I was going to wait and see if the Spotted Flycatchers fledged and then write a post about them but I just couldn’t resist showing you a 30 second “taster” of what life is like in the nest at the moment.

Forgive me blogging-friend for I have sinned. It has been 40 days since my last blog. I seek forgiveness by giving you my “Top Six Bumbles” and promise to do many, many hours of penance in front of my computer in the coming months.

Buff Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) photographed June 2009

In fact, that’s one of the reasons I haven’t blogged; too busy looking at the wildlife to blog about it!

Anyway to make up for it (and because my friend Peter at Bishopthorpe Nature did a great blog post recently about Cuckoo Bumbles which has spurred me into action) here are my Top Six Bumbles to look out for in and around your own garden (all of them are common species and all but one was photographed this June):

In no particular order…

No 6 – The Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum)

Queens, workers & males all have one yellow stripe on the thorax and one on the abdomen (which is preceded by a black band) and an orange tail. The male has very distinctive yellow hairs on it’s face.  Small species (especially the workers). It’s face is as long as it is wide, and it has a short tongue. Colours can be very variable with some workers almost all black and some males with a second band of yellow on the thorax.

Easy to confuse with Bombus lapidarius. Resemblance to Bombus monticola.

Often found in gardens (great pollinators of soft-fruit flowers), this bumble can have two generations in the South. Queens are often one of the earliest to be seen in Spring. Males often produced in May.

Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) male photographed June 2009

No 5 – the Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum)

Queens, workers and males are practically all pale ginger-brown colour, with a few patches of black hairs on the abdomen (sometimes there are a lot of these). There are distinct black hairs in with the ginger-brown ones on the thorax. Male has ginger-brown facial hairs. Medium sized. Abdomen is almost round (but seems more ovoid in males). Face longer than wide, long tongue. Colours don’t tend to vary too much but they do fade to an almost grey-brown colour.

Easy to confuse with Bombus humilis and Bombus muscorum.

Another regular garden visitor. Queens searching for suitable nesting sites are often the first carder-bees to be seen (March in the South).

Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum) photographed June 2009

No 4 – the White Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lucorum)

Queens, workers and some males have a single yellow band at the front of the thorax and one on the abdomen (which is preceded by a black band). White tail. Males have yellow facial hair (which is a good clear yellow – not muddy). Large, robust species – although workers are much smaller. Face as long as wide, tongue very short. There is some variation. Some males have an additional yellow band at the rear of the thorax and no black band at the beginning of the abdomen.

Workers are hard to distinguish from Bombus terrestris, although queens & males should be easy to ID.

Regularly seen in gardens. Nest searching queens sometimes seen in February in South (and may be starting to nest in Autumn in some mild areas).

White Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lucorum) male photographed June 2009

No. 3 – the Buff Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)

Queens, workers and males have a single yellow stripe on front of thorax, one on the abdomen (preceded by a black band). Tail is a dirty-white to buff colour, occasionally orange-red. Facial hair on male is black. Very large, robust species – workers are much smaller. Face as long as wide, tongue very short. Very little variation in colour in the UK-native population.

Workers easy to mix up with Bombus lucorum – although males & queens should be easy to ID.

A regular garden species. Not found in the far north & scarse in Scotland (although it’s moving north!). Nest-searching queens seen in February in the South (and sometimes in the winter).

Buff Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) photographed June 2009

No 2 – The Red Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius)

Queens and workers have black head, thorax and abdomen with orange-red tail (less than 50% of total length of abdomen). Abdomen is longer than wide. Males have yellow facial hair, yellow bands on thorax, abdomen is black and orange-red tail. A large robust species – although workers are much smaller. Face as long as wide, tongue mid-length. The yellow colouring in the males varies – some have very little yellow banding. Very occasionally females have faint yellow banding.

Can be mistaken for Bombus ruderarius, Bombus lapidarius, Bombus rupestris – but if you look closely and compare you should be able to find differences.

Widespread and found in many habitats. Spreading into north-east Scotland.

Red Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) male photographed June 2009

No 1 – The Garden Bumblebee (Bombus hortorum)

Queens, workers and males have two yellow bands on the thorax and one at the base of the abdomen. Tail is white. Males have black facial hair. A large, robust species – although early workers may be much smaller. Face is very much longer than wide, tongue is very long (which it unfolds as it approaches a flower to drink nectar). Some individuals can be very dark (almost black), but the tail usually remains white.

Similar to Bombus ruderatus (rare) and Bombus jonellus.

Widespread species found in gardens. However, it may not be frequent in some areas.

Garden Bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) photographed Sept 08

and the extra one? Well that’s a Cuckoo…. what’s a cuckoo? well it takes over the nest of another bumblebee – dirty rotter!

The Vestal Bumblebee (Bombus vestalis)

This species takes over the nest of the Buff Tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris).

Females & males have one dark-yellow stripe on the thorax, none on the abdomen. Tail is white, with clear dark-yellow side patches at the junction with the black. Wings usually dark-tinged. Male has black facial hairs. No workers. Large robust species. Face as long as wide. Tongue short.  This species is very variable in colour (especially males). Sometimes additional faint yellow band at base of abdomen.

Similar to Bombus bohemicus, but the yellow is lighter and side patches smaller in B. bohemicus.

Widespread. Found in many gardens in England & Wales. In South it’s the most commonly found cuckoo bee. Not known in Ireland and only recently recorded in Scotland. Host-searching females may be out in late March. New females & males may be seen resting on flowers from June to August.

Vestal Bumblebee (Bombus vestalis) photographed June 2009

Extra Information

Just in case you think I’ve turned into some kind of “bee guru” (I haven’t!), all the information in this post came from the invaluable little book “Field Guide to the Bumblebees of Great Britain & Ireland” by Mike Edwards and Martin Jenner (which doesn’t seem to be on Amazon at the moment, but is worth picking up if you can).

Another great source of information is BWARS and the Natural History Museum Bumblebee Reference Guide.

Bumblebees (and bees in general) are great insects to watch (and learn about).  I’ll try to do a general “bee” post later in the year.

I hope you find this post useful and have fun looking for (and photographing) your local Bumbles – I’d love to hear about any that you find!

When I woke up on Saturday morning, the morning of the Open Day, the sun was shining – but not for long. Soon the rain was pouring down and the wind was blowing like there was no tomorrow. “Better dig out my waterproofs” I thought

The start of our walk – Steve tells people about the rusty reptile tins

By the time I got to the Urban Wildlife Centre at 10.30am the sun was shining again. It was going to be one of those days!

I was based in the Education Room with the “wildlife”. However due to the rubbish cold weather no one had been able to find any reptiles warming themselves under the tins nearby and the only small mammals were a pair of baby woodmice.

A snake of people walk out onto the heath

What we did have were the saviors! Two glorious buckets of water… one with pond water and the other with river water from the River Piddle (I love that name).  With pond dipping nets and some white trays Emma (one of our willing helpers) was able to find some great pond and river creatures. Mayfly nymphs, worms, snails, caddisfly larva – you name it we had it in those two buckets. We even managed to find three Newts!

With the help of a nifty bit of technology we were able to put a small drop of water on a dish and project some of these wonderful little creatures onto the screen of a computer at 200x magnification. Mosquitoes may be a pain in the butt (literally) in a summer evening but projected onto a screen, a mosquito larva is mesmerising.

Steve Davis telling us about the Smooth Snake

With live images from our Lorton Meadow kestrel nestbox and a local great-tit nest box projected onto the big screen at the end of the room, and lots of colouring in and activities for kids, it wasn’t long before we had some customers and the room soon filled with the sound of oooh’s and ahhhh’s, laughing and chatting.

At midday I was asked to help on one of the guided walks on Upton Heath (following up at the back to pick up the waifs and strays). The idea was to give people a better understanding of the heath and the habitats and wildlife it supports. It’s such a misunderstood place – and many people just think of it as “scruffy, untidy land”.

Steve Davis with the Smooth snake

So off we went with our “snake” of people, up onto the heath in strong wind but occasional sunshine. Steve, the leader, stopped along the way to give interesting heathy info, and he even found TWO smooth snakes(warming themselves under rusty tins placed strategically around the walk). These are our rarest snakes in the UK, so it was a real treat for people to see them. Only Steve could touch them (as you need to be licensed to handle them) but some people got pretty close views!

Eventually it was time to head back to the Centre, stuff ourselves with burgers and sausages from the BBQ, clear up and head for home. A great day. 100+ people through the door and hopefully a few more people going away with a better understanding of the heath, their local wildlife and the role that Dorset Wildlife Trust plays in helping to protect it.

Time to put my feet up!

It’s Open Day at the Dorset Wildlife Trust, Urban Wildlife Centre in Corfe Mullen on Saturday 16 May! Come along if you live nearby. As a fully-signed up volunteer (I have the t-shirt as you can see below!) muggins here will be in the Education Room showing people small mammals and reptiles (and trying not to be bitten by them while in front of small children), there will be a BBQ and guided walks on the beautiful Upton Heath. Lets hope the sun shines and we have a great day. I will try to get some pictures!

What does a pair of common kestrel, an English nature reserve, a wildlife webcam and a website have in common?

A male Common Kestrel – photo courtesy of Wikipedia

I don’t usually blog about “work” but to be honest what I’ve been working on this week has been a complete pleasure.  I help to look after the Dorset Wildlife Trust website and one of our projects this year has been to set up a live wildlife webcam for a breeding pair of kestrels.

This pair have been using the same nestbox at Lorton Meadows Nature Reserve for the past three years. They were filmed last year (and there was a computer showing live video in the reserve information centre) but this year we are going global!

It’s taken quite a bit of jiggery-pockery but it’s now working. The webcam page includes not only the live wildlife webcam but lots of information about the kestrels, a video from last year, photographs, info on Lorton Meadows, a commenting facility (linked to Twitter), email a friend, even the local weather forecast!

Take a look at it here: Kestrel Live Webcam

Please let me know what you think. I’m always open to comments and questions.  We will also be adding other webcam links and more pictures and video as the weeks go on.

So far the male has made a scrape for the female to lay her eggs, and is busy bringing her lots of mice and voles. She is expected to start laying any day now.

Happy watching!

This post shouldn’t really be on Urban Extension (it should be on FloridaWildlife) but I wanted to upload a recording and I can only do that on ere…

Every morning and evening this lovely little mockingbird has been perched on the telephone wires outside our Conch Key house singing his little heart out.

I think it’s mating time, as he seems determined to attract THE best mate on the island (and keep out all intruders). He seems to be doing a good job!

Here is a 30 second audio clip of him singing this evening. You can just hear him through the wind and palm leaves clattering (turn up your sound). A truly beautiful song which is forever changing and keeps me spellbound.

If you can’t get the above thingy to work, click on the link below (and it should open another window with an audio player). I hope you can hear him. I want to take him back to my Dorset garden.

Mockingbird Song

You’ve seen the osprey nests in Scotland (via webcam?) now see them on my KeysWildlife Blog by clicking the following:  Florida Keys Ospreys

If you’d like to have a laugh at my expense and read about how I walked over 10 miles in 80 degree heat and got stung by an unknown “thingy” and didn’t arrive back home until 8pm then click here.

All the better to see you with…   No, I’m not finding new species of dragonfly in the Dorset countryside, I’m actually thousands of miles away on a small island called Conch Key. I’ve got the Atlantic out of the sitting room window and the Gulf of Mexico out of the bedroom and I’m about as far south as you can get in the good ole US of A. To find out what wildlife I’ve been pestering click on this Florida Keys Wildlife blog link for the next 3 weeks. Hope to see you soon… Jane

It was a truly beautiful spring day today in Dorset. Perfect blue sky and lots of warm sunshine.

I think the insects appreciated the warmth as much as I did and in-between bouts of gardening, housework and washing I chased them round the garden with my camera.

Green Veined Butterfly, originally uploaded by Nature Watch Corfe Mullen.

Some interesting first’s for me today.

My first Green Veined butterfly (ever) and my first Comma butterfly of the year (always a pleasure to see).

Ever wondered why they are called a Comma? Just look at the closed wings below and look for the funny white comma on the wing…

A Speckled Wood was very accommodating and stayed still long enough for me to get a half decent photograph while she warmed up at 9am.

A Bombus pascuorum (Brown bumblebee) was rooting around in the grass and the leaves. Glowing with it’s ginger hairdo.

An Osmia rufa (male) or Red Mason Bee to you and me.  A pretty little bee feeding on the newly opened bluebells (that seem to have turned a bit purple this year!)

Lastly a Lasioglossum calceatum (or maybe albipes) or a Mining Bee to us mortals. This is a tiny bee no longer than 10mm. It managed to cover itself completely in pollen from this dandelion flower (yes, I have got dandelions… hasn’t everyone?).

I also saw a Andrena fulva (female) – Tawny Mining Bee and a Nomada sp probably N. fabriciana (another little bee) but the photos were pretty awful and were consigned to the “just for identification” category.

All in all a pretty great day.

PS. Thanks to Stuart Roberts at BWARS and everyone at WAB for their help with the ID’s of the bees. I’d never had known them!

Tulip, originally uploaded by Nature Watch Corfe Mullen.

OK this isn’t a native wildflower… but it is beautiful and to me it signifies Spring, bright sunny days, pollen and insects!

A couple of times recently I’ve driven over to Woodlands, a small hamlet between Wimborne and Cranborne, to survey the intriguingly named Remedy Oak for the Ancient Tree Hunt. I must admit it’s very easy to miss, blink and you’ve driven past, but get out of your car and walk around it and I promise you will not be disappointed.

From a distance it’s just another oak tree but as you get nearer you realise just how big it is. To give you some idea of scale my arms wouldn’t even stretch a quarter of a way around this tree if I tried to hug it (which is something I frequency do to trees).

From the road it’s statuesque with a fetching Pisa-esque lean.

Go round to the side and you start to see it’s hidden secret. It’s hollow but not only hollow, half it’s trunk is completely missing.

Go round to the back and you are looking into the living, breathing heart of a giant oak. I measured it’s girth and at 1.15m from the ground it has a 6.42m girth (that’s about 19 feet 8 inches in old money) or just over 4 adult hugs!

So what’s its “royal” connection? Well legend has it that the Boy King, King Edward VI (1537-1553) who came to the throne at the age of 9, was supposed to have sat under the tree and “touched for Kings Evil”.

Kings Evil was a custom that started in medieval times whereby the King (of England or France) could touch people who had skin diseases (especially tuberculosis affecting the lymph nodes of the neck) and it was supposed to heal them. Hence the Remedy Oak. Monarchs were supposed to have received this power through direct decent from Edward the Confessor.

So, back to the tree. It’s held up now with two massive metal wires. Without them it would definitely fall onto the road. In the last few years the local Council has also planted a “Remedy Oak” son next to it.  You can see it in the picture above. So that when the time does come, there will be another oak to take it’s place.

Growing all around are Wood Anemones (a sign of an ancient wood) which carpet the ground with their white petals, along with bluebells, snowdrops, daffodils (not native!) and lesser celandine. I thought the wood anemones deserved a closer photo. What a beautiful little flower. I’ve never looked at them in detail before.

The tree itself is lined with mosses, ferns (below) and an invasive rhododendron has also crept in. I will let the Council know and see if they can carefully remove it. No way I’m climbing up there to get it!

So, is this my new “favourite” tree. It isn’t. It’s amazing and beautiful to look at but it’s also sad. It doesn’t have the safe, stability of Adams Oak, the first truly ancient tree I found.

The Remedy Oak is in it’s final years. It’s hanging on to life (literally) by two thin metal wires. I’m just glad I’ve had the opportunity to run my hands over it’s bark and look up into it’s towering branches.

I told you the roe deer got very close the other day when they visited the garden. This is a still from the short video I managed to get from the outside “badger and fox” camera. There’s a short bit of film as well, so that you can see his gorgeous antlers!

Only 15 seconds long and slightly slowed down – but just look at those velvet antlers on the vid below!

I spent most of Friday trying to find out what was happening about the baited badger sett in my previous post.  I “badgered” the police and the council and I eventually got Natural England involved and sent them one of my photos.

They found out that the bait has been put down by a local Ecological Consultant trying to work out if the artificial sett was being used. The blue pellet that I picked up and crushed must have been a very old “plastic” pellet. They have been baiting the sett for many, many months and the pellets eventually degrade and crumble (which makes sense as you wouldn’t want plastic pellets all over the place).  They are thinking of building another artificial sett on the other side of the road…. as someone is having problems with badgers digging in their garden.

So thank goodness it wasn’t poison. I’m really, really pleased. Apparently the consultant shouldn’t have been using blue pellets (he should have used green or yellow) because blue are so easy to confuse with slug pellets! Apparently I even had the Natural England experts confused and the guy I spoke to said it had been a good learning exercise for all of them. No one had realised that the plastic pellets degrade quite so well! I can relax now.

A friend and I found an artificial badger sett a couple of days ago. We are really worried that it has been poisoned.

Peanuts, Oats and bright blue Poison

A few days ago a friend and I  were asked to check out a “wildlife corridor” on a housing estate about 10 miles away. When it’s known that a new housing development will make it more difficult for an animal (especially a badger) to get to it’s feeding grounds from it’s sett, some forward thinking planners include a “wildlife corridor” through the estate.

The corridor we went to look at was built in about 2000 and was a path enclosed by 6ft fence panels.  Pretty  impossible for us to see if any animals were using it (as it was at the bottom of the gardens – over the fence!) so we went in search of other “signs” around the estate (regularly used animal pathways, dung-pits, snuffle holes, hair where they had gone under fences.. that sort of thing).

One of the recently digg out badger sett holes

Wandering round the estate we found very few signs of animals until we got to the estate entrance. Where some grass had grown tall we could see a couple of animal paths which looked like badger leading from the road into the ditch. So then we switched our attention to the piece of rough ground on the other side of the road. Planted with trees and shrubs it was hard to penetrate but we followed one of the animal pathways and low and behold it brought us to a badger sett deep in the undergrowth.

I think we both got a bad feeling when we saw it. It was obviously an artificial sett but there were signs of at least three natural holes by the side of the plastic tube-holes. I’ve since found out that the council built this sett. A new council building was built on the site of a badger sett across the road and there was a “need for badgers to be moved to a new sett”. If only it was that simple.

Another of the holes

The digging was quite recent and the soil was damp and loose.  What was also recent was the food that had been left in at least six places in front of the holes. Peanuts covered in something sweet and sticky, oats and small bright blue pellets.  The food wasn’t indiscriminately scattered it was carefully placed under flat rocks (that badgers could easily move).

Someone knew exactly what they were doing and had purposefully baited the sett.  The blue pellets smelt of candy-floss, but we have no idea what they are. Have another look at the picture below.

We left the sett and drove to my friends house nearby where I used her phone to call the Police. Could someone be trying to poison them? Were the badgers digging up their garden? Were they afraid the badgers had TB?

The Police visited the site (that day) and said they thought it was poison, and handed it over to the authorities to clear it up. Yesterday my car broke down and I couldn’t visit the sett but apparently last night it still hadn’t been removed. Today I will phone the police again and tell them that I’m going to clear it up myself (armed with plastic gloves and a mask!). I can’t bear the thought of other badgers (or any other wildlife – including kids!) eating the it and possibly being poisoned. Then over the next few months we will visit the site regularly to see if there are any signs of “live” badgers.

The investigations continue….

And I have a very posh solid glass, engraved obilisky-thing to prove it!

Receiving my award from John Raymond, The High Sheriff of Dorset (and Trustee of Dorset Wildlife Trust) and Cllr Ray Dudman

Those deer definitely brought me luck.

I’m off to the Pride of East Dorset Awards! Completely out of the blue I found myself nominated in the Green and Glorious category “rewarding a person or group responsible for helping improve the environment of their community”. So in less than two hours I will either be giving my best Gwyneth Paltrow-esque acceptance speech, or I will be looking at the winner with daggers in my eyes (only kidding!).

Two gorgeous deer were in the garden this morning. They got so close to the sitting-room window that if it had been open I could have lent forward and touched them. In fact Andrew had to bang on the window as one of them was trying to eat a complete azalea bush. It looked at him with sleepy bambi eyes (the deer that is, not Andrew) and then wandered off to have a munch on some tasty camellia flowers! Who said wildlife is scared of humans.

Hopefully they will bring me luck tonight…

For years starlings have been roosting just down the road from my house in a large clump of bamboo during the winter. It’s in the front garden of a block of flats in a busy residential road. If  you happen to walk past at dusk you will see a couple of hundred starlings gathering in the sky. However, I should really say “could see” because in January (between our two coldest bits of weather) it was cut down. I was so angry and upset that it’s taken me until now to tell their story.

The brown bit (next to the telegraph pole) is where the bamboo used to stand

Starlings can feed up to 10 miles away from their roost during the day but at dusk the family group will always return to the safety and warmth of their roost. As it starts to get darker the numbers increase and what looks like a giant swarm of bees dances around in the sky before plunging into their roost like little torpedos.

Luckily on the 12 of January I’d taken my camera and filmed the starlings as they came in to roost. The film is 4 mins long (longer than my normal films – sorry) and shows the shape-shifting starlings zooming around above the houses. The sound track is actually the sound of them in the roost. I placed my camera near to the roost and walked a few steps back – but I thought it was an apt backing track for the film!

So why did it happen? why was the roost cut down? and why was it done in such a cold patch of weather? Well I’ve heard from another resident that the next door neighbour wasn’t a fan of the starlings and had asked that they be “moved on” because they were noisy and dirty. They didn’t seem to make a lot of mess as they came in (but maybe I’m wrong) and yes they were noisy for a few minutes when they arrived, but that soon died down to total silence. However the timing of the bamboo being cut does seem to show a real lack of understands of how fine a line these birds are walking at this time of year – if they had only left it until the warmer weather came (mid-March) the birds would have found it a lot easier to survive, instead of being left in sub-zero temperatures with no home!

I rang the RSPB to ask their advice (this was before the roost was destroyed) and contacted Dorset Wildlife Trust. Both told me that although starlings (and all birds) and their nest sites are protected, their roosts aren’t. Both organisations were sorry that they couldn’t help more. However, this seems to suggest that if you want to make hundreds of starlings homeless at the coldest time of the year… go ahead… you aren’t breaking the law. It seems mad to me. Starling numbers have dropped by a massive 66% since the 1970’s and they are now a “red list species” but when they come into conflict with man (or woman) – then they must go… with no thought to their welfare.

I feel frustrated and angry that I couldn’t protect wildlife that was practically on my doorstep but if this post is read by just ONE person who’s thinking of cutting a roost down, then maybe, just maybe it will have done some good.