Butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies at Stanley Ferry Flash

Today, Stanley Ferry Flash produced my first sightings this summer for purple hairstreak and gatekeeper butterflies. The purple hairstreak was sheltering (out of the sun?) high up in a willow bush and surprisingly some distance from the site’s main areas of oak trees where egg laying would normally occur.  Other butterfly sightings included large skipper, several small tortoiseshell, numerous ringlet and meadow brown. Dragonflies and damselflies included brown hawker, four-spotted chaser, numerous black-tailed skimmer and common darter, together with emerald damselfly around the new large balancing pond just south of the main Stanley Ferry Flash.

Emerald Damselfly

Emerald Damselfly

Large Skipper

Large Skipper

Purple Hairstreak

Purple Hairstreak

Giving Swifts a Little Help

It was Swift Awareness Week last week. Work was a bit busy then but, a week later, I have finally put up two swift nestboxes that I was prevented from putting in place earlier in the year.

Swift nestbox.

By doing a little research, I found that swifts are more likely to use a box if the interior is dark, so I painted the insides of my two new boxes black.

The effect of painting the interior.

It did not seem right to expect swifts to lay eggs on a perfectly flat surface, so I created a nest concave for each box. The simplest way that I could think of to do this was to cut a set of circles of decreasing size in pieces of card and glue these together. I also thought the birds might prefer a box that looks a little lived-in, so I glued a few feathers, from our budgerigars, into the concave.

Nest concave.

The main way to increase the probability that the boxes will be used is to play the calls of swifts to attract them to the boxes. To do this, I bought a couple of small speakers, or tweeters, and a small, cheap amplifier unit. the tweeters are attached to the boxes and the amplifier is in the house. This set-up plays swift calls from an SD card and is turned on and off using a timer plug.

Tweeters.

Finally, I placed the boxes below the eaves of the house.

Swift boxes (left) and house sparrow boxes (right).

I have missed this year’s breeding season but I hope that some swifts will have a look at the boxes before they return to Africa for the winter.

Field meeting at Thorpe Marsh YWT Reserve

There was a good turn out of Society members at our field meeting on Sunday 10 June at the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve at Thorpe Marsh.  We were well rewarded with a wide variety of interesting bird, plant and insect species as we walked around flower filled meadows, woodland, becks and lagoons.  A check list with images attached included a recently emerged black-tailed skimmer dragonfly, caterpillar of the yellow-tail moth feeding on sallow, yellow barred long horn moth, wasp beetle and common cudweed, a low growing annual plant growing in a clinker track (a former railway). Other sightings included adult garden chafer beetle, adult cinnabar moth, caterpillar of vapourer moth, male and female forester moths, banded agrion damselfly various hybrid orchids, buzzard, together with whitethroat, oystercatcher and cuckoo all calling in the background.   Thorpe Marsh extends to 77 hectares and is packed with a variety of habitats and as we discovered it is developing into a very valuable home for a wide range of wildlife.

The next field meeting is on July 15 at Epworth Turbary Nature Reserve and further details are available by checking the Outdoor Meetings on this website.

Yellow tail moth caterpillar

Yellow tail moth caterpillar

Yellow barred long horn moth

Yellow barred long horn moth

Black tailed skimmer

Black tailed skimmer

common cudweed

common cudweed

Wasp beetle

Wasp beetle