The last few mornings here at Fairburn have been beautiful, with lots of fresh wildlife sightings to report! There have loads of damselflies emerging lately, with large reds being the first to appear a few weeks ago. Some of our newest editions are the blue-tailed damselfly and azure damselfly, with the azure having a blue and black striped abdomen and the blue-tailed with the striking blue tip on the end of its abdomen. Damselflies interestingly don’t fly as strong as dragonflies so you can often see them lazing on leaves waiting for their insect prey to come to them... why waste the energy! Four spotted chaser dragonflies have also been spotted this week, these are not your typical dragonflies as they are much more broad-bodied but do have the classic four black spots on the edge of there wings which give them their name. I find the life cycle of dragonflies and damselflies amazing, if you’ve been pond dipping you may have come across their nymphs which come out of the water and make the tremendous change from underwater larva to winged adult within just a few hours. The time when they emerge from the water is mainly reliant on what they can find to eat in the water and the temperature of the water, so we might see them coming out a bit sooner than usual in the next few years. Keep an eye out for them when you’re round the ponds on the discovery trail!

Blue-tailed damselfly – Stephen Burch (www.stephenburch.com/dragonflies)

We had a lot of confusion the other day when I bought in a picture of a yellow cabbage-like wildflower that we struggled to identify! Half an hour and many wildflower books later we managed to identify it as ball mustard (we think...if anyone has any advancements on this feel free to drop suggestions in!) There are plenty of these flowers on the bank of the river Aire before you start cut lane. It’s all been yellow flowers this week with common laburnum flowering, ball mustard, gorse, broom and yellow flag flowering at Charlie’s hide, although I think team white may just be winning still with all the majestic white hawthorn blossoms breaking up the greenery. The goat willow or pussy willow down by the kingfisher screen has also been snowing this week! You may have noticed the male catkins appearing in February, gradually these become full up with pollen which fertilises the female catkins, now in May the female catkins are fluffy with seeds which get blown off by the wind and look like snow as they fall to the ground ...or right into your face.

Ball mustard

Garden warblers and grasshopper warblers have been seen and heard this week along riverbank trail. We were stopped by one keen man with a camera just last night as he was pointing enthusiastically up into one of the bushes at a lovely view of a garden warbler singing. The call is very similar to a blackcap but with a scratchier warbler twinge to it. Whitethroats have also been busy singing away near the far end of the car park in their preferred patch of hawthorn. You may also be able to hear the random sound of the song thrush if you wonder to the south end of cut lane. I always imagine the song thrush’s call to be a beautiful mix-match of all other bird calls, it seems to just be a random mash of whatever it feels like singing but I’m sure they know what they’re doing!

  

Song thrush – Chris Gomersall (RSPB-Images)