Yellow Rattle and Bogbean - two new plant species in the reserve.

This rather unobtrusive looking plant is actually one of several Yellow rattle seedlings that have germinated from my seed sowing efforts last year. I have read about these wonderful meadow makers and am excited that I have been able to start a colony in my meadow. Hopfully, I can photograph them when they are more substantial and in flower, and again later in the year once the famous rattle seeds are produced. I hope to produce my own seed to increase the stock across the meadow.

Bogbean starting to flower for the first time in the pond margins. Overtime this will hopefully spread to create nice clump of flowers for the pollinators. 

 

Moorhen Eggs at Easter

 

Six beautifully marked eggs from our resident Moorhen. Sadly on checking the nest 2 days later all eggs were gone... Possibly fox or badger had a good meal at my espence.  There were no signs of broken eggshells. That will likely explain why the Dab chicks abandoned their nest part way through building it. 

Ninespine Stickleback.

Stickleback in a beer bottle.

Despite making a conscious decision not to stock the pond with fish in order to make the pond as attractive to Great Crested Newts (GCN) as possible, I recently spotted some movements in the pond that caught my eye... Grabbed a butterfly net from the garage and went back to investigate. Turns out that when pumping water into the pond from the nearby drain, some fish must have passed through the pump and made it into the pond! The Nine spine stickleback is a small fish, so I am not concerned for the newts or about the fish stirring up mud and silt as they are simply too small to bother most things except perhaps water fleas and the like.  I did spot a fish that was a little larger the other week and have a suspicion it may have been a tiny Pike, but time will tell.  

Note: Don't worry, the fish pictured above was returned unharmed to the pond, after its swim round the beer bottle. (Pond water in the bottle NOT beer!)

 

Orange tip and Comma

 

Orange Tip - rarely sits still for long!

Comma - much more accommodating and not so camera shy.

Butterflies and Beginnings

Beautiful spring day with lots of butterfly action. Today I saw Eight different species: Speckled Wood, Peacock, Tortoiseshell, Large White, A 'Blue', sadly I was not close enough to confirm which type. Brimstone, Orange tip and Painted Lady. We also had a number of Sedge flies by the pond; our pendulous sedge plants had sedge flies!

Sedge on a Sedge.

Speckled wood.

Large white

Snakeshead fritillary 

Red Campion

Pendulous Sedge 

Colts foot seed heads

Water crowfoot

Flowering Water crowfoot