Wow what a hot week! The weather here at Strumpshaw has been up to 31 degrees on Wednesday, with warm sunny spells to continue into the early part of the weekend at least.
The hot weather has certainly had a large affect on the wildlife here at the fen. The invertebrates have had yet another explosion and a very large number of beetles, hoverflies, butterflies and dragonflies have emerged with this warm spell. The trouble is that for a lot of the day it is just too hot for some of them, swallowtails are still on the wing, but are best seen earlier in the morning than we usually recommend. Likewise other butterfly species, which are not having a very good year at all are best seen in the mornings between 8am and 11am as the nectar in their food plants tends to dry up in this warm weather quite rapidly.
So what’s newly emerged since the last sightings blog? White admiral, large skipper and meadow brown butterflies are all very much more evident now as well as emerald damselfly, an early common darter and brown hawker.
Moths are certainly improving by the night. We have had a good number of sightings of red-tipped clearwing in the past two weeks, these odd looking moths have been best seen between the fen hide track and the river bank. Our moth morning on Saturday saw three very full traps containing 110 species, of these species at least 15 were notable for their scarity in Norfolk, a grass moth (crambus ulignosellus pictured above) was new for the reserve, while another was new for the 10km square! Its nice to know that on those hot horrible nights that we cant sleep that the moths are having a great time!
Norfolk hawker and swallowtails are still on the wing as mentioned above, this is unusual and with reports of swallowtails freshly emerging in the past week, it truly does look like it will be a slightly odd year for swallowtail viewing, certainly the more usual mid June cut off date has been passed.
Birds on the reserve have clearly reduced in activity during the hot spells of weather, however we still have regular sightings of bittern from all three hides, kingfishers have been seen all over the reserve, but just recently the perches in front of reception have been well used, offering great views of these little gems. A lot of the duck species are now in eclipse plumage, this means that the majority of males take on an odd female like plumage. This can prove very testing for many birdwatchers, I was possibly the only person on the reserve this week to get slightly excited about seeing an eclipse drake teal, this species is not usually seen in this plumage as they breed further north.
A grasshopper warbler was heard this morning at the top of sandy wall, this is most probably singing for a third brood now.
Hobby’s have been seen regularly hawking dragonflies over the past week, their movement in the air and ability to catch and eat dragonflies on the wing is always impressive.
Marsh harriers are still feeding their young, they are expected any day now, they are possibly running a little behind schedule as they have had a large variety of weather extremes to contend with this spring.
Given the weather conditions predicted over the next week, I would expect a similar week containing lots of insects, butterflies and dragonflies with regular marsh harrier, kingfisher and bittern sightings (all with a degree of patience of course). The meadow is also giving a good display of southern marsh and common spotted orchids at the moment, so it could be a good week for taking a walk in the meadow.