Azure Damselfly and White-tail bee

 

Common red soldier beetle

 

A Facinated Oxeye Daisy!

 

Well I never... Apparently this us what is known as a 'Facinated' flower. It's a quite rare event caused by a number of possible causes including, genetics, virus or fungal infection etc.  In a field of tens of thousands of daisies I was lucky to spot this unique bloom. 

Scarce Chaser Dragonfly

This is a first for me either at Longbeach Farm or anywhere. Pleased to add another species of dragonfly to the list of Longbeach residents.

The extra picture below is a follow up to a previous picture of recently emerged Dragonfly exoskeleton only this time it seems that this stem of Reed mace was very popular with several dragonflies selecting it as their preferred exit route. 

Orange Tip, male and female comparison.

 Male with Orange Tipped Wings

Female with Grey Black tipped wings. Easy to confuse with Large and Small White butterflies if you are not paying attention. 

Small White Butterfly on Red Clover

 

Bladder Campion in bud.

Yellow Sweet Clover

 Melilotus officinalis, Yellow Sweet Clover, another new discovery in the meadow.

Too Early for the Navtivity..

Quite by chance I uncovered this Star of Bethlehem wild flower in the tall meadow grass,  I'm confident that it predates my sowing of my meadow as it was found in an area that had not been seeded and is on a small patch of dense legacy 'improved' grass that existed before I made the flower meadow and it is the only plant I have found; one cannot however be 100% sure of these things. 

Kidney vetch is making a showing across the meadow.

Common vetch being visited by a thankful bee. 

Red clover is also making  purple presence known.

 

Barn Owls, Cuckoo's and Doves

 

Delighted to see the Barn Owl hunting round the pond and over the meadow. I have deliberately left areas of uncut meadow and grass to allow a thick thatch to develop to create the perfect habitat for mice, voles and shrews. My Barn Owl box put up earlier in the year has so far only attracted Stock Doves to use it as a home. While I'm happy to have the box used by birds my preference would have been for the owls to use it! Maybe next year... in the picture below there are two stock dove chicks looking more hairy than feathery. On the theme of squatters, I have had house sparrows take up residence in one if my four swallow nest boxes, I'm hoping that I manage to get at least one bird in the right nest box! Heard but did not see a cuckoo yesterday so it seems the theme of squatting continues.

2 X Stock Dove chicks in the Barn owl nest box. 

Dragonfly Emergent Exoskeleton

 

Returned home from work and noticed that there were at least 6 Emperor dragonfly cases on the reedmace and flowering rush plants in the pond. They must have all decided to hatch overnight or during the day as they were not there the day before. A shame I missed them emerging and expanding their new wings to take to the sky.  Given my pond is only a year old I thought that I would not see emergent dragonflies for a couple of years. I had seen the larval forms swimming in the pond last year, but assumed they needed to mature for a few years before they would emerge. Better do some research to check my facts!  

Common Blue

 

Common Blue on black medic; this male seems to have a section of its wing missing.

Green-veined White Butterfly

 

Brown Argus pair. The Brown, but Blue butterfly.

 

A mating pair of Brown Argus. Tiny little butterflies but a delight to have about the meadow. Both male and female have mainly brown upper wings with orange markings but have that slight blue dusting on the body making them blue butterflies. The underwings look very similar to the other blue butterflies that have mainly blue upper wings.

 

Hawk's-beard - Aetheorhiza bulbosa

Borage!

You can use these pretty blue flowers as a nice garnish in a ice cold jug of Pimms or the flowers can be frozen into your ice cubes to add a dash of colour and interest. The flowers and leaves are edible and taste a little like cucumber. Please do not pick or eat plants that you cannot safely identify!

Yellow Rattle, Simple things, please simple...

Some people get excited about a new car, or a surprise win on the lotto, not me, after years of reading about the 'meadow maker', my rattle seeds sown last year  have germinated and are now coming into flower.  I had only ever seen picture's of yellow rattle and was surprised to see how petite the plants are; I had always imagined them to be the size of white dead nettles. Petite or not, I'm genuinely excited to have them in my new meadow and will be scattering the seeds around to spread the joy across other parts of the meadow at the end of the season.

Blood-vien Moth

Found this while walking round the cut grass path through the meadow. Not a rare moth but my first official recording of it at Longbeach Farm. 

Flowers, Toads, Geese and Ducklings...

 Arriving home after work I took my customary walk around the pond and meadow to see what was new, what was coming into bloom and what was perhaps going over and turning to seed. The fist thing to greet me on the pond were two wild greylag geese that had dropped in unannounced. This was a fist and although the thought of geese fouling up the pond water was nor to my liking, I was however gratified that they found my pond to be attractive enough to drop in on. As if the geese were not enough excitement, my attention quickly turned to a mother mallard who was chaperoning no less than 12 of her ducklings around the pond. 

Toadtally liking this chap!

While checking out the emergent flowers on the meadow walk I was blessed to encounter this toad who was clearly making the most of the feeding opportunities in the meadow.

Further on in the walk I identified a few more wild flowers that have made a grand flowering  entrance into the meadow landscape.

SANFOIN

SCARLET CLOVER

OXEYE DAISY

FIELD PENNYCRESS 

RAGGED ROBIN