Wildlife Wandering - 13th to 26th July, 2020

Note that the title of this blog post has 'Wandering' in the singular. I only managed one excursion in the whole fortnight and that was on 17th July!

Friday, 17th July

Earlier in the month, I was delighted to get an invitation from Forestry England's National Forest Community Ranger to accompany her to a site adjacent to the original Sence Valley Park where Forestry England has reclaimed a large area of land over the winter of 2019/2020, planting trees and creating some ponds. The objective of the visit was for me to check whether I was interested in helping survey and monitor for odonata presence.

The day of this initial visit had been wet and windy with absolutely no expectation of seeing anything, but was extremely useful in getting to know the lie of the land and confirm that there was huge potential. I was, to say the least, more than a little interested in becoming involved. I was then duly issued with a letter of authority to enter the area which had no public access.

This resulted in me making a return visit on Friday 17th July. The weather was very warm, but a little breezy and with intermittent clouds - not ideal, but adequate.

The first pond that I reached was one that is currently almost totally bereft of vegetation, but I did see a male and a female Emperor dragonfly,  with the pair starting to couple-up in flight and disappearing before I departed. There were three Black-tailed Skimmers (2 x male, 1 x female) round this pond, and one pair took to mating in flight as is the norm with this species.

The Black-tailed Skimmers were back to their usual habit of settling on the ground - photographically unhelpful !

Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) (male) - Sence Valley

There were also three Common Blue Damselfly at this pond (2 x male, 1 x female).

I then moved onto the largest pond, which had somewhat more vegetation. Here, there was more action with a similar mix of species (Emperor x 4, Common Blue Damselfly x 10-15, Black-tailed Skimmer x 4),  plus Blue-tailed Damselfly x 2.

I took quite quite a few photos here, but not as many as I would have liked as I spent probably a total of an hour trying to get shots of an Emperor in flight.

Common Blue Damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) (male) - Sence Valley

Emperor (Anax imperator) (female - ovipositing) - Sence Valley

Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans) (male) - Sence Valley

At one point, a female Black-tailed Skimmer arrived and started ovipositing. This species does this by zooming around, dipping the rear of their abdomen into the water - note the ripples from the last dip.

Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) (female - ovipositing) - Sence Valley

For part of the time she was being guarded by the male - sorry for the rubbish photo!

Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) (male + female) - Sence Valley

From here, I moved on to a third pond, nearer the boundary fence. Here I found Black-tailed Skimmer x 1, Emperor x 2, Common Blue Damselfly x 2, and Blue-tailed Damselfly x 1.

Because it had been dry and sunny for a while, I'd gone to the site wearing shoes. However, at this third pond, one of the two Emperors was in great difficulty, having got itself stuck in the algae slime that was abundant on the pond. To rescue it I had to wade into the pond and get wet feet and legs. I managed to remove most of the slime from its body and wings, as can be seen in the second shot below, and it managed to fly away - albeit, somewhat unsteadily!

Emperor (Anax imperator) (male) - Sence Valley

This algae is a problem with these ponds, and I'm told it is mainly due to farmland fertilizer run-off. It was not a problem, however for something as light as a damselfly.

Common Blue Damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) (male) - Sence Valley

I returned to the first pond, and eventually managed a poor shot of a distant Emperor in flight, plus some more shots of a 'grounded' Black-tailed Skimmer.

Emperor (Anax imperator) (male) - Sence Valley

Black-tailed Skimmer (Orthetrum cancellatum) (male) - Sence Valley

Close to the ponds, but outside the boundary fence, is the River Sence (more of a small brook really!) and another pond that was intended to be a scrape. However, to get to these, I had to walk back to the gate at the other end of the site, and then return on the other side of the perimeter fence.

Access to view the River Sence was largely blocked by dense vegetation but in one gap I was able to view the far bank of the stream where I saw three Banded Demoiselle. I managed to get distant shots of two of them and was glad I'd got the 50-500 lens on the camera.

Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) (female) - Sence Valley

Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) (male) - Sence Valley

I then moved on to the scrape, where I was delighted to find my first Broad-bodied Chaser for the year!

Broad-bodied Chaser (Libellula depressa) (male) - Sence Valley

A second male Broad-bodied chaser arrived and a male Black-tailed Skimmer, both of which had skirmishes with the original chaser. Two Emperors were present for a while too, with the female ovipositing.

Emperor (Anax imperator) (female - ovipositing) - Sence Valley

It was now time to call it a day. It had been an interesting session, and I am greatly looking forward to seeing how this part of the Sence Valley Park develops. I'm hoping for good weather and a return in this coming week.

Postscript:

I have received the following information from the Community Ranger which will, I hope, give you some idea of the scale and scope of this new area:-

There are I think 17 species of tree planted at Sence Valley. Around the new ponds is primarily Aspen, there is also scots pine and sessile oak in the fenced area. In the wider field there is more oak (of both native type) plus red oak, birch, hazel, black poplar, hornbeam, wild service tree, oriental spruce, Japanese red cedar, western red cedar and Douglas fir. In the other field we have some of the same species as above plus a large area of wild cherry, small leaved lime, sweet chestnut and an area of black thorn and hawthorn scrub.

We have also created four new ponds/scrapes, a new orchard of local heritage apples and seeded open areas with wildflowers. We attempted to create a big area of winter seed mix for birds but this didn't work too well this year. We also have plans to create some scrapes and meander on the brook.

The total area is 102 acres (48 ha) of which around 33ha has been planted. We planted over 100,000 trees.

Blogger has got a new user interface, and I'm stuggling with it a little. Sadly, it gives me less control over how images appear in the blog. I used to manipulate the image files so that they were exactly the right size to fit the blog layout, and publish them at 'full size' so that Blogger didn't need to mess with them and spoil the images. It seems that 'full size' is now not an option. The image caption facility is also in a mess. If I put a caption in as size 'normal' it comes out as tiny text, but if I put it at the next size up, which is 'large' it comes out huge. If I then reduce the size to 'normal' again it comes out somewhere in the middle, but still larger than the rest of the text.  It's been a pain in the backside!

All things being equal, my next post will be in a week or so's time, and feature another fortnight in the garden.

Thank you for dropping by. Take good care and stay safe - - - Richard