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Autumn Lady’s Tresses
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Autumn Lady’s Tresses
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Autumn Lady’s Tresses
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Autumn Lady’s Tresses
We visited a site today for Autumn Lady’s Tresses which again I am Grateful to Dave for the information.
I am not able to divulge the location of this site as I am sworn to secrecy!!
Sadly this will be the final Orchid species for this year as we have reached the end of the Orchid season now and Autumn Lady’s Tresses are the very last of the Orchids that will be in flower.
I have already started to make some plans for some new Orchid species that I haven’t seen and I have the dark, cold winter months to prepare for next year.
And my final tally for the year is 23 Species of which 14 new species this year.
I am going for a further 15 new Species next year!!
Continuing with my Orchid quest this year we visited Great Merrible Wood today for Violet Helleborine. This species was guaranteed today as we meet Dave Gray who has a very good knowledge of Orchids in VC55. Sure enough Dave took us to the exact area where all these Violet Helleborines grow and we counted at least 80 spikes. There were several other people doing exactly the same as us and one couple that I spoke to came from Durham to see these beautiful Orchids. It was the same as the last couple of times they are difficult to photograph as the light level in the wood is very poor, so its a case of doing the best you can. These Orchids are my 13th new species this year which takes me to 22 species in total.
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Violet Helleborine
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Violet Helleborine
Can you spare 15 minutes??
Butterfly Conservation is running a Butterfly Survey, all you need to do is spend 15 mins counting butterflies at any location in the UK.
They are trying to understand the current health of the UK’s Butterfly population, so with your 15 minute survey it will help them see the bigger picture!! There is a very simple Online sightings form to fill in.
The survey is running from 24th July until 1st August 2010 to find out more information click on the Butterfly Conservation link
After last weekends surprise of a single Hornet Moth we just to try again for another one. No sooner had we arrived at the Poplar Trees there was one male sat on the tree, then we found another 2 paired together. A search along the trees revealed 3 Pairs together and the single male so we were up to 7. I got the HOR Pheromone lure out and attracted another 2 males so that was 9, we had 5 on one tree and 4 on the next tree. The paired couples seemed to stay together for more than an hour before they parted. For a small insect they must have some Stamina!!.
So after watching the Hornet orgy we decided to do what we should be doing count as many different species in Ketton Quarry as we could within the 24hrs.
After a slow start to the day the afternoon really changed things as we had another surprise Six-belted Clearwings . We strolled up the North end of the reserve and I thought I would try the API Pheromone Lure out over a patch of Birds-foot Trefoil within 30 seconds we had 20+ Six-belted Clearwings. Some of them landed on Tim so he must smell really horny to Six-belted Clearwings, it was a fantastic experience to see them. I repeated the same thing at another patch of Birds-foot Trefoil 10 metres further and nothing came which I find really bizarre. The mothing during the night time turned out to be a greater success than we had thought with 3927 moths of 239 species with 15 traps. A fantastic result with 2 County firsts and there are still some moths to be identified, I will keep you posted when they have been identified. I still haven’t received all the lists from various people but I am fairly confident that the species list will be around the 400 zone.
 
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During our visit I estimate at least 30 present during a 200yd walk and very easily photographed. Also during this short walk we found Dark Bush Crickets in good numbers at least 3 different types of Shield Bug and 2 common Lizards close to the main path. Also in this area we saw Small Red-eyed Damselfly, White-legged Damselfly, Brown & Migrant Hawkers and several Ruddy Darters. After our successful trip to Alton Water we decided to get ourselves re-fuelled at Ronnie’s and head off to Abberton Reservoir. This turned out to be a major disappointment for us as they had drained the Reservoir to carry out some major work around the embankments and the birds were like little specs in the distance, it was worse than sea watching!!.
