A Kestrel Comes to Stay

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Falco tinnunculus, juvenile

Our next autumnal excitement arose from a series of long sightings of a young Kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, at the end of October. Whats the big deal? You might ask. After all, we see kestrels hovering in the paddocks and fields surrounding our home all the time. And have even enjoyed the odd fly by or spotted one perched up on our boundary telegraph pole looking out for prey.

But in eight years I’d never actually seen a Kestrel actually land on our property and I’d never ever observed one so close up before, especially not for so long at a time, and repeatedly over a period of several days.

We suspect he or she might be a juvenile ousted from the family home as they disperse widely in Autumn. Or else they could have been a young immigrant, newly arrived from Europe, as Kestrels living further north migrate southwards to overwinter where there is more food available.

We know its a young bird as juveniles have much more diffuse pale buff streaks on their undersides rather than the clear, dark distinctive spots on the plumage of adult birds. Young birds of prey are generally paler and and darken as they mature. The paler head could possibly mean its a male according to our detailed Collins “Birds of Prey” ID book by Benny Gensbol.

There are around 31 thousand summer pairs in Britain in the UK and sadly the species is listed as Amber nationally due to recent breeding and winter population and range declines according to BTO BirdFacts, but populations appear to be stable locally in Norfolk and are of least concern in Europe. One study found that populations improved with the addition of dedicated Kestrel breeding boxes so perhaps lack of suitable breeding sites is part of the problem.

We continued to enjoy prolonged, close sightings on the lawn, the pergola and, unfortunately for our small garden birds, the peanut feeder pole at the bottom of our garden for several days in a row, one time mantling on the ground and one time carrying prey to the pergola then feeding.

Perhaps the Kestrel lingered awhile because our wildlife friendly garden offers plenty of small rodents and birds, the Kestrel’s main diet source in Northern Europe, before he moved onwards on his journey.

An Early Autumn

After a lacklustre summer, it seemed Autumn was all too eager to get started and arrived right on cue. Even as the calendar clocked over into September, the temperatures fell and clouds and stormy rain appeared. But as always September also brought some bright mild sunny days later on in the month to enjoy.

One of my favourite things about this time of year is watching late Common and Ruddy darter dragonflies doing aerial battle and, once paired up, ovipositing over the pond backlit by that soft, hazy golden autumnal sunshine filled with gossamer spider parachutes. This year was no exception and it seems too that the early spring pond work finally bore fruit as at long last I spotted a Southern Hawker female ovipositing amongst the bulrush roots.

Dragonflies are supremely resilielnt and one of nature’s evolutionary survivors. However uncertain and chaotic things may seem, I find it somehow reassuring to observe dragonflies knowing that they have been on this planet for over 300 million years, predating both dinosaurs and birds, and have survived millenia of change.

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Common Darter dragonfly stretching out in the autumn sunshine perched on flowering Purple loosestrife

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A female Southern Hawker dragonfly ovipositing amongst Bulrush roots, hopefully a seal of approval for the spring declutter work

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Ruddy Darter dragonfly basking on a reed

The Dragonflies Return

One of my biggest concerns last summer was the reduced diversity in the dragonflies visiting our pond, due I suspected to “ecological succession”. Over time ponds naturally fill in and the water becomes more acidic from leaves and organic material. This changes the nature of the habitat and correspondingly, of its inhabitants.

After eight years of benign neglect, our pond plants and marginals had established and flourished so well that there wasn’t a drop of open water left on the surface of our pond. I’d read that certain dragonfly species, particularly larger species like Hawkers require this in order to breed.

True enough, last year we didnt see a single Hawker dragonfly, nor did we see Ruddy Darters and even our usually reliable Broad-bodied Chasers and Four-spotted Chasers didn’t linger. So over winter we prioritised a big clear out in order to create an area of clear water again, although we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to remove our Water-lily root Island.

The long cold spring seemed to delay dragonfly emergences so I was on tenterhooks and initially very uncertain whether our intervention was having a positive or negative effect in drawing in dragonflies. Thankfully the pond seemed to burst into life in our sunny mid June spell. Both Broad-bodied Chasers and numerous Four-spotted Chasers arrived in style, displaying their usual spectacular aeriel battle for territorial hegemony.

To top it off, just a few days ago I was delighted when I saw both Large-Red damselflies mating again and then this Emperor dragonfly ovipositing. This latter species in particular, not seen since our very first season and known for its preference for young very open ponds, seemed a promising sign. Sadly there are still no Hawkers about, but overall, it seems our local Odonata have given our major spring clean a seal of approval, which will hopefully bear more fruit in two year’s time with further new emergences.

You can read a short history of the dragonfly and damselfly colonisation of our new wildlife pond in this blog post . My last new species, a damselfly, arrived the following summer (July 2019) to make ten Odonata species in total. Not bad going for a garden pond!

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An Emperor dragonfly (blue form) ovipositing next to the recreated open water in our rejuvenated pond.

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The Large Red damselfly, an early species, paired wtih an ovipositing female in our mature wildlife pond.

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Four-spotted Chaser dragonfly perched on an old Reedmace stem, they seem to have colonised well.

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Azure Blue damselfly, perched on Lesser Bird’s Foot Trefoil. They are our most numerous damselfly.

Cut-off Channel Butterflies

After one of the coolest, driest springs on record, May so far seems to have done a pretty good impression of what a typical April should be like. Our weather station recorded a mere 5.8mm of rain for the whole of April but by the 2nd of May we’d virtually equaled that at 5.6mm and a storm on the third day took us to 20mm!

At last on 18th May we saw some butterfly friendly weather and I took a trip down to the Cut-off Channel at Stoke Ferry to enjoy the springtime Grizzled Skippers, Small Heath, Brimstone and Orange-tip butterflies to be seen there.

Aside from a zooming Peacock, Small Heath were the first butterflies to show. As usual they chose awkward perching spots close to the ground amongst the undergrowth and leaf litter. I always forget how very small they are; the Common Daisy, Bellis perennis and Redstem Stork’s-bill, Erodium cicutariam, in this photo help to give some scale.

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Small Heath butterfly, Coenonympha pamphilus, nectaring on Redstem Stork’s-bill, Erodium cicutariam

Next we enjoyed the sight of several Brimstones dancing on by. One briefly landed and its camouflage proved so convincing that a Nomad bee even landed on its closed leaf-mimicking wings for a rest!

A Brimstone, Gonepteryx rhamni, butterfly’s camouflage is so good that it fools a Nomad bee into landing!

Orange-tip butterflies were the most plentiful and confiding of the species we saw and I was lucky to spot two perched up mating, a first for me. They were perched on Hairy Rock-cress, Arabis hirsuta. Unfortunately for me, they weren’t entirely parallel and it was very breezy (the warmer than expected weather was brewing up a storm) so I couldn’t quite get both butterflies in focus simultaneously, but it was a lovely sight to behold nonetheless.

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Mating pair of Orange-tip butterflies, Anthocharis cardamines perching on Hairy Rock-cress, Arabis hirsuta

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The female Orange-tip butterfly, Anthocharis cardamines, has a green eye and mottled underside wings

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Female Orange-tip butterfly, Anthocharis cardamines, basking on a grass seedhead with its wings open

We’d managed to spot just a few Grizzled Skippers along the way but they too were restless and camera shy. But just as we turned to head for home one landed on a buttercup for a few seconds, making a perfect end to a lovely canal-side walk. For more information about the history of the man-made cut off channel canal you can visit its wikipedia page

Grizzled Skipper butterfly, Pyrgus malvae, nectaring on a Buttercup

The Prelude to Spring

After a comparatively mild, wet early winter, albeit it intermingled with plenty of healthy frosts, our Winter Aconites and Snowdrops were out a week or two early this year and emerged in late January when usually they arent about until the first or second week in February. I’ve written about the fascinating history and wildlife gardening merits of each previously in the linked posts so will just show a few of this years local pilgrimage down the local lanes.

There were plenty insects using the flowers, highlighting just how important winter nectar and pollen sources are for our wildlife. I saw a young fly and a couple of different types of beetle, which I deliberately left in the shots, as well as a camera-shy ladybird hunting among the foliage, so keep an eye out for insects photobombing several of my photos!