It has been an extraordinary week because I have managed to tick off two items that have been languishing on my wildlife bucket list for quite some time. During the extreme temperatures of last weekend we stayed at Warren Cottage in the middle of the Tiger Hill nature reserve in rural Suffolk near Sudbury:

Dr Grace Griffiths started renting this charming cottage with her family in 1927 and, when it came up for sale in 1938, she bought it along with several acres of woodland. She was an amazing, selfless woman who absolutely loved this place, and was also a dedicated naturalist, fighting for it to become a protected space for nature after her death. The Griffiths Trust and others now care for the land which has become part of the wider 54 acre Tiger Hill local nature reserve.

We were only staying there three nights and were a bit scuppered by the oppressive temperatures of the heat wave, making us want to hide inside in front of a fan. However, ten species of bat have been recorded on the reserve and, at 10pm when it wasn’t really much cooler but at least there was no blasting sun, we ventured out with our bat detectors.

There are so many lovely mature trees on the reserve, many of which are liberally adorned with bat boxes:

After spending some time out with the bats, we returned to the cottage lawn…

And this was the momentous point that I ticked off an item on my wildlife wish list:

We found seven small but intense green lights shining out from around the edges of the lawn. Using a torch and my camera flash, it was possible to photograph the female glow-worm, Lampyris noctiluca, whilst she was shining her light to bring in a male:

Already there was a male in the grass below her:

Before very long at all, the male had found the female and he was masking her light with his body which perhaps stops other males from arriving:

Another female that we photographed, though, had attracted far too many males and I wonder how that situation sorted itself out:

Once I had got my eye in for what a male glow-worm looked like, I noticed that they were also being lured into the house when the lights were on at night and then dying on the window sills. I was not too late to save this one:

I have twice found a glow-worm larva in our wood back in Kent and presume that there must be a population there, although we have never visited as it gets dark to see the adult females’ bioluminescence.

With flightless females, dispersal is always going to be a challenge. The female larvae travel across the ground just before they pupate but colonies still tend to become highly isolated, struggling to expand across inhospitable landscape. Males are also confused by artificial light and this is another reason that probably contributes to why the UK glow-worm population has been declining for many years.

I have reported these glow-worm sightings on iRecord and already heard back from the expert that they had one previous record for glow-worms at the cottage dating from1974, and that he was really pleased that they were still there! We are now enthused to further investigate the glow-worm population in the marjoram clearing in our wood. Glow-worms are apparently also to be found in unimproved chalk downloads and old hedgerows so maybe we might also find them in the meadows if we take the time to properly look.

We were in this part of Suffolk last weekend for a very particular reason. Kentwell Hall in Long Melford has been holding immersive historical Tudor reenactments for the past 48 years. Our son Jonty and his wife Ellie were part of this year’s living history experience, along with over two hundred other volunteers.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Kentwell. The volunteers had all made their own costumes and wonderfully stayed in character throughout the day.

After several days of sweltering in the extraordinary temperatures and camping onsite in a tent throughout the hot nights, Jonty said that he was very envious of the Kentwell pigs wallowing around in the mud:

When we were wandering around the moat, a brown hawker dragonfly landed on my sandal. This is the first time I’ve seen this species but it wasn’t around for long enough to get a really good look:

By Sunday the temperatures had returned to a more tolerable level and we went for a walk in the Arger Fen and Spouse’s Vale reserve that lies next to the Tiger Hill reserve where we were staying.

These days I cannot walk past a sight such as this without stopping to see whose nests these are in the sandy ground:

We didn’t have to wait long:

It was a colony of ornate-tailed digger wasps. These solitary wasps frequently nest together like this and hunt small and medium-sized bees. The bees are paralysed by stinging and are then brought back to the nest to feed the wasp larvae

We saw plenty of butterflies at Arger Fen. A pair of ringlets here…

…but we saw the magnificent white admiral and silver-washed fritillary as well, and also purple hairstreak through our binoculars high up in the canopy of the oaks. I didn’t get a photo of the purple hairstreaks at Arger Fen, but I did see one on the lawn at our cottage just as I was sitting on a picnic bench with a glass of wine:

I very much like the idea of combining wildlife spotting with drinking wine, but even I have to admit this isn’t a great photo. Here is a better one from Wiki Commons:

But it wasn’t just glow worms that have been ticked off my bucket list this week. A few days earlier I was sitting in the garden going through the moth trap when I got a phone call from another member of the Walmer Castle wildlife team. She knew that I really, really wanted to see a fiery clearwing moth and she and her husband had just seen one on the beach in front of the castle. I ensured that the moths in the trap were safe, jumped in the car and drove. The fiery clearwing is a red data book species that is fully protected by law against disturbance, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t quietly observe them going about their business. The females lay their eggs on curled dock plants at the top of the shingle beach between Walmer and Kingsdown.

A week or so previously we had been down on the beach in front of the castle photographing tiny fiery clearwing eggs that had been laid at the base of a curled dock leaf:

I am really pleased to now be able to remove the fiery clearwing from the bucket list.

A couple of weeks prior to this I had set some clearwing pheromone lures in the meadows and was delighted to catch both an orange-tailed clearwing and a currant clearwing. I subsequently put the lures out twice more without seeing a further clearwing. This week, however, I caught five orange-tailed clearwings within ten minutes of setting the traps:

They are amazing-looking things and I like their shaggy knees:

A few other interesting photos from this week:

I might have successfully ticked two items off my nature bucket list this week, but there is still plenty on there to be getting on with. Some, such as watching grizzly bears plucking salmon from Canadian rivers, I will never now achieve since we no longer fly. But there are others, like seeing basking sharks cruising through the water with their mouths wide open, that I do still hope to experience one day. I will certainly do my best to make them happen.

We have been busy with several sets of visitors recently, getting out and about to show them how packed East Kent is with interesting history and wildlife. One day we caught the Go2Sea ex-special forces rib out of Ramsgate harbour to see the seals that lounge around at the mouth of the River Stour.

There were lots of unusual vessels in Ramsgate harbour. These two below carry pilots out to large ships to help them navigate into the Thames:

There were also five or six of these UK Border Force vessels moored there, used to intercept small boats carrying migrants across The Channel:

It was lovely to see so many harbour seals resting up at the mouth of the river:

They stay still and look very sweet, so are definitely a photographer’s friend:

The land to both the north and the south of the river entrance is all nature reserve and there were plenty of birds to see too. A little egret strolls past one of the seals:

And a marsh harrier hunts above them:

A pair of shelduck stand watch over their little family:

On another day we visited Elmley nature reserve on the Isle of Sheppey. The view from the Well Marsh hide, over what is usually a lake, tells you all you need to know about how dry it has been so far this summer:

Black-headed gull chicks finding themselves something to drink:

Nevertheless, we saw a pleasing forty-three species of birds, a list that contained marsh harrier, bearded reedlings, corn bunting, cuckoos, avocets with chicks and yellow wagtails:

On another day we went to Goodnestone Park where Jane Austen’s brother once lived and where she often visited:

Martin found some noteworthy invertebrates while he was here in Kent:

The beach at Walmer and Kingsdown is looking really rather lovely at the moment

We have also had our daughter Sarah and her family up from Cornwall to stay. Our young grandson very much enjoyed rockpooling on the beach at low tide in Kingsdown…

…and he was of course introduced to the wonders of mothing while he was here:

Other interesting things that we have seen this week:

We met John the bird ringer in the wood and he checked the six raptor boxes that we have up there – two barn owl boxes, three tawny owl boxes and a kestrel box.

Along with evidence of squirrels using two of the boxes, we think that three of the boxes currently have stock doves nesting. Indeed, a stock dove flew out of this tawny box as we were putting up the ladder:

Inside were two warm eggs and a third egg partially buried under twigs which is presumably no longer viable:

Stock doves moved into another of the tawny boxes more or less as soon as the young owls fledged on 11th May:

John also noticed a songthrush nest in a tree and ringed the four chicks in it. They were apparently the perfect size for ringing:

The green woodpecker chicks have now fledged from their hole in the old cherry tree, but the camera is in disgrace since it failed to capture any of the departures:

Great spotted woodpeckers have also fledged elsewhere in the woods and the juveniles are frequently appearing on the cameras:

As I write, we are suffering another scorching spell of weather – this time with amber warnings of extreme heat. But there has been some recent rain and we are extremely grateful for the recharging of the ponds and water butts:

The meadows slope gently downwards, overlooking the North Sea to the east, and it is therefore a place of sunrises rather than sunsets. Nevertheless I finish this week with a beautiful sunset that I was recently treated to when I went out at dusk to give the badgers their peanuts:

What a wonderful sight.

Last Christmas my brother bought me a set of the ‘Big 6’ clearwing moth pheromone lures. Clearwing moths are an elusive and scarce group of day-flying moths that aren’t drawn to the light of a moth trap and stay very much under the human radar. But, in the last twenty years or so, synthetic pheromone lures have been developed to attract them and this has been transforming our understanding of their population sizes and distribution.

Dave and | had only ever come across one of these clearwing moths before. It was a red-tipped clearwing, seen back in 2018 at the Wheatfen Broad reserve in Norfolk:

I was totally mesmerised by the exotic-looking little thing. But this was on an amazing nature reserve in Norfolk and could I really dare to hope that there were also clearwings flying here in the meadows in Kent? We had certainly never seen one.

This week I took the lures out of the freezer where they need to be kept:

After doing some research into flight seasons and larval food plants, I decided to give the orange-tailed, yellow-legged and currant clearwing lures a go as a test run this week.

The Christmas present also included three specialised traps to hold the pheromone lures. The orange-tailed clearwing lays her eggs mainly on wayfarer trees and in the past decade we have planted many of these here in the meadows. I hung the first trap next to a small copse of mixed wayfarer and guelder rose bushes:

The yellow-legged clearwing, however, likes oaks – mainly pedunculate but also other oaks including holm oaks. So the second trap hung in a pedunculate oak tree which is also right next to a holm oak:

The placement of the third trap was easy because the currant clearwing lays her eggs on blackcurrants and we have several of these busily producing fruit for summer puddings in the allotment:

I really wasn’t expecting anything to come of this test run, and so I was actually jumping with excitement when we inspected the traps a short while later and found a clearwing in one of them:

It was in the trap hanging in the oak tree that contained the lure for yellow-legged clearwings. It was therefore a bit of a surprise to find that this was not a yellow-legged clearwing at all, but was in fact an orange-tailed clearwing. What a thing of beauty it is – the orange tail at the end of a narrow abdomen is quite extraordinary

Once I had photographed the moth, I released it in the same place and brought that trap in so that I didn’t catch it again. We continued to check the other traps and were delighted to also get a currant clearwing in the trap near the blackcurrants:

After the unexpected success of the clearwing test run, I have done additional research and now know a lot more about clearwings and how to most effectively lure them with the pheromones. I wonder if we will manage to see any more species before the end of the summer?

The addition of the two clearwing species to the meadows moth list is indisputably one of my wildlife highlights of the year. Another high point, though, has been the successful treatment of a pair of foxes with mange using arsen sulphur. These two foxes have cubs this spring which made it especially important to get them better. In an earlier post I included before and after photos showing how the male’s fur was growing back:

I have now had a chance to get a better look at the vixen. Here she was in late March just as I was starting the six-week course:

Now, with a big sigh of relief, I can include a photo from this week to show how much better she is, with fur reappearing where it had been lost:

The treatment was made much easier by the fact that the two of them were model patients, turning up every evening without fail for their sandwiches sprinkled with the arsen sulphur that I was serving with the peanuts at dusk.

There has not been much rain this spring and early summer, and earthworms have been difficult to get at. Consequently the badgers too have been extremely interested in the nightly peanuts and are often waiting for me out in the open. Never before have I been able to photograph them as easily as this:

This is the mother of the cubs as you can tell by her tummy:

And here she is again, out with her cubs at night on a trail camera:

The song thrushes would ideally also be collecting worms at the moment and no doubt they have a nest full of hungry mouths to feed. But, in dry periods when the ground is hard, they have an alternative food source to keep their family fed:

Back in the meadows we haven’t seen much of the kestrels so far this year but this one has caught herself a lizard:

And it has been a long while since a barn owl was last seen here:

Several pairs of starlings have been nesting in the meadows this spring, and the young from their first broods have now fledged:

Adult starlings feed their chicks a protein-rich diet of invertebrates. But, since earthworms have been hard to come by, this will have comprised of beetles, caterpillars, spiders and other such grubs. I was also surprised at how many photos I have had this week of starlings with butterflies or moths in their beaks:

The four butterfly banks in the meadows are at their most fabulous in June:

One of them is heavily covered in kidney vetch this year, a plant that is adored by many species of butterfly:

Sainfoin is a beautiful plant with a beautiful name, and is a complete bee magnet:

And a few pyramidal orchids have now arrived in the meadows:

I ran the moth trap in the wood one night this week and got a big haul of moths, adding nearly forty species to the wood moth list. I think this scorched wing moth was my favourite:

One of the many joys of mothing is exploring the imaginative English names given to the moths by entomologists from earlier centuries. Clockwise from top left we have clouded border, green oak tortrix, fern, pretty chalk carpet, mocha and satin lutestring:

The wider wood has a population of buzzards and, although they don’t nest in our wood, they are often to be seen there, especially using the water in the summer. A buzzard arrived to find this shallow dish unfortunately dry…

…but there is always water available in the deeper pools for these magnificent birds:

It appears that, no sooner had the tawny owls finished with the nest box and moved out, than the stock doves have moved in:

Returning to the meadows, for quite a few years now we have been trying to establish a swift colony here but it has been a very slow process indeed. The good news is that the sole bird in box 3 has now found itself a mate:

There is another pair of birds in box 5, but an egg is yet to be laid in either box. Last year the first egg was laid on 22nd May, so things this year are already over a fortnight behind. This delay will inevitably be putting back when the chicks fledge and they can leave for Africa at the end of the summer. I do hope that both pairs get going soon so that they will be ready to leave with the rest of the swifts, migrating in a group rather than on their own.