We had lots of interesting bird sightings yesterday despite the wet weather, with a Temminck’s stint on Spoonbill Flash along with black-tailed godwits, dunlins, ringed plovers and garganeys. A male and a female marsh harrier were seen over the Moat area, whilst green sandpipers and little egrets have been spotted from Pick-up. There’s been a sighting of a black tern on Village Bay and a spotted flycatcher was seen on the Discovery trail. Spotted flycatchers target flying insects from a perch, launching themselves to catch them mid-air, hence the name flycatcher.
The weather's been quite muggy recently which means there are lots of bugs about. We saw loads of insects on our minibeast safari today including massive southern hawker dragonflies, butterflies like common blues and meadow browns, spiders and grasshoppers. There have been quite a few mating dragonflies around recently, the females will be laying their eggs in the water soon and these will hatch out as nymphs and live in the pond for up to five years. We also saw a common shrew on our safari, some frogs and a wall brown butterfly, which hasn't been seen on the reserve for a few years!
We got loads of moths in our light trap yesterday morning, 18 different species! We had three poplar hawkmoths in the trap today which we weren't expecting as their flight season is from May till July or early August, however a second generation can emerge at this time usually in the south.
All these moths and other insects will be providing food for our bats that come out to feed on the reserve at night. We get common pipistrelles, noctules and Daubentons here, and the best way to identify these different bats is by using a bat detector. Bats navigate and find their food using echolocation, and the noises they produce are often at frequencies we can't hear. With a bat detector, you set it to a certain frequency which means you will then pick up the sounds of the bats. You'll most likely see Daubenton's feeding low over water whereas noctules fly higher up over open woodland.
Image of spotted flycatcher by Andy Hay - RSPB images