When I blogged last week we were in between school visits. The children were very lucky with the weather and pond dipping was just as much fun on the Friday. Unfortunately, no dragonfly nymphs were caught for me to photograph (always the way) but I did get a picture of a damselfly nymph – turns out it’s difficult taking photographs of things in pots filled with water!
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – damselfly nymph On to the bittern surveys. What a difference in the weather between today and last Thursday. Last week we were bathed in sunshine and covered in sun cream but today we were all freezing! Despite full waterproofs to keep the wind out, a fleece, woolly hat and gloves the wind won out and in the end we stopped early – with only one bittern sighting. After last weeks quiet survey, which also included booming and display flying, we think our bittern nesting can be added to the list of what’s late this spring/summer – let’s hope they are on eggs now.
As well as helping with our bittern surveys, our volunteers have been working on into the afternoons despite now having early starts for the surveys - aren't they amazing! Work party jobs recently have mainly included raking up behind us strimmers and trimming vegetation growth around benches. Small oak trees have been re-staked out in the car park, to protect them from browsing deer while they are still growing (the original stakes strangely disappeared...) The past couple of days have been spent trying to tackle the ever growing list of odd-jobs, including making and erecting signage around the Brandon Fen family trail, increasing the size of our amazing compost heap (thank you volunteer Nigel!) and yet more raking.
Katherine was joined by volunteers Rob and Su for some mothing in Botany Bay on Tuesday evening. Highlights included reed dagger, cream-bordered green pea and the brilliantly named ‘the flame’ moth. A full species list can be found at the bottom of the blog. Mothing results again reflect the state of the weather, although numbers and species have definitely picked up which is great news. Hopefully things will continue to improve!
Moths caught 11 June 2013: reed dagger; cream-bordered green pea; the flame; angle shades; small china mark; dark-barred twin spot; swallow prominent; pebble prominent; green carpet; white ermine; common rustic; spectacle, and large nutmeg.