Week 25: Hello Essex & Kestrels Fledge

My life is complete! Well, it is in terms of finding all 3 species of little orange Skipper butterflies on Box Moor Trust land. More than that, I can’t say.

My wanderings this week started with a quick visit on Monday morning to Dellfield. As soon as I opened the car door, I could hear young falcons calling. The first creature to come swooping past me as I entered the meadow was an adult Kestrel. I didn’t catch whether it was the male or female but it was heading for a noisy youngster located high up in the trees in Ryders (the field west of Dellfield). This is exactly the same area I’d seen a pair of Kestrels mating in early May so I guess springtime shenanigans were successful. Anyway, once food had been delivered, the fledgling took a short flight to a more exposed perch, giving me the chance to get a photograph, albeit a rather distant one. It and its fellow offspring (3 in total, I think) were constantly calling for food and attention. The universal plight of new parents!

The view across Dellfield towards Ryders. The line of trees, from left to right, runs along Ryders' border with Dellfield. The Kestrels were initially in the right corner: the trees you can see, if you look between the Oak and its neighbouring Scots Pine.

When it comes to photographing the Oak, I sometimes have an idea of what I’m after. Other times, it’s a case of responding to what’s in front of me. On Monday, it was the latter. Early on, I’d taken a few shots but none that satisfied. As I walked back down from visiting the pond on Preston Hill, the Oak was drenched in shadow and set against the wisps and puffs of a striking cloud formation. I quickly got into place and timed the shot to coincide with the Oak remaining in silhouette whilst the meadow in the background was released into the light. I love how clouds passing over the sun can create such fleeting drama on an otherwise static scene. Blink and you'll miss it.

Now to this week’s life completing experience (compensation perhaps for watching Federer nearly, nearly win...but actually lose in the final on Sunday). Tuesday, I plumped for Bovingdon Brickworks. Butterflies galore! And, within about 10 minutes of arriving, there in front of me, settled on a delicate pink flower, was an Essex Skipper butterfly (Thymelicus lineal) (ref last week's post). They emerge slightly later than Small Skippers (the end of June rather than mid June). Their inky black-tipped antennae being the clinching ID feature. You do have to be a little careful (apparently) as Small Skipper’s antennae can “show very dark brown undertips, whilst others have confusing amounts of black on top of their antennae”. The other quite noticeable feature, especially when comparing the photographs, is the shape of the forewing. The Essex Skipper’s appears to be squarer. The colour also seems to be brighter: a feature noted by Charles Smith but qualified later as perhaps being a result of the later emergence and therefore fresher state of specimens. However, my photographs were taken 9 days apart so perhaps the Essex Skipper truly is a brighter butterfly than the Small Skipper. For a more detailed comparison of Hertfordshire’s Skippers see this excellent webpage.

All 3 orange Skipper species, photographed on Box Moor Trust land

Finally, a few metres beyond the Skipper, I found a Creeping Thistle hosting 5 Common Red Soldier Beetles (Rhagonycha fulva). “Adults feed on aphids, and also eat pollen and nectar. Larvae prey on ground-dwelling invertebrates, such as slugs and snails, and live at the base of long grasses. The adults spend much of their short, summer lives mating and can often be seen in pairs.” The literature doesn’t lie!

POST SCRIPT August 2016 

With time and experience, I am no longer convinced the Skipper photographed above and labelled as Essex Skipper is indeed an Essex Skipper. It could be but a view of the underside of the antenna would be conclusive and I didn't manage that, unfortunately.

Week 16: Not so Dandy

As the yoof would say, I proper overdid it last week. Bouncing bunnies, rare butterflies and merry mothing adventures were a Lepidoptera too far. I’ve had to scale back a little this week. Evidently, the curative powers of nature take a while to kick in. So, this post is all about Dellfield, or at least, the bits of it I could identify and photograph yesterday. In fact, in a glass half full kind of a way, scaling back has the advantage of forcing you to look more carefully and patiently at what you can access, and put that which is off limits to one side.

Ever since capturing the Oak, with the mass of yellow dandelions in the foreground, I have been waiting for the right weather and the seed heads to develop, in order to repeat the shot. Unfortunately, Monday night’s heavy rain drenched and destroyed many of the fluffy, white orbs I’d hoped to include. C’est la vie. You can only photograph what’s there. It’ll be orchid season soon anyway… So, we have, the not so dandy Dandelions...

If you’d like to see how a dandelion goes from flower to seed head, take a look at this great, time lapsed video clip.

Pretty pink/purple Bush Vetch (Vicia sepium) is coming into flower now and is dotted all around Dellfield. On the common nettles, Small Tortoiseshell larvae (caterpillars) are emerging from their communal webs, built after hatching (left). They will continue to construct these webs as and when they move on, before, finally, individually finding a suitable site for pupation. By the middle of the summer, metamorphosis complete, the new butterflies will start to free themselves from their chrysalides.


My search for life (of a non-alien form) kept me glued to the stinging nettles (where else?!) (ouch). They are all around the fringes of Dellfield and are, as ever, teeming with invertebrates, including a couple of easily missed, day flying, Small Yellow Underwing moths (Panemeria tenebrata). According to Butterfly Conservation, they fly “actively in sunshine visiting flowers such as dandelion and buttercup.” Neither of the specimens I found had read the literature and were on Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) instead (below).

As I walked the west side of Dellfield, a male Blackcap kept me company with his scratchy song which was occasionally overlaid with the fluty melody of a Blackbird. Up in the trees, a pair of Kestrels were busy doing spring time things and overhead the resident pair of Buzzards were calling and soaring. In the midst of this, I came across a 14-spot Ladybird (Propylea 14-punctata). This is a native, british species and is about half the size of the more familiar 7-spot Ladybird (Coccinella 7-punctata). My photograph (right) won’t win any prizes but I was chuffed to capture the opening of the protective wing casings before lift off.

There are at least 2 pairs of Green Woodpeckers around Hay Wood. One pair was up in Barnfield yesterday. The male (nice red “moustache”) was stabbing the moist earth with his tough bill, trying to get at a food source. He will mainly feed on ants but he could have been after other insects. I just managed to photograph him before the pair of them flew to trees in Ryders. That superb yellow-green rump glowed in the brilliant sunshine. I'll keep my eyes peeled for baby 'peckers over the coming weeks.

Finally, a cautionary tale. Should you ever find yourself in a field of Spring flowers, about to crouch down to inspect a bee on a dandelion, make sure you check its wingman hasn’t landed on the back of your leg (almost just behind your knee, say). Wingman bee stung me, even through thick denim jeans, but it served its purpose. At the first “prickle”, I stood up quickly and the bee flew off, apparently not squished by my squatting on it. I was very relieved not to have caused inadvertent death and the bee sting is only mildly itchy now. All’s well that ends well.

Finally, finally, before I forget, Ben is hoping to run the moth traps again this evening at Box Moor. You’ll be able to catch up with the results on his blog, later this week.