A varied month I’ve had

What an amazing and varied month I’ve had for my wildlife notes for June. Having been on a short holiday in Devon and spending a few days in London I’ve managed to get some excellent wildlife images. I guess the image of a sanderling scurrying along the tide line at Dawlish Warren is my favourite close up, together with a wonderful curlew in flight. Static wildlife like the superb southern marsh orchids at Dawlish are easy to photograph in close up, but being so close to a ringed necked parakeet in St James’ Park was remarkable. They are now so common that they can be seen all over the capital and will readily come onto people’s hands for food. I was pleased to see a good colony of common blue butterflies on the same area of sand dunes at Dawlish as the orchids on this National Nature reserve, and also on the same visit photographing a very faded Painted lady butterfly indicating that it was an early migrant from Morocco, or possibly Spain or France. The first butterfly on the Legion meadow this spring was a beautiful comma. Whilst staying at Dawlish we visited the stream running through the town with its small herd of black swans, the emblem of the town. These were introduced many years ago, and they have been fortunate to keep a breeding group, despite the problems caused by many severe storms, with powerful and uncontrollable flood water rushing through the town. They were also strong enough from the seaward side to wash away the sea wall and the main south coast railway line. The adult pair currently have 4 young cygnets who turn from white to black in the first few months of life. They are born in winter, the same time as their compatriots in the southern hemisphere.

Locally we were delighted to see a pair of mute swans with 7 cygnets born around 20th May at the Walk Mill Pool. The adult pair include a pen, CJF1 ringed at Audlem in South Cheshire in 2016. I’m also delighted to report that a cuckoo was heard at Hockenhull for the first time for ten years, and a week or so ago I saw, heard and photographed a male cuckoo at Bickerton Hill. On another occasion I heard the loud distinctive gurgling call of the female quite close to the National Trust Car Park. A visit to Bickerton Hill especially the area around Maiden Castle Hill fort is really well worth a visit for anyone interested in wildlife. The management regime introduced by the National Trust is clearly working. Long horn, belted Galloway and other cattle are grazing the open hillsides, and hundreds of willow trees have been allowed to grow. This area has been transformed and amazing numbers of small migrant warblers can be heard. Willow warblers, chiff chaff, common whitethroats and black caps are everywhere, a really healthy sign. I’m sure I also heard and saw a number of pipits, song and mistle thrushes. An unusual sound in the village in May was a greenfinch, whilst we have been visited regularly in Croft Close by a sparrow hawk, which can be seen in the pictures below.

A number of friends have reported seeing mandarin ducks on the reserve at Hockenhull, often flying in and around the poplar plantation in Spring. This was also the case this year, and we were delighted to see that a female mandarin with fourteen ducklings was caught on a Wildlife Camera trap on the Gowy at the end of May. These very attractive ducks were an introduced species to this country. They were kept and later escaped from wildlife collections, and are now pretty widespread across the UK. This was our first recorded hatching on the reserve. They are tree nesting ducks, and use nest holes often high up in tree trunks. This appears to be a sensible strategy to keep the ducklings safe from predators, but then image their surprise, when the ducklings are faced with an immediate fall from the nest hole to the ground, often a sheer drop of 20ft or so. They clearly are born to do that, but it does seem to be a cruel introduction to life out of the nest.