Happy Easter to everyone and what a great weekend it is shaping up to be with all this sunshine! I had a pleasant afternoon down on the reserve yesterday in glorious 25C temperatures and the place was buzzing with life. I picked up my first hobby of the year over Phase 1. What a stunning bird this is, with it's steely grey upperparts, black and white head pattern and bright orange/red 'trousers'. Look for them darting very fast over the reedbed hunting dragonflies.
Invertebrates are in abundance now and the numbers of St. Mark's flies and longhorn moths, Adela reaumurella (see previous blog), seem to have increased significantly since Tuesday! Another painted lady butterfly on Phase 1 yesterday was a welcome sight and the reserve's beetle recording has started for the year, with some nice species already on the list! The green dock beetle, or Gastrophysa viridula, is a small metallic green beetle that can be seen on or around dock plants - as their name suggests, the larvae feed on dock. See if you can spot a gravid female (full of eggs). Her abdomen swells to about twice normal size, pushing the much smaller elytra (wing cases) upwards, exposing the black 'skin' of the abdomen underneath. Some of my personal favourites are the click beetles and we have seen two species on site already this year. No English, so here goes with the Scientific names - Agriotes lineatus and Kibunea minuta are two common species in the UK, Agriotes is a light brown colour, whilst Kibunea is black, but get it in good light and you will see a purplish sheen. As a defence mechanism they are able to arch their backs, snapping a special 'spine' into a notch on their undersides. This produces a loud clicking noise and propels the insect into the air to escape predators!
And the moth trap on Thursday night produced some more nice species for our ever growing site list. Along with hebrew characters and clouded drabs, we had a pebble prominent, a powdered quaker and 3 muslin moths. The pebble prominent is a pretty species, usually flying between May and August, the caterpillars feeding on sallows and poplars. The powdered quaker is related to the common and small quakers (see previous blogs) and fly in April and May, the caterpillars feeding on willows and sallows. And my favourite the muslin moth is a beautiful species, with a strong sexual dimorphism - that is, the male and female look very different. The male is a soft grey/brown colour, whilst the female is bright white, but both are sparsely flecked with small black spots and have bright yellow hairs covering their front pair of legs! They fly in April and May and the larvae feed on low growing plants including dock.