Summer 2009 july1st Over to see a friend who lives near the canal at the top of Romney Marsh, a very hot sunny day.
My first sightings were a blue-tailed damselfly and a common darter which was a male the female being yellow. Then I spotted a pond skater, this insect walks on the surface of the water by the aid of dense pads of hairs on the underside of its feet and body, you can see here its pressing down on the water film by the shadow on the bottom.
I got a photo of a great tit and a young blue tit feeding at a bird feeder, the young blue tit is distinguished from an adult by the lack of a blue cap and its cheeks are yellow like the body.
I have included a shot of a typical dyke of which there are many on the marsh, the track in the water weeds is caused by swans.
There were lots of ox-eye daisies in a field nearby which is left for wild flowers to grow.
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5th I was at West Hythe and taking photos of the surface of the canal from as low as I could and when I looked at the results I could see that there was a lace boarder moth on a small lily pad looking a bit precarious!
Here is a pretty sight a male holly blue butterfly feeding on bramble flowers and not far away a gatekeeper butterfly.
The wild cherries are ripening up in this sunny weather, lovely to see the splash of red in all the green.
Can you identify this bird ? [Second row far right] Try before you look! It was singing at the top of a tree over the path and it was proving difficult to get a clear view of it to be able to photograph it, but managed it eventually but as you can see there was only a small gap in the branches!
I spotted this little beetle on a hedge lily, its a oedemera nobilis sorry no English name! This is a male the female doesn't have the bulbous legs, the creature is only eight to ten millimeters long and feeds on pollen.
Also took a few photos of a moorhen preening on the opposite bank.
On the way back I saw a large number of jackdaws and rooks in a ripening cereal field and had to stop and photograph them.
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10th West Hythe, As soon as I had parked the car I saw this song thrush tackling a snail it had found, it kept repeatedly hitting it on the ground until the shell was off before eating it. Quite often a song thrush will have a particular stone on which to do this and is know as a thrushes anvil.
I also caught sight of this small snail that had perched itself on the end of this grass for the day, I don't know if it would be able to stay on if the wind got up!
Further along in the undergrowth I came across a common darter [female] and a gatekeeper and a red admiral butterfly.
When I got to the weir I looked further up the canal and spotted a female tufted duck with ducklings. This was a surprise as I had not seen any signs of tufted ducks here. The canal at this point had lots of yellow lilies growing on both sides, I don't think I have seen so many like this in the past.
I turned around here and walked back in the Hythe direction and crossed over the road and continued along by the canal. It is lovely along here, few houses and some times a solitary fisherman.
Came across a male common darter and you can see the difference from the female I mentioned earlier.
The blackthorn's sloes are ripening and adding colour to the canal banks.
On the way back I was lucky to get a close view of a willow warbler flitting about in the bushes on the bank by the path and a good view of a lovely peacock butterfly on the brambles, here accompanied by a honey bee.
Can you identify this bird? [ Bottom right ] Try before you look! There was a pair of them and they flew across the canal and landed in a tree by the path. Unfortunately before the camera could focus on them they flew off but I got what you can see.
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12th The chicks have hatched out in the courtyard in my house, there only seems to be two and the parent birds are busy feeding them non stop!
Made a visit to Brockhill Country Park which is on my door step not much happening around the lake but once I got out by the fields there much more going on by the path.
There was plenty of insect life on the undergrowth and bushes, comma butterflies were very conspicuous with their striking chestnut brown colouring and you could see the comma on the underside of the wing. The other butterflies on the brambles were peacock, gatekeeper, meadow brown, painted lady and large white apart from bumble bees, bees, common darter and a brief visit by a hornet which I wish had stopped long enough to photograph.
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While I was watching all this I kept hearing a yipp, yipp, yipp sound coming from the top of the field, at first I couldn't see where it was coming from but then I spotted a female kestrel flying away and when I looked at a large log lying further to the top of the field I could see two young kestrels sitting on top ! This was a first for me, I had seen young sparrow hawks being fed in the air and young peregrine falcons on the Dover cliffs but not young kestrels.
In the field I came across a small skipper looking charming in its ochre wings and further along there was a patch of thistles that was proving very popular to a small flock of goldfinches that were feeding on them. These are such attractive birds not just in their plumage but song as well and a flock of goldfinches is called a 'Charm' a very fitting term.
Amongst the bushes by the path I came across a hazel bush and there were already hazel nuts nestling under the leaves, they wont be there long once the squirrels and other nut loving creatures find them!
That turned out to be a rewarding visit.
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13th West Hythe a short visit but worth it. Saw four types of butterflies, large skipper which was a female, peacock and a gatekeeper together and a marbled white, the first three were feeding on bramble flowers which is very popular with a variety of insects.
The canal was full of fish of various types and sizes, this one here is a roach.
Bulrushes are starting to appear along the bank and young moorhens still with their brothers and sisters are fending for themselves. A mallard with a late batch of chicks and an early blackberry.
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14th Lovely day so went over to Russel Gardens Dover. My first sight was a charming one of a mallard with its chick traversing a thick weedy area on the lake, the chick following in its mothers wake. Also a coot chick nearly full grown with its parent on the old nest.
By the side of the lake the vegetation is quite thick consisting of mainly reeds but also other varieties like saw-wart shown here with a hoverfly.
The mute swans cygnets are growing fast nearly full grown now. The little grebe was there, forever diving and swimming under the water for quite some distance looking for food. I managed to get a shot of it just as it dived, it was difficult to predict where it would come up so you would have to scan the surface in anticipation. Another charming sight was of a moorhen feeding its pair of chicks quite close to the bank.
From here I travelled on to St Margrets Bay where I knew there was a pond in the 'Pine Gardens' where there may be emperor dragonfies.
I wasn't disappointed, there flying up and down was a beautiful male emperor dragonfly. I tried to catch it in flight but not with much success. I stood by the pond for nearly an hour watching it, trying to see if there was a pattern to its behaviour. After a while I could see that it would rest briefly on some plants at one end of the pond so I moved up that end but then lost it when a female appeared at the pond and he went chasing after her but he came back. Then my efforts were rewarded with the photo shown here!
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From the 'Pine Gardens' I went down to the bay itself, the white chalk cliffs flank the beach and below them the beach consists of flint pebbles. These pebbles are formed from the flint which have been eroded out of the cliffs, the flint can be seen in rows on the cliff face which can provide nesting ledges for kittiwakes.
The rock pools on the beach are fairly easy to get to and provide a fascinating into coastal sea life. Common limpets are easy to find, stuck to the rock as they are. Although they look rigid and unmovable they do in fact move around to feed, not going any further than about a meter from their base. Usually at night when its damp or at high tide. The limpet clings to the rock with its foot used like a sucker which is very strong as you will find if you try and remove one.
The other obvious part to rock pools is the seaweed which covers everything, in this photo you can see in the center bladder wrack and with it toothed wrack. One creature I found a few of were sea anemones, the pair here are closed up because they are out of the water. When they open they have lots of stinging tentacles for catching small prey, which is then passed down whole through the mouth into the body to be digested.
Another creature is the winkle which looks a bit snail like and moves around in the same manner and here you can see trails left by one on a pebble.
I was lucky to spot a fish in one pool having been left by the receding tide which after looking up when I got back turned out to be a tompot blenny. Also I caught sight of a small shore crab hiding in a crevice in a pool but it disappeared before I could get a photo of it.
Lastly I found a few small barnacles stuck to a large piece of flint, these are the same type as you hear of covering the bottom of boats.
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From the bay I travelled up to the top of the cliffs to see what might be around, parked in the car park by the little cafe there and walked off along the cliff path.
Most of what I saw were the insect and plant life, except for the herring gulls nest. The sun was still shining on the chicks and they were looking a bit hot and dozy. The insect life I came across consisted of first a saxifrage covered with cardinal beetles, a six-spot burnet, a bombus lapidarius on a great knapweed and a bombus terrestris bumble bee. Flowers were field scabious, bindweed and wild marjoran.
This was one of the most rewarding days out for a long time.
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19th and over at the RSPB Reserve Dungeness on a moth hunt day. The people at the reserve had put out moth traps overnight and we were all there to see what had visited the traps. You can see here what the trap looked like, the base had egg boxes inside for the moths to land on and in the middle was a light to attract them with the transparent lid with the hole placed on top. There were quite a few moths inside this one but another not far away had much fewer. The moths photographed here are: the drinker, peppered moth, poplar hawkmoth, garden tiger moth and a common emerald.
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28th back at Russel Gardens for a short visit, had a nice view of a silver y moth you can sometimes see these flying during the day. You can clearly see the length of the tongue as it feeds at the flower. This moth gets its name from the 'y' shape on the fore-wing.
While I was there some one drew my attention to the fact that there were some herons further up the lake.I walked further up and saw three young herons on a tree on the other side, I watched them for a while but they just seemed content to sit there so I moved on.
The other sightings were of insects, hover-fly on a creeping thistle, see if you can identify the butterfly below, before looking! black mining bee [these nest in the ground] and a Norwegian wasp this one is a female, more black than the worker and male. These wasps make their nests in trees and bushes.
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