A Mixed Spring with one or two Surprises

From an avian perspective, Spring around Maldon was disappointing. Chiffchaffs were singing at Lofts Farm on 15^th March and an early Swallow flew by at Heybridge Pits on the 16^th, but there was little in the way of follow up passage. As ever, Lofts Farm was a good place to pick up Sand Martins, and then the first House Martins and Swift, and there was a smattering of passing Willow Warblers heard singing around the patch. But no Wheatears or Whinchats were spotted. There were some Whimbrels along the estuary and a couple of Little Ringed Plover sightings but the only half decent passage bird encountered was the drake Garganey seen by Tony Kennelly at Heybridge Pits on the 10^th April. Fortunately, there were other wildlife distractions around the town!

Certain plants seemed to be everywhere. Red Dead-nettle was abundant, Greater Stitchwort widespread and Alexanders were seemingly along every roadside and sea wall. 

Alexanders along the sea wall by Southey Creek

Alexanders aren’t native, and it would be better if they weren’t so successful, but at least they deliver lots of early nectar that attracts a broad range of pollinators, from bees to dung flies! One notable fly of spring is the St Mark’s Fly, so named as they traditionally appear around St Mark’s Day, 25^th April. They fly in a characteristic, sluggish manner, with legs dangling, and I was pleased to get a photo of one in flight.

St Mark's Fly on Alexanders

Yellow Dung Fly on Alexanders

Another fly I was pleased to see was an Alder Fly. Not rare but the first I had properly clapped eyes on. Their youngsters are entirely aquatic and are voracious predators. Indeed, a great many of the insects that we enjoy seeing around lakes and rivers- dragonflies, damselflies, caddisflies, mayflies- all have early stages that live underwater, demonstrating how vital it is that water quality is maintained, if the adults are to appear!

Alder Fly on Greater Reedmace

As ever, the first of the odonata to appear was the Large Red Damselfly- a nice distinctive species, often seen in gardens.

Large Red Damselfly

In April, Simon Wood discovered a patch of field at Lofts Farm that had been left uncultivated for a few months. For once, a whole load of traditional wild flowers had a chance to grow, and for a few weeks there was a chance to see the likes of Field Pansy, Common Fumitory and Henbit Dead-nettle. These belong to a group of species known as ‘arable plants’ that, due to modern agricultural practices, are rarely encountered these days.

Area of uncultivated field at Lofts Farm

Field Pansy, Lofts Farm

Common Fumitory, Lofts Farm

Mousetail, Lofts Farm

The arrival of spring also encouraged our reptiles to get out and about. We have yet to locate a local Adder, but the Maldon ‘big three’ were all seen:

Grass Snake, Hazeleigh

Slow Worm, Hazeleigh

Common Lizard, Maldon Hall Allotments (Susan Mint)

At Hazeleigh, there was a typically impressive spread of Bluebells. As well as providing an attractive display, they also provide habitat for other species, such as the micromoth Bluebell Conch.

Bluebell display at Hazeleigh Hall Wood

Bluebell Conch, Hazeleigh

Another example of interdependancies involves the Rivulet. Its foodplant is campion. Unfortuntately, campions are also eaten by Muntjac deer. In Hazeleigh we saw a lot of nibbled shoots but luckily there were still some blooms and Rivulet still seem to be hanging on.

Rivulet, Hazeleigh

Red Campion

Red Campion nibbled by Muntjac

Moths appear to be having a particularly tough time at the moment. This spring has been exceptionally poor for moth numbers at traps throughout south-eastern England. A post on the Recording Moths in Suffolk site by Neil Sherman gave a good summary of likely causes. An ongoing north-east airflow and clear nights have not helped and the cold, wet recent weather may have killed larvae and pupae.  But possibly the main cause was the drought last summer that decimated larval foodplants.

This lack of moths was reflected at sessions at Hazeleigh Woods, where species counts were less than a half of the totals on the same dates in previous years.

Many of the spring moths that did show at Hazeleigh, were species that try to blend in to their surroundings.

Pale Pinion

Waved Umber

But in contrast it was good to also see more striking species, including the always impressive Eyed Hawkmoth, as well as White Ermine and the attractive micromoth, Common Tubic.

Eyed Hawkmoth

White Ermine

Common Tubic (known by moth-ers as 'Geoffrey' on account of its scientific name)

Walking through the Maldon countryside in springtime there are always critters to spot, often surprisingly colourful...

Black and Red Leafhopper, Hazeleigh Wood

Malachite Beetle, Hazeleigh Wood

Gorse Shieldbug, Lofts Farm

Amongst the regular species, there were a couple of good finds at Heybridge Pits. 

Simon Wood found a Large Garden Bumblebee and the first of several local Small Yellow Underwings was spotted feeding on Cornsalad.

Large Garden Bumblebee, Heybridge Pits (Simon Wood)

Small Yellow Underwing, Heybridge Pits

Finally, around the beginning of May, a couple of classy appearances at Chigborough helped restore Maldon's reputation for birds. Now just looking forward to what the summer will deliver!

Night Heron, Chigborough, May 2023

Spoonbill, Chigborough, May 2023

 

 

 Little things please little minds…

It has not been the best of springs so far really…some very chilly days, high rainfall and a distinct feeling that sunshine has been at a premium. In the bird world there have been a few interesting records which I am sure will be blogged about here soon, but for families such as moths and butterflies, things have definitely been slow and we find ourselves perhaps a couple of weeks behind a typical spring, although I am not quite sure what is typical these day! 

So, with a little time on our hands it gave us the opportunity to go in search of other Arthropoda. These are the group (more technically a Phylum)  of animals without backbones but with a hard external skeleton, segmented bodies and jointed limbs. Within the Arthropoda can be found the Hexapoda (insect and ‘non-insect’ hexapods), the Crustacea (e.g., wood lice, crabs, lobsters), Chelicerata (including spiders and other arachnids) and finally the Myriapoda (millipedes, true centipedes etc). 

And where did we look for these? Well, to be honest they are everywhere around us but a good place to start is in leaf-litter and Hazeleigh Wood has a lot of it!

With a bit of trial and error, involving getting back-ache and everything-in-general ache whilst lying on the woodland floor, we came up with an extremely simple way of searching through the debris - a white board on a table onto which we emptied a bucket of leaf litter. Then using the naked eye and a hand lens we picked out interesting creatures. The leaf litter felt very cold and we suspect activity had not really got going but we found a few bits and pieces.

So what did we find? Well, we were spurred on to doing the leaf litter search because the owner of the wood, Maureen Bissell, and myself wanted to find a pseudoscorpion, a member of the Arachnidae. And we found not one but five, all of the same species, whose English name is Common Chthonid, the scientific name of which is Chthonius ischnocheles, which is about 2-3mm in length. 

These are one of the predators of the micro world and springtails are a favourite prey, although they will eat pretty much anything they can find and are generally beneficial in that they will take clothes moth larvae, carpet beetle larvae, book lice etc . Springtails used to be considered a true insect but they now form a separate class within the Hexapods. They are very difficult to identify as most are very small but we did manage to identify one, Banded Springtail, Orchesella cincta. This is a similar size to the pseudoscorpion. 

The crustaceans were represented by a high-speed wood-louse which proved to be Common Striped Woodlouse Philoscia muscorum, a positive giant at about 8mm in length. 

Several beetles were also found and the ones I have been able to identify are (clockwise from top right) Strophosoma melanogrammum, Copper Greenclock Poecilus cupreus, Common Shoulderblade Abax parallelepipedus and Red-rimmed Plate-jaw Leistus rufomarginatus

All of these were in the range 7mm-20mm in length. 

We did noticed other species, tiny spiders as well as primitive arachnids and mites, centipedes, absolutely minute springtails and similar looking creatures as well as several tiny white nematodes and the odd earthworm, the latter two are of course not Invertebrates but Nematophora and Annelida, I think! All were way beyond our identification knowledge and likely to remain that way!