The Naturephile

Butterflies on the Beacon

Posted on March 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

One hot sunny day in late spring last year I headed over to Ivinghoe Beacon in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire because it’s renowned as a stronghold of the rare Duke of Burgundy fritillary butterfly. As I’d never seen one before and I love butterflies this ticked some boxes for me. I parked a mile or so away from the beacon and was greeted by a whitethroat perched on a tangle of power cables, it was a nice start to a nice outing.

It was a mile or so across fields and up the hill onto the beacon but it was well worth the walk. The views from the top are huge and it didn’t disappoint on the butterfly front either. The first one was a brown argus soaking up the sunlight on a grass stem

Brown argus, Aricia agestis

I think this one is a female from the prominence of the orange spots which are bigger and more pronounced in the female. The brown argus could be confused with a common blue female but the brown argus is smaller and the blue has a noticable blue hue at the wing roots.

The brown argus lives primarily on chalk grassland and feeds on various species of cranesbill:

Dovesfoot cranesbill – a food source for brown argus caterpillars

There were many species of butterfly patrolling the scrub and grassland on the beacon looking for plants to feed on and lay eggs on including this gorgeous brimstone caught probing for nectar in a cowslip. The male brimstones are more yellow than the females which are pale and more green so I think this one is a male.

Brimstone butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni

The sulphurous brimstone is another buttefly that is happiest around scrubby grassland and is active through May and June, so with the fine weather I wasn’t surprised to see them on the Beacon.

Another species which was abundant was the green hairstreak. These butterflies are an amazing colour and quite unmistakable

Green hairstreak, Callophrys rubi

Even against a sumptuous green background the irridescent greenness of the hairstreak stands out at a distance. It’s a smallish buttefly with a wingspan of around 30mm or so but it’s not difficult to spot, and the adult is active from mid April into July. It’s not terribly fussy about the habitat it frequents or the soil type so I hope that will help to ensure its survival whilst many other butterfly species are in spiralling decline due to habitat destruction and climate change. Basically, because of us, people.

But the star of the show that I’d headed across country to see was the Duke of Burgundy. I didn’t have to wait very long and after seeing one there were lots of them. Mission accomplished.

The Duke isn’t a very large butterfly, also with a wingspan of approximatelty 30mm, but the colours are exquisite:

Duke of Burgundy, Hamearis lucina

Because of the prominent position to display I think this one is probably a male as the females are more elusive and spend a lot of time looking for suitable egg laying sites. The underside of the Duke is even more colourful than the upper:

The Duke of Burgundy, like so many of our native butterflies is in peril and only survives in a small number of locations in southern England and two in the north, one in the southern Lake District and the other on the North Yorkshire Moors. So even though I had to drive for an hour to see them it was a pretty special trip and it didn’t seem that far!

Insectageddon?

Posted on May 16, 2022 | 1 comment

A few days ago I went for a walk in the city centre of Cambridge and as luck would have it it was a day when the grounds of Trinity College were open to the public. I crossed the river Cam over the Garret Hostel Bridge by Trinity Hall and looped back through Trinity College to recross the river over Trinity College Bridge.

***From Trinity College Bridge looking back to Garret Hostel Bridge***

It was a beautiful warm sunny morning and it’s a very green part of the city, and the grounds of the ‘backs’ of the colleges are surrounded by drainage channels, so on a day like that I’d expect there to be lots mini beasts buzzing around over the water and feeding on all the open flowers.

**Drainage channel between Trinity Hall and Trinity College**

With so much water lined with uncultivated banks adjacent to other areas which had been cultivated to maximise the number of flowers it should have been humming with bugs and and the birds that feed on them.

***Flower beds and gardens of Trinity College***

It’s a lovely place to spend time on a sunny morning but the almost total lack of insects was worrying. Along the drainage channel above I saw no insects at all and in the flower beds and gardens of Trinity I counted three butterflies – two small whites (I think), one holly blue – and two bumble bees. There was also very little birdlife apart from half a dozen jackdaws that were flapping around the lawns.

There have been a lot of news articles in recent times about how climate change is causing a catastrophic decline in insect numbers, and there seems to be debate about what’s really going on; but the almost total absence of them on a sunny morning in somewhere as green as the ‘Backs’ in Cambridge made me think that there is a problem here.

**St Johns College from the gardens of Trinity College**

It’s a beautiful place but maybe not as green and biodiverse as I thought it might be. Or should be.

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Posted in Uncategorized

Fenland floods

Posted on April 24, 2022 | 2 comments

Because the land is very flat to the north of Cambridge there is a lot of infrastructure to deal with flooding and that includes extensive flood relief around Earith. A couple of weekends ago there were lots of waders and ducks making the most of the flood waters there including black tailed godwit and blue winged teal (Spatula discors), an unusual visitor from north America.

**A flock of black tailed godwit (*Limosa limosa*)**

The birds were too far away to photograph individuals but we estimated there were 2-300 in total. There were many other birds on the water and mixed in with this group were teal (Anas crecca), redshank (Tringa totanus) and the ubiquitous black headed gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus). We didn’t see the blue winged teal but the regular teal, shoveller, redshank and godwit more than made up for that.

Right at the start of the walk there were two coot nests, one was being sat on and the other was in the final stages of construction.

**Female coot (*Fulica atra*) busily building her nest platform above the water**

And whilst the female was occupied with home making, the male was otherwise engaged defending his territory and squaring up to another male:

Unfortunately all this mating activity was to no avail, on the same walk a week later the flood water had receded and both the coot nesting sites were left high and dry and were deserted. But there is a huge area here which is suitable breeding habitat for coots so hopefully they found somewhere a tad more permanent

It was a bright and sunny spring morning and the route was regularly punctuated by the song of chiffchaffs which could be seen flitting around the trees. And then this little chap popped up right in front of us on a bramble just a few feet away

**Chiffchaff (*Phylloscopus collybita*) posing for a portrai**t

The chiffchaff has a distinctive song from which it gets its name and is one of the first migrant warblers to arrive back in the UK from its winter feeding grounds in north Africa. It can be heard as early as late February and at this time of year there are many of them singing in the tree tops.

2 Comments

Posted in Ducks, Fens, Ouse Fen, Waders, water birds

Tagged black tailed godwit, chiffchaff, coot, ducks, Earith, flood water, waders, water birds

Springtime Fenland birdlife

Posted on June 8, 2020 | 4 comments

After my last post, my long time blogging friend, Scott, mentioned in a comment that he was reading a book set in my part of the world, viz the fenland of East Anglia. And that reminded me that during the Covid lockdown we’ve beeen allowed to drive a few miles to exercise outdoors, and back in April I ventured over to a local fen for a walk with my camera.

The Fens are a unique ecosystem characterised by lakes, reed beds and low scrub which create habitat for a wide range of wildlife and they’re a great place to see flowers, birds, mammals and reptiles. It was a glorious sunny day when I was there and the wildlife was abundant, including this male reed bunting who posed beautifully for his portrait:

Reed bunting Ouse Fen 18 Apr 2020_3015 Reed bunting (Dansk – Rørspurv, Latin – Emberiza schoeniclus)

Cuckoos (Dansk – gøg, Latin – Cuculus canorus) were cuckoo’ing all around the Fen – it’s apparently a good year for cuckoos here in the UK, and I heard one for the first time ever in the village a few weeks ago – and bittern (Dansk – rørdrum, Latin – Botaurus stellaris) were booming. The bittern is a smallish brown heron which lives and breeds in reedbeds and is extremely rare in the UK, only 191 males were recorded in the UK by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in 2017. Their booming call is an amazing sound and it can carry for over a kilometre. It’s difficult to find a recording that really does it justice but if you click on the link this one hopefully gives you a good idea of what they sound like. Even though when they boom they’re very disticntive and easy to hear, they’re not easy to see unless in flight as they blend in perfectly with the background of the reedbeds. But one of these days I hope I can post one of my own pictures of a bittern to show you.

However, one bird that is easy to see is the marsh harrier:

Marsh harrier Ouse Fen 18 Apr 2020_3040 Marsh harrier (Dansk – Rørhøg , Latin – Circus aeruginosus)

The marsh harrier is another one of the British birds of prey whose numbers have recovered significantly since the 1960’s presumably after the pesticide DDT was banned, and this one is a male hunting small mammals or birds over the low scrub of the fen.

The marsh harrier is a constant on the Fen, and it seems the bittern may be coming one too, which is fantastic. But the cuckoo isn’t, they’ve laid their eggs for the host species to rear and will soon be heading back on the perilous journey to the rainforests of sub-Saharan west Africa, hopefully to return to the UK next year to fill the spring air with their wonderfully distinctive call.

4 Comments

Posted in Birds of prey, buntings, fen, harriers, Herons, Migrants, Ouse Fen, Pesticides, reedbed

Tagged bittern, cuckoo, DDT, marsh harrier, Ouse Fen, Pesticides, UK birdlife

Avian relaxation

Posted on May 24, 2020 | 4 comments

Following on from my last post when I mentioned the changes in behaviour of the local wildlife, since then there have been more birds relaxing in the garden. There have always been wood pigeons (Columba palumbus) round and about, and for several years they’ve nested in my plum tree in the front garden, but this year, in the absence of most of the normal human intrusion, they’ve been omnipresent. There are often at least two sitting atop the garden wall just relaxing,

49871188083_5601f155bd_c Preening wood pigeon on the garden wall

Growing on the garden wall is a wisteria, and you can see the purple flowers here. But what you can’t do is smell the flowers.

49871189203_d73b7ff92f_c

On a hot sunny day, for a couple of weeks in early May, the bracts of flowers, which are up to a metre long, fill the garden with the most intense and heavenly aroma. Interestingly though, the bees don’t seem to be that bothered by it, but I love it!

What I think are a pair of males have adopted a branch in the apple tree which they fight over – I assume they’re males, if they’re females I imagine they’d probably just take it easy and have a chat, but I guess it’s that time of year.

49872029342_e55e4a4386_c Woody wood pigeon perched on the ‘fighting branch’ – I can see why they like that particular spot

But a few days ago this one dropped down out the apple tree onto the grass and after lazily mooching about for a few minutes just hunkered down and did nothing for 20-30 minutes or so:

49930145537_6c4790cfeb_b Cooling off on the ground, and obviously not afraid of the local cats

He wasn’t sufficiently relaxed to doze off like the dove in my last post and he stayed alert, but even so, I’ve never seen one do this before.

4 Comments

Posted in Birds, Garden birds, Histon, Uncategorized

Tagged animal behaviour, Covid 19 lockdown, garden birds, histon, wood pigeon

Lockdown Upside

Posted on May 8, 2020 | 3 comments

I’ve been working from home during these unprecentedly loopy times we’re all living through. So while I’m sitting reading next to the window I’ve noticed the local wildlife has been behaving quite differently. The creatures frequenting my garden seem much more realxed than they normally do. I have a resident wren which I’ve seen hunkering down to sunbath just outside the window, and that’s unusual. Other birds that would normally flit in and out really quickly have also been taking their time, such as this collared dove which took time to enjoy the sunshine and generally take it easy yesterday.

First off it perched on the back of a garden chair and had a really good stretch, wings extended and tail fanned:

49871710901_d00183dca1_z

And after spending quite a few minutes just hanging around and enjoying the heat it drifted off for a little siesta…

49871180628_575a45753c_c

And that would never have happened before the Covid-19 lockdown. So even though it’s a pain for humans, it’s wonderful that the rest of the creatures on the planet can enjoy a few months of quality relaxation whilst we’re not terrorising them.

3 Comments

Posted in Covid 19 lockdown, Uncategorized

Tagged collared dove, Covid-19, human interference, lockdown

Happy Easter

Posted on April 11, 2020 | 4 comments

It’s Easter Saturday and the thermometer is reading 27 degrees C, it’s a really beatiful day. Yesterday was the same and blossom is well underway on my apple tree, and maybe at least partially as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown my garden is being frequented by a stream of butterflies. Which makes me very happy! Some of them such as the comma (Polygonia c-album) and the holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) are regular visitors at this time of year:

4910330906_498b77ab24 Comma

5681704530_8f2f56a391_w Holly Blue

But there have been a couple of first sightings, both yesterday, which was great to see; the brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) and the orange tip (Anthocharis cardamines):

7895409316_3abe55fe8b Brimstone

5681166601_54ddff5bb7 Orange tip

I love orange tips but they’re really tough to track and photograph because they seldom settle. But when they eventually do settle and close their wings the underside has the most exquisite green lacework which also functions as perfect camouflage, they’re virtually invisible when they sit tight and don’t move.

One other treat I’ve had whilst working from home during the Covid-19 lockdown is my resident wren who appears just outside the window at least once a day and just occasionally sings his heart out. It’s amazing how so much lovely song emanates from such a tiny bird, and at such high volume! I’ll try to get some wren pictures in the next few days and post them here.

In the mean time have a lovely Easter weekend and stay home and stay safe!

4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged brimstone, butterflies, comma, Covid-19, Easter, holly blue, orange tip, wren

The fragile nature of Green Belt

Posted on April 23, 2019 | 2 comments

Over the last year and a half or so I’ve been working with a group of people from my village to try to limit the development of our Green Belt land. ‘Green Belt‘ is undeveloped green space encircling built up areas which has legal protection from development in order to limit urban sprawl and provide places where people from towns and cities can go for relaxation.

One of our areas slated for development is Buxhall Farm, which is around 300m from where I live. It’s in the Green Belt and I’ve posted about it’s wildlife on numerous occasions. On the face of it it’s a flat and boring piece of arable farmland with little value for wildlife. Or so you might think. Closer inspection shows that it’s home to many species of birds as well as wildflowers, butterflies moths, mammals etc. All you have to do is look…

Linnet (Linaria cannabina, Dansk: tornirisk)

All the picures here were taken on Buxhall Farm over the Easter weekend from 19th to the 22nd April and at the end of this post is a full list of my sightings there from that weekend.

The linnet is a ‘red listed’ bird in the UK which means it’s of maximum conservation concern. This listing is usually due to falling numbers which is often the result of habitat destruction. Linnet are present at Buxhall all year round and breed there.

Dunnock (Prunella modularis, Dansk: jernspurv)

The dunnock isn’t red listed… yet. It’s a common sight round here and it has a rather lovely song, and some interesting mating habits.

Skylark (Alauda arvensis, Dansk: sanglærke)

The skylark is red listed due to declining numbers, largely due to intensive farming methods. I spoke to the farmer earlier in the week and he told me that he leaves wide field margins to encourage the wildlife and farms his land accordingly. So hats off to him, it shows that it’s possible to make a living from the land without destroying all the wildlife.

Female reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus, Dansk: rørspurv)

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella, Dansk: gulspurv)

Over the last three winters there have been flocks of around 50 yellowhammers (also red listed) at Buxhall Farm and this is an important number of these lovely birds. They are one of those iconic farmland/hedgerow species whose numbers have plummeted in recent decades, also due to intensive farming methods, but we still have a healthy population in my neck of the woods.

Peacock butterfly (Inachis io)

All in all I saw at least 7 species of butterfly. There were many whites, but only one species that I could identify as it flew close and slow, but there were probably large whites and green veined whites too, both of which I see there every year. Butterflies are a very good indicator of the health of a habitat so to see so many species so early in the season was wonderful.

Long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemajse)

Long tailed tits are normally fliting from tree to tree in small flocks but this time there were only two and they seemed local to a particular tree, suggesting they’re a breeding pair using it as a nest site.

Small tortoiseshell butterfly (Aglais urticae)

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis, Dansk: stillits)

Land designated ‘Green Belt’ has historically not been developed to retain those green areas for local people to get away from the city. But under current planning legislation an authority can simply take land out of Green Belt and develop it as it pleases. Combined with the massive curtailment of funding from central government to local authorities there’s now intense financial pressure for those authorities to try to develop an income stream from the land they own. It’s perfectly understandable that cash strapped councils need to raise funds but I don’t think this is a good way to do it, but it’s what’s happening around my village and what we are trying to minimise.

The full list of sightings on Buxhall Farm between 19th-22nd April 2019:

Species Number

Great tit                    1
Blackbird                 5
Greenfinch               1
Skylark                     17
Wren                         4
Dunnock                   4
Yellowhammer        4
Long tailed tit          2
Carrion crow            3
Goldfinch                  8
Rook                         21
Starling                     2
Reed bunting           8
Corn bunting           2
Whitethroat             2
Swallow                    2
Magpie                      2
Blackcap                   1
Linnet                       1
Blue tit                     2
House sparrow       3
Buzzard                    1
Robin                        1
Wood pigeon           3
Collared dove          1
Songthrush              1
Green woodpecker 1
Kestrel                      1
Chaffinch                 1
Butterflies:
Peacock                    2
Small white              1
Holly blue               1
Orange tip                1
Brimstone                 1
Speckled wood         1
Small tortoiseshell 1

It’s a really great place for wildlife and I hope we can help to ensure it remains as very well managed farmland and doesn’t get destroyed by developers building houses.

2 Comments

Posted in Agriculture, Butterflies, Buxhall Farm Histon, Farming and wildlife, Farmland, farmland birds, Ornithology, UK wildlife, Uncategorized

Tagged Buxhall Farm, farmland birds, Green Belt, spring butterflies

Mad Marketing and Migratory Birds – the next instalment

Posted on April 23, 2019 | 1 comment

Following on from my little rant about crap marketing by a well known purveyor of sports equipment at the end of December last year, I thought I’d check and see if the same gloves were still on sale and if so, whether the sales pitch had changed.

Imagine my disappointment to find that the offending text was still in situ in an unabridged form:

Designed for standing at post on big game drives in cold weather. Also suitable for hunting migratory birds.

Either they didn’t actually pass on my comments to the relevant people within their organisation, in which case they fibbed to me. Or they did, and it got lost in the ether – in which case they’re incompetent, or they did and then decided not to change it, and in that case they’re scumbags.

Suffice to say I shall be voting with my feet and my credit card and source my sports kit elsewhere. Bastards.

But that’s enough of that and I hope a picture of a spring butterfly will lighten the mood a tad…

This is a holly blue (Celastrina argiolus) which is usually the first butterfly I see in springtime when it emerges in March/April; after which it disappears for a while. But it has a second emergence in June – August (the technical term is ‘bivoltine‘), and this image was taken in the summer in my garden. And it makes me smile when idiot marketing people conspire to ruin my day!

1 Comment

Posted in Butterflies, Insects, Lepidoptera, Marketing, Migrants, Uncategorized

Tagged butterflies, holly blue, Marketing, migratory birds

Mad Marketing and Migratory Birds

Posted on December 27, 2018 | 6 comments

I try to avoid too much political comment and opining in this blog, but just occasionally I stumble across a piece of corporate loopiness which makes me spit feathers and has to be commented on… . So apologies in advance, but here goes.

I’ve never had much respect for marketing, it seems to me it’s simply a way to convince gullible people to part with their hard earned cash for something they don’t need and may not even want. And today whilst looking for some gloves I came across this description for a pair of convertible mittens on the website of an internationally well known purveyor of sports equipment:

“Designed for standing at post on big game drives in cold weather. Also suitable for hunting migratory birds.”

Also suitable for hunting migratory birds. Really?! I’m sure I won’t be alone in finding this piece of marketing nonsense completely bonkers. Will someone really read that and think to themself “I must buy those because if I don’t I’ll be less well equipped to shoot a willow warbler”?

And to illustrate my point, here is a small selection of our migratory birds:

Migratory bird 1 – waxwing

Migratory bird 2 – fieldfare

Migratory bird 3 – short eared owl

Frankly, I’d rather have cold hands.

But in the interest of fairness I must point out that I contacted the company to voice my disquiet and they came straight back to me to say they had passed on my concerns to the relevant people within the organisation. So now I’m waiting see if anything changes… . I’ll let you know what transpires.