Outside the Parish

This has been another month where my wildlife sightings have come mainly from outside the Parish, but I hope you’ll find them interesting, and with me having some special time with my camera I have been able to get some excellent shots which you can see below.

Visits to the Pit this last month have been extraordinary with sightings of “big fish” mainly grass carp being seen each time. They can be spotted by v shaped arrows on the water, often with a fin showing, or even completely leaping out of the water presumably trying to take an insect. Sparrow hawks have been reported causing havoc in people’s gardens, and a couple of days ago I had a superb sighting of a beautiful kestrel coming out from the trees overlooking the Park & Ride at Boughton. Mute swans have proved to be productive at different sites I have visited, with the Walk Mill pair still having six healthy cygnets from their clutch of seven. The illustrations show them in the middle of July together with a pair with seven cygnets seen at Woburn Center Parcs, each pair showing the ability to control their line of cygnets when searching for food, or heading for safety. You’ll also see images of the Woburn pair preening, something that all birds do every day, but an important part of their growth, ensuring that their feathers are always clean, and waterproofed. Whilst filming at Woburn, I took several delightful images of a pair of dabchicks, and on one of the images you’ll see a parent bird feeding a chick hidden in the feathers of the other adult’s back. I also had excellent views of a very young song thrush, several red legged partridges, and a red kite.

I have been telling people I know all summer about my worries for the populations of swallows, house martins and swifts both locally and nationally. There are small groups of swallows and martins around on some of our farms, but traditional colonies are well down on numbers, even at the best breeding site for house martins in Chester, Eaton Hall Gardens & grounds. The nest site photograph shown is of three young house martins at Walk Mill. I have seen only the occasional few swifts in our area this season, usually hunting in ones and twos over Sainsbury’s roundabout. Friends in the village however tell me that they have seen good numbers on several occasions around the middle of Christleton, a traditional breeding site. They were late arriving this year, and will probably have left before you have read this article, but numbers are well down nationally. Every year a telegraph pole and wires at 23/25 Croft Close gets a gathering of swallows and martins around mid August, but this year we had gatherings in mid and late July, when up to 100birds were seen on both dates. I can only assume that they gather together from local breeding sites, because they can usually be seen when crops in the fields nearby have been cut and harvested, and there are lots of insects to feed on. What I find fascinating is that they only appear on this particular site in the Close, and that the event occurs every year.

Although butterflies are reported to be scarce nationally I have over 200 sightings recorded on my butterfly app. mainly recorded locally. So I think we have done reasonably well. I will report fully on my sightings later in the year, but buddleia shrubs have provided me with good numbers of peacock, red admiral, gatekeeper, heath brown, small tortoishell, and comma, whilst our lavender plants and holly hedge, have been a good food source for holly and common blue butterflies. Purple hairstreaks have been seen at Hockenhull, Burton Mere’s and other local sites, and I was recently able to photograph a beautiful burnet moth feeding on a blue scabious flower, very close to a clump of yellow ragwort, its caterpillars main food plant. Although ragwort is very plentiful, there have been fewer and fewer caterpillars seen in recent years, and I have spotted only two ragwort plants with caterpillars this season, none in the Parish.

August is one of the best months for seeing dragonflies and I will report next month on my sightings, but keep your eyes open for both southern and brown hawkers, as they are on the wing in the village as I write.