this year I have only seen her eating insects. She has something like a bumblebee in her right claw here:

And I think this must be another great green bush-cricket in her left foot here:

There has also been another sighting of a male kestrel with his grey head:

The kestrels continue to be bothered by magpies who don’t want them hunting here:

And on the subject of magpies, this one appears to have two mice in its beak at the same time:

The fox with the broken leg comes up close to the house as dusk approaches and waits for me to emerge with the peanuts

He has to try to get in quickly because once the badgers arrive they tend to chase the foxes away:

Dave thinks they look like the Romans, who also used to feast lying down:

Now that I have my new battery-powered moth trap, I was really keen to run it in the wood to see if I could catch some woodland specialists:

However, I made a mistake in its placement. When we returned to the wood the next morning, the picnic table was already in dappled sunlight and the moths were far too warm and active. As soon as I started to look at them they flew away, which was very frustrating.

There was this handsome black arches moth remaining though, which is a moth that lives in woodland and I had never come across it before:

I will try again with the moth trap in the wood soon, this time placing it somewhere that will be in cool heavy shade the next morning.

Since the visit of the Kent micro moth recorder last week, I have been paying much more attention to the micros. I always used to largely ignore them on the basis that they were too numerous and mostly too difficult. When I ran the trap in the meadows this week, there was a large catch including many micro species which I worked through and tried to identify as best I could. I really wish I’d got a better photo of this one before letting it go because it’s a rare little thing:

My final photo for today is of ‘Her Ladyship’ – the wasp spider that has her web woven amongst the grasses of the meadows. She is a grasshopper specialist but we still haven’t seen her catch any of these. She is mostly doing a brisk business in flies but here she has something a bit different:

She has caught herself a dragonfly and you can see the packaged up wings in the big ball of web, with the body arching over the top. As always with spiders this is macabre but strangely fascinating all wrapped up into one.

I am now the proud owner of a battery-powered moth trap which will allow me to catch and report moths even when far away from a power source:

The trap has a 20W actinic light – a fluorescent tube that is high in UV and manufactured primarily to attract insects in the catering trade. The instructions for the battery, however, tell you to recharge it even if you’ve only done nine holes, so must be used mostly for golf. But it is small and powerful and can keep the moth trap bulb alight for ten hours. The control box on the trap has a light sensor, so everything will efficiently leap into action automatically at dusk and go off again at dawn.

I had wanted a mobile moth trap for ages, mainly to investigate what moths live in the wood, but was unsure of which system to buy. It was only when the Micro Moth Recorder for Kent come to visit the meadows this week, and I had a chance to talk to him about it, that I had the confidence to take the plunge.

I had run my old moth trap on the night before his visit and he was happy to go through the catch with me. This was a golden opportunity to learn from an expert rather than puzzle over things on my own and I found it extremely helpful. There are several types of moth that I struggle to identify and always used to just ignore. The plume group of moths is an example of one of these:

In fact I have run the moth trap on three nights this week. There have been a lot Jersey tigers:

There have also been gypsy moths in the trap. This is another moth that is quite newly arrived in the UK, although this one is far less welcome:

There is often a bycatch to be found in the moth trap. The cockchafer is an amazing beast:

And it too has noteworthy antennae:

Ophion wasps are attracted to light and also regularly turn up in the trap, although they are difficult to identify down to species:

Two young birds have been entertaining us in the meadows this week. The first is a kestrel:

The second young bird is a recently-fledged green woodpecker, which has also been bouncing around in our front garden, as well as appearing on many of the trail cameras:

Now that it is August, lesser knapweed and wild carrot are the dominant flowers amongst the grasses of the meadows:

It is also an extremely good berry year. The hawthorns and blackthorn are groaning with fruit:

The hawthorn berries in particular are extremely popular with the birds and this is always the first of the hedgerow fruit to disappear:

The female kestrel that was ringed in the meadows as a young bird in September 2019 is back and regularly hunting here. Is she the mother of the young kestrel now in the meadows? I hope so. Although her diet will be mostly rodents, we have also seen her with bumblebees, dragonflies and lizards over the years. She especially seems to have a taste for the great green bush crickets that hop and fly around the meadows in August:

In fact we caught one of these crickets ourselves this week and photographed her before she was released back into the long grasses:

As the adult kestrel patiently waits for her prey to reveal itself, she often gets bothered by magpies who take exception to her being here:

It is unusual to see a male kestrel in the meadows but one did come for a bath this week:

We always like to try to spot wasp spiders in the meadows in August and we found one this week:

These large spiders are grasshopper specialists, but here she has caught herself a flesh fly. You can see its red eyes under the web that the spider has wrapped around it:

Now that we know where this spider is, the grasses won’t be cut this year in a wide circle around her. This is to preserve the cocoon of eggs that she will soon be constructing somewhere close to her web and within which the next generation will overwinter.

John, one of the bird ringers, has spent a few recent mornings ringing in the wood. Although he understandably finds it difficult to take a photo on his phone whilst holding a bird in the other, he has sent me a photo of an adult marsh tit that he caught this week:

But we know that they breed in our wood because last May we found a family of them in a dormouse box:

John also sent me a photo of a sweet young robin that is going through a moult and now has a mix of adult and juvenile plumage:

I am no good at identifying fungi but this is a beautiful specimen that we found already knocked over in the wood:

The marjoram clearing is a riot of vegetation at this time of year with dogwood, rosebay willow herb and marjoram all jostling for space. The intense concentration of flowering plants within a woodland setting makes it a really special place:

On a sunny day it is heaving with invertebrates. White admirals and silver-washed fritillaries are both big, woodland-specialist butterflies that live there:

There were many other species of butterfly that love the marjoram too. Here a comma demonstrates how it got its name:

Gatekeepers are easily distinguished with those double white spots within the black spot on their wings:

Even a hummingbird hawkmoth has found its way through the trees to reach the marjoram in the clearing:

This fly is quite an amazing sight, although my photos aren’t fantastic. Look at that strangely long skinny waist:

A great many hoverflies were also visiting the flowers, including some very large and thankfully easy-to-identify ones such as this pellucid hoverfly, Volucella pellucens:

Scorpion flies, Panorpa communis, are extraordinary-looking things that feed on scavenged insects and we see lots of them every year in the clearing:

Now that it is August, I am finishing this week with the annual agapanthus photo. Situated at the threshold to the meadows, this plant looks spectacular set against the yellowing seed heads of the grasses at this time of year:

It is very nearly ten years since tentatively launching my first ever Walmermeadows post on 15th September 2015 and I have probably posted a photo of this agapanthus every August since then – it has become something of a tradition.

I am pleased to see that this year’s photo shows the agapanthus surrounded by lovely green grass. At one point earlier this summer I had thought we were heading in the same direction as 2022 when the annual agapanthus photo looked very different indeed:

But thank goodness it has rained this summer, keeping the vegetation alive for all the invertebrates to successfully complete their lifecycles so that they can reemerge next year for us all to enjoy.