Just The Cricket

I recently attended a wildlife study day about crickets and grasshoppers which I must say was superb. It was a KWT event and only cost £25. I’ve now found another use for my bat detector and next year I want to try and see a local great green bush cricket. The photo of the one below I took in Cornwall in September and was the first one I’ve ever seen. They seem to start stridulating in the late afternoon and then carry on well into the night when this male was photographed. A brilliant insect, got to be up there as one of the best insects in the UK.

Great Green Bush Cricket

Oak Bush Cricket. A predominantly arboreal species which is under-recorded. This female was a surprise to see in my back garden literally the day after I had been on the study day and it was in a hazel rather than oak tree.

Speckled Bush-Cricket. This is the one you are most likely to get inside your house. This male is good and spotty or should that be speckly.

I wish….

I could find such a stunning bird as the juvenile Pallid Harrier found at Cliffe Marshes. I was able to see it late this afternoon and for once I had my camera ready.

It’s Grey, It’s Hairy But It’s Not A Mouse.

I'm celebrating finding Grey Mouse Ear and here are the photos to prove it, which I took yesterday. I don’t consider myself vey good at identifying plants and I have been looking for this species for about 4 years now having realised that a colony exists at the small KWT reserve just up the road from my house at Longfield. The only other site in Britain is in Bedfordshire.

It is just so amazingly hairy, brilliant! Despite the lack of rain the plant is in a shaded area so should still be ok for a couple of days hopefully. Get in touch if you are in the area and would like to see it.

Get Close To A Pansy

Noticed these beautiful pansy’s in my garden this morning. A small flower that warranted a close up shot. I just love the vivid colours.

Badgercam

More fiddling about with the trail cam that I now have last night and this time i’m giving the video mode a go with the camera located next to a well used track baited with a handful of peanuts. The badger knew that something odd was nearby but the peanuts were worth the risk.

Nuts!

Well i’ve no idea what this moth is and the other night I caught two. So please let me know what you think cos it’s drivin me nuts!

It All Happens At Night!

Been running my actinic trap a couple of times over the last few days and on the first attempt I got totally caught out by the hard frost but unfortunately so did the dead common quaker that was the only moth in the trap. However last night was much better with a new species for me in the shape of a clouded drab. Now what did this reasonable looking moth do to deserve a name like that? Well I guess i’m in a minority to think that it really isn’t that drab, poor thing.

Clouded Drab

Double Stripe Pug Small Quaker
 
Recently I purchased a Bushnell trail cam and have been enjoying checking out photos of a hedgehog that is visiting the garden on and off during the night as well as all the local cats that seem to use my garden as a highway! I really wanted to get to know how to use this camera for getting shots of other mammals in the area and last night I setup a camera at a badger sett and was lucky enough to get some shots.

 

More Moths

Continuing to run my 40w actinic in the back garden as I don’t think the neighbours would appreciate my mv running with so little foliage available to block the light from their bedroom windows. Anyway a better night than before with 7 Hebrew characters, 6 common Quakers, 1 small Quaker and 1 early grey.

Small Quaker

Hebrew Character


Early Grey

Plume Moth, probably Emmelina monodactyla


The very variable Common Quaker

The Common Quaker above with a Hebrew Character

Sunshine Treats and Disappointments

A good day for butterflies yesterday in the sunny spells with 2 brimstones and a holly blue visiting the back garden. I thought it would also be good weather for finding basking adders so headed off to a couple of sites near the Medway towns and saw a further 3 brimstones at Meopham along with a brief glimpse of probably a peacock. At Queendown Warren the sun was still out but unfortunately the adders were not. This is a worry as I know the folks that perform regular surveys there have indicated a general decline and I don’t know how the hard weather in December may have affected them. Certainly the Kent reptile and amphibian group (KRAG) are concerned over a perceived decline and have setup a project to gather data. I did manage to see a couple of commas though, so a 4 butterfly day, not bad for early March, I think? I then moved onto a second site but by this time the sun had gone in so no real chance of finding anything.

I’m branching out into the world of motion sensor cameras and have been given one for a month to ‘have a go’. So I positioned it in a suitable place in my back garden last night, hoping that the elusive hedgehog that appeared a week back may make another appearance. Unfortunately I only managed to get pictures of the local cat population which confirms my suspicions that my garden is the local cat highway

Its March so migrate!

It’s all too easy to look at the weather and just think that nothing will be migrating cos the weather is not right. I tend to forget that the urge to migrate and move north is a strong instinct in birds in the spring and a birds understanding of the weather is luckily very different from mine. So after giving myself a pep talk I wandered around the local fields this afternoon behind Pinden quarry just on the outskirts of Longfield. I kicked up a flock of 46 corn buntings and 25 skylarks and then there in front of me was a superb male wheatear. I say superb because that is just how it looked, the bird appeared to be in its peak of breeding plumage. My spirits were lifted you would have thought I’d just found a major rarity, I was elated, it made my day and only 15 minutes from my front door.