A drone but not of the bee variety…

Wednesday, May 31st 2017

As with every Wednesday morning there is always the joy of opening the moth trap put out the previous evening. It had been a fairly chilly evening but did have 12 species and 26 moths. This included three impressive Poplar Hawk moths, plus beauties such as this Common Swift,

….an unusual looking Pale Prominent…

….and this Map-winged Swift.

The sun shone on the reserve all day, which was ideal because we ran a pond dipping event for families as it's school half term!

Various pond critters were discovered including this female Palmate Newt…

….and this cluster of Caddis Fly larvae; look closely and you can see some legs and heads! These are probably of the genus, Limnephilus. They stick plant matter to a membrane and use it much like a snail uses a shell. We quite often get the odd flighted adult in the moth trap. There are actually three Caddis fly larvae in this cluster.

There was also a lot of excitement with the diving beetle larvae attacking a tadpole and then feeding on it using its large pincer like mouth parts to suck it dry!

With the pond dipping finished we returned to the Field Centre to make egg box frogs - the results speak for themselves:

Ben Wilkinson attended the site for a recce flight with his small drone with the intention to take aerial pictures of the reserve as part of the 25 year celebrations taking place this year.

Thank you to the moth team, the flower walk team and John (out recording butterflies) for recording our species today.

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