Covid strikes again and we are entering another Lock-down. The site will remain open and people are welcome to visit but always remember to respect Social Distancing and follow the Government Guidelines, which can be found at the following link:  https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

Due to several people having diary clashes this month’s Bird Count has been set back one week to Sunday, 17th December.  PS.

On  Saturday afternoon a Waterside Care group, led by Mark Glover, went to work on the Ouse Dyke between the culvert on Teal Close and the footbridge onto the Lagoons nature reserve. They removed a mountain of litter, including tyres, a bike and a skateboard as well as pulling up vast quantities of balsam seedlings. Mark said it was a very successful afternoon.

  The purpose of these walks is to help people to be more confident in identifying these insects on the site. Some people ignore the ‘brown’ and ‘white’ butterflies because they are not sure they can tell them apart. By the end of the walks most people are having a go as they learn the points to look out for. It is the same with the dragonflies and people were confidently separating Red-eyed from Small Red-eyed Damselflies once the differences were pointed out and both were seen together.

On the butterfly walks the sun was hot and there was a lot of butterfly and day-flying-moth activity. The ‘browns’ showed a considerable gain on last year with Ringlets being abundant as 75 were recorded, with 32 Meadow Browns.

Several moths identified rather carelessly as Six-spot Burnets were re-identified as Narrow-bordered Five Spot Burnets when somebody noticed a spot was missing. The Six-spot Burnets fly later, after the Five-spots have finished.

More careful observation of the Small Skippers was rewarded by the discovery of a thriving colony of Essex Skippers. The two populations keeping to their own areas on the site, Essex on the Deep Pit bank, opposite the railway line and along the Causeway and Small Skippers around the dry end of the Slurry Lagoon.

The second generation of Common Blues were only just beginning to fly, so the counts were low, but there are signs of a come back from the dismal numbers seen last year but, unfortunately, there was no sign of a recovery with Small Heath and Brown Argus, as none of these two species were seen.

The dragonfly walks were slightly less successful than the butterfly walks as several species were no longer flying and others had yet to get going. The Small Gravel Pit made the best showing with Red-eyed, Small Red-eyed, Emerald and Azure Damselflies being seen, along with Brown Hawker and Black-tailed Skimmer on the first walk. On the second walk the sky was overcast for much of the time and the wind was strong, so much smaller numbers of insects were seen but a Ruddy Darter was found by the Small Gravel Pit.

 Sometimes the most spectacular sights are of the most ordinary creatures. The fields adjacent to the Slurry Lagoon had been used for growing sweetcorn and they had just been harvested. This was the trigger for thousands of Grey-lag and Canada Geese to flock in to glean the spilt corn in the stubble. Seen from the Slurry Lagoon bank, interspersed with Carrion Crows, Rooks and Jackdaws and spread out across the expanse of the fields, they did not look very spectacular. I carried on past them to the Causeway to see how many Shoveler were on the Slurry Lagoon.

As I counted the Shoveler something disturbed the geese from their feeding and they took off en-mass to take refuge on the Slurry Lagoon. To see so many large bodied birds wheel over the bank, and hear their wing beats and calls as they circled the water before settling to swim, was spectacular. They drowned out every other sound with a cacophony of nasal cackling and honking calls, the drumming of their wings on the air and the splashing as their feet ripped through the water’s surface as they landed. They came over in waves, so that as one lot settled another was arriving. Once they were all down they continued an excited exchange of cackles and honks as they sorted themselves out into families and groups.

Crows began to fly across the back of the Slurry Lagoon whilst I watched the geese. They were beginning to go to roost. I was not really aware of them at first but gradually I noticed that there was a flock of birds that straggled right across the sky from one side to the other. I could not estimate their numbers as they were sometimes stretched in a ribbon and then bunched together, but as birds disappeared to the south more appeared from the north as a stream of corvids flowed over the lagoons. They were not as noisy as the geese, but contented themselves with conversational caws, cacklings and croaks.

Behind me I gradually became aware of another building sound, a combination of whistles, squeaks and rattles. I hardly noticed it at first but gradually the volume grew as more birds arrived to join in. I looked up on the nearest pylon and saw the Starlings were beginning to gather. Some birds arrived in small, tight flocks and went to join the others on the pylon. Other flocks flew towards the reed bed, their intended roost, where they joined together to make swirling clouds of birds. Now the spectacle began to unfold as more and more birds arrived. There were masses of birds on the pylon now so that all the spars and horizontal surfaces were thickened and blackened. The two nearest pylons were similarly clothed with a layer of birds. From time to time large groups of birds would tear themselves from the pylons to swoop over the Slurry Lagoon and join up with the swirling flock already there. The flock twisted and dived backwards and forwards over the reed bed, sometimes folding back on itself and then stretching out thin. The cloud of birds constantly changed shape as they twisted and turned, their wings roaring as they banked this way and that. They seemed unable to decide where to go or what to do as large parts of the swarm would detatch themselves and then rejoin or else return to the birds on the pylons. All of the time more and more small flocks were arriving and sometimes much larger flocks would race in over a hedgerow. The popular analogy with smoke is very understandable as the flocks no longer seemed to be birds but the drifting shapes of smoke rising from a fire.

Gradually the birds started to make a decision and groups would dive quite suddenly into the reed bed. The actual patch of reeds they went into seemed too small to hold so many birds but group after group fell into the same space and more birds poured from the pylon to join them. Through binoculars I could see birds perching on the reed tops and the reeds bending as more joined them as they charred the reeds black. Others were jostling for a place or being displaced from one spot and crossing over to another so that the view at reed-top level was of a confusion of birds flying in all directions. Of course, they could not do this quietly, so every bird was using its voice to its limit as it complained to its neighbours about the liberties another bird had just taken. Still more birds were arriving, but the pylons were still holding a black mass but as the light lowered more birds flew from the pylons and smoked into the reeds. Small groups were still arriving but these seemed anxious to get into the roost and dived in without preamble, as if they felt too vulnerable to dilly-dally. Almost suddenly the hubbub ceased and the birds settled to roost. Small groups were still diving into the reeds but the spectacle was over for another night.

Five intrepid orthopterists met by the footbridge at the alloted hour to see what orthopteran delights the site held in store for them. The weather was warm and sunny, just right, and a great improvment on the rain that cancelled the Wednesday walk.

As usual the first insects were searched for by the bench, at the top of the steps. Here we very soon found Meadow Grasshopper, Field Grasshopper and Long-winged Conehead. Attention was drawn to the pronotum on the two grasshoppers so that the differences in the two species could be seen. I managed to persuade a Long-winged Conehead to sit on my finger so that everybody got a good view of one.

 The other main target was the Roesel’s Bush Cricket, which prefers the banks around the Deep Pit, so we set off along the south side of the Slurry Lagoon. As we progressed, opposite the railway embankment, the path was beside a wide grassy area where more Meadow and Field Grasshoppers were seen. In the brambles at the top of the bank a Spiked Shieldbug Picromerus bidens was found and several hoverflies, including Helophilus trivittatus and Sphaerophoria scripta. Further on, as we passed the Deep Pit there were Common Blue and Small Copper butterflies to see.

We were fortunate to have one member of the party who could actually hear the crickets stridulating (We have tried ‘bat boxes’ but they are non directional and frustratingly tell you there are crickets about but not where they are.), its normally a good idea to have some kids in tow to do this for you. Soon there were Roesel’s Bush Crickets being found by the bucket load. They were mainly at the top of the grassy bank as we looked towards the gravel pits and we were soon getting excellent views of them.

 With the excitement of seeing so many crickets, the walk leader forgot to search for Slender Ground Hoppers, which are fairly common on the site and often found on the edge of the Small Gravel Pit. Other than that the group had an enjoyable walk and were well pleased with the insects that they had seen.

 Once again the Small Gravel Pit was used for this event. On 8^th there were five people present, but none were children whilst on 12^th there were eight people, including two small children. We went through the ‘OPAL’ water quality routine again and the water was judged to be of very high quality and almost neutral pH.

Water slaters, damselfly larvae and water bugs were plentiful and each dip included at least a few of all of these. The best finds on 8^th were two three-spined loach and a newt tadpole. Also found were a caddis fly larva, common shrimp, ramshorn and common pond snails and some water beetles.

Step in the kids on 12^th. One proved to be a master fisherman and on almost every dip he caught one or two, and once even three, newt tadpoles. His final tally was at least twelve. The two between them caught about five three-spined loach and two ten-spined sticklebacks. There were also plenty of damselfly larvae, water slaters, caddis fly larvae, water beetles, leeches, shrimps, water boatmen and a water scorpion. Frog and toad were also recorded and brown hawkers and common blue damselflies were seen egg laying. At one point a black-tailed skimmer rocketed out of the poolside vegetation. We assumed that it had just emerged from the pool but could not find the exuvia when we searched for it.

All in all these were two successful events and good fun to participate in.

Seven of us met at the footbridge at 14.30 as arranged and the weather was for once on our side. A couple had come from Leicester, having seen our website and decided to give the lagoons a visit. There was a Brown Hawker flying around us as we met, and a Holly Blue flew along the bushes behind the seat at the top of the steps.

We walked from the steps towards the Wader Scrape, along the north side of the Slurry Lagoon, noting the insects as we went. The Gatekeeper was the most abundant insect that we saw, with at least 45 being seen during the course of the walk. There were also a few Meadow Browns and even seven Ringlet were seen, although they’d been flying since late June. The Meadow Brown numbers were low however and only twelve were recorded. Small Skippers were also flying and ten were seen but the Essex Skipper was more elusive, although we checked the antennae of most of them to see if we could identify one. Common Blue Damselflies lived up to their name as we walked along the path and we saw so many that we gave up counting them. Amongst them all we did manage to find two Blue-tailed damselflies. On the bank overlooking the new substation we saw our first Six-spot Burnet of the day as it performed gymnastics on a flower-head. It was holding its wings in a strange way so that the crimson under wing was showing and it really looked a very smart insect. As we watched it perform a Red Admiral flew past us.

We walked along the Causeway and sat on the bench, overlooking the Slurry Lagoon as I had seen some Black-tailed Skimmers here previously and hoped they would still be about. I spotted one sunning itself on a small patch of mud and pointed it out, whereupon it took flight and disappeared. Soon its place was taken by a superb male Emperor which patrolled the water in front of the bench very diligently. Soon the Black-tailed Skimmer was back, and then another one. As we watched a total of seven Black-tailed Skimmers appeared and then another Emperor and they all darted this way and that in skirmishes over the water, where dozens of Common Blue Damselflies were egg laying.

We continued around the Deep Pit in an anti-clockwise direction, noting more Gatekeepers and some more Six-spot Burnets. As we proceeded ,Black-tailed Skimmers took off from the path in front of us and we found a Golden-bloomed Grey Longhorn Beetle, Agapanthea villosoviridescens, clinging to a Wild Carrot stem.

On the bank overlooking the river, everybody was pleased to get views of a hunting Weasel as it crossed and recrossed the path and here we found the only Banded Demoiselle of the day. There were some whites about and we managed to identify three as Large Whites and three as Green-veined Whites and there were still one or two Black-tailed Skimmers taking off in front of us. We went down to the Small Gravel Pit to see what was about but were disappointed to find no dragonflies at all. As we were about to leave a male Emperor appeared, and then posed for us on a reed beside the pool, giving us very good views.

At the Wader Scrape there was lots of dragonfly activity, and more Black-tailed Skimmers were seen, bringing the total to 17, seen on the day. There were also some young Kestrels practising manoeuvres along the shorelines but I don’t think the dragonflies had anything to worry about.

We now returned to the steps to complete the walk and managed to find an Essex Skipper. Near the bench we also found Meadow and Field Grasshoppers and some Long-winged Coneheads. These were all still growing and in the nymph stage of their life cycles. This rounded off nicely a very enjoyable afternoon.