Two Big Dippers to Feed!

Dippers and the relentless search for food for two demanding offspring

The Nedd Fechan river in the Brecons is famous for its succession of lovely waterfalls, tumbling through steep wooded gorges of the Neath valley. The clean, fast flowing rivers here also provide ideal conditions for dippers, who hunt among the mossy stones and underwater, for caddis fly larvae and other invertebrate food. In late May I came across a parent bird working the river in an attempt to satisfy the hunger of its two fully fledged chicks.

The well-fed ever-hungry dipper chicks

Dippers are thrush size birds with chestnut brown back and distinctive white bib. They are often seen flying just above the river surface from one stony perch to another, bobbing vigorously as they land.

Dippers are one of the few birds that use their wings to effectively fly underwater but they also dive and walk along the river bed in search of prey.

Caddis fly larvae are a favourite source of food and great numbers need to be caught and prepared in the breeding season when the dipper parents have hungry mouths to feed.

Caddis fly larvae live under stones on the river bed and protect their soft bodies with a sheath of armour formed from small stones or pieces of twig and this protective coating needs to be removed to make the larva palatable to the chicks.

The dipper flicks the larva against a stone to deftly strip off the covering .....

......  and reveal the soft bodied insect within.

But despite just having been fed, the chick persists in demanding more food and receives a disapproving look from its exhausted parent who must dive straight back into the river. A look many human parents will empathise with!

Adonis the King of the Blues

Adonis blues at Rough Bank Butterfly Conservation reserve in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds

Adonis males on black knapweed flowers

I went to Rough Bank reserve near Stroud in mid July to look for its fabled Adonis, chalkhill and small blues and although it was a hot, sunny day, I must have been too early in the season and saw no blues at all, common, Adonis or otherwise. Rough Bank is called Nottingham Scrubs on the OS map, though it must be eighty miles from Nottingham, my old home town.

It is a beautiful area of steeply sloping flowery grassland in a deep Cotswold valley on calcareous oolitic limestone and was purchased by Butterfly Conservation, along with a few acres of unimproved pastureland, a few years ago. It will now be managed with butterflies in mind. Although it was disappointing to see no blues that day, there were plenty of  commoner browns, vanessids and whites on the site (see 'A Summer Meadow' in my video section),  so I resolved to come back later in the season when Adonis might have emerged.

There were plenty of second flight Adonis around when I revisited the site in mid August. I had only seen one or two fleeting glimpses of this stunningly coloured butterfly before, so I was thrilled there were so many around, perhaps twenty of thirty seen over a two hour visit.

The flash of heavenly blue, enhanced by a slight iridescence which gives the wings a luminous quality, is a breathtaking sight.

Common blue males are sometimes mistaken for Adonis but their lovely blue wings have a violet tinge and this is complicated by the fact that occasional Adonis males have a somewhat violet hue.

The diagnostic feature is in the white fringes of the wing, which are crossed by black markings in Adonis but are plain white in the common blue.

Two Adonis and a chalk hill blue 

The black and white fringes are also present in females, which greatly aids their identification.

Female Adonises are similar to other blue females but also have punctuated wing fringes

By the 1980's, the once common Adonis blue was rapidly dying out from most of its known localities. The irresistible beauty of the male's wings made this insect highly desirable to butterfly collectors from Victorian until recent times and vast numbers were taken in this way. The absence of rabbits due to the myxomatosis epidemic of the late twentieth century induced changes in the short grasslands essential to this butterfly's lifecycle and many of its habitats were being 'improved' i.e. disappearing, in the name of agriculture.

Adonis warming up at ground level

It was thought that Adonis might go extinct in Britain by the turn of the millennium, which would have been a tragedy and a disgrace. Conservation efforts since then and a better understanding of its ecological requirements, along with the return of rabbits, have seen a gradual improvement in the butterfly's fortunes and it seems to be making a comeback in many of its old haunts, though there are no grounds for complacency.

Magpie Riders

Taken close to home in Ashton Court just outside Bristol, red deer hinds were scouring the dry grassland for green shoots during the hot July weather of 2018. A couple of magpies were hitching rides on the deers' backs, looking out for insects kicked up by the hinds.

The does were being pestered by flies round their eyes and noses, which the magpies scared off, at least for a while. In fact you can see a small swarm of disturbed flies in this photograph and this is may explain why the deer tolerate these noisy birds hitching a ride.

Feisty Fritillaries

Fragile Ecological Bubbles - the Heath Fritillaries of Exmoor

The remote, wild valleys known as combes, high on the moorlands of Exmoor in the UK's West Country are the unlikely sanctuary of the rare little heath fritillary Mellicta athalia. This butterfly is now only found in a few valleys on Exmoor and woodland clearings in localised areas of Devon, Cornwall and Kent and has been in serious decline for decades. Better news is that this rather feisty butterfly seems to be making a comeback today, thanks to a better understanding of its life cycle and concerted conservation efforts over recent years.

Female heath fritillary sunning on bracken at Bin Combe

I say feisty because, on a June visit to Bin Combe, which begins its descent just a hundred and fifty feet below Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on Exmoor, I not only saw heath fritillaries but shared my lunch with one and gained first hand experience of another!

I remember a boiled ham bagel was in my lunchbox that day and it seemed to prove irresistible to this handsome male. I was sure he would fly off as soon as I moved the slightest bit but, after quietly admiring his beautifully chequered underwings, hardly daring to breathe in fact, I decided to risk trying a couple of one-handed frames and slowly picked up my camera.

Operating a heavy pro Canon camera with one hand whilst holding a bagel eating butterfly in a sandwich box with the other is less than easy. The key to a successful shot was to focus by moving the butterfly rather than the lens, which I managed to do while the butterfly was enthusiastically tucking into my lunch.

After this unplanned dinner for two, I carried on butterfly hunting and found reassuringly good numbers of heath fritillaries and other more common species in the deep valley, along with dragonflies, damselflies and other insects.

And when I stopped to rest later on, I was delighted when another male landed on my hand, dabbing at the salt and moisture with his proboscis!

I would have preferred him to sit on my left hand to pose for a photo but I could hardly ask him to swap hands, though I can tell you that operating a heavy pro Canon camera with your left hand when you are right handed is even more difficult than the other way round!

Under the circumstances I was happy to get these photographs, which may not be great butterfly in habitat shots but they do show why it often pays to let wildlife come to you rather than chasing around after it.

They also remind us how fortunate we are to have this endearing and attractive little butterfly back from the brink of extinction in the UK.

Red deer stags resting after heavy rain at Ashton Court Bristol

Ashton Court is very close to my home in Bristol and has two separate deer parks with large herds of red and fallow deer. Roe deer come into the unenclosed sections to the park, so all three native British species can be seen here.

Walking back home after a wet morning walk in the park, I came upon the older males of the red herd sitting out the rain. For most of the summer the stags hang out in a male creche, growing their antlers ready for the autumn rut. These are old nine, ten and eleven pointer alpha males with massive antlers, so the photographic intention was to show those magnificent antlers to best effect against the grey skies. An unmissable opportunity as they usually have their heads down feeding or are standing and quite unapproachable.

After a slow and cautious approach on foot, they seemed not to be worried by my intrusion, so I lay in the wet grass and inched forward, commando style, until their antlers were silhouetted against the sky, perhaps ten feet from the closest male. Even when I stood up to leave, cautiously I must admit, they remained calm and rested.

Red deer are not normally aggressive but the thought of the lethal damage those antlers could inflict made this a thrilling and quite humbling experience.

Amazing Acetabularia - the limits of unicellular life?

Acetabularia mediterranea in shallow water along the fringes of Jezero Malo on Mljet

Acetabularia acetabulum

What comes to mind when you think of a single-celled organism? Something microscopically small like an amoeba or an alga perhaps, with a single nucleus surrounded by cytoplasm and a cell wall? 

How about a complex structure with a stem and a shallow bowl-shaped cap in a delicate eau-de-nil, from one to ten centimetres tall? 

It seems incredible but that's acetabularia, a marine alga which has a single nucleus controlling a gigantic cell with a base rhizoid or root section, a long stem and an umbrella of branches fused into a cap. 

The nucleus sits in the rhizoid section of the cell and if the cap is removed, the cell regenerates a replacement. Furthermore, if the caps of two acetabularia of different species are exchanged, each transplanted cap changes its form to that typical of its new host.

Jezero Malo - the smaller of the two sea lakes

We discovered acetabularia in June, on a visit to Mljet, a beautiful island off the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia (I discovered the charms of Mljet forty-seven years ago in 1970!). 

The western tip of the island has two large turquoise sea lakes, cradled by Karst limestone hills, cloaked in forests of Aleppo pine and linked to the Adriatic by a narrow tidal channel. The warm, sheltered fringes of these lakes provide ideal condition for a morning swim and the growth of these pretty and delicate pioneers of the plant kingdom.

Signs of Spring and Kingfishers at Forest Farm

Forest Farm Reserve near Cardiff is a great place to see and photograph kingfishers and the 'Friends of Forest Farm' who manage the site have placed branches by the two pond hides to encourage the birds to fish close to the hides. For such a small area, there is a surprising variety of habitat, from ponds, streams and a canal to woodland and meadow and all this encourages a heathy diversity of wildlife on the outskirts of Wales's capital city.

Although last Wednesday's visit was disappointing for Kingfishers, there was plenty of interest from other species of wildlife enthusiastically gearing up for spring and the chance of offspring!

It was good to see so many toads in and around the ponds. Frogs and toads have seriously declined in numbers over the past few decades but were definitely thriving at Forest farm, with many males swimming the ponds on the lookout for the much larger females, fat with eggs.

Many birds were busy nest building and using the pond edges as a source of moss to use as a lining material, warm and insulating for the soon to arrive clutch of eggs.


Moorhen too were collecting oversized pieces of reed to build up their untidy raft of a nest among the reed stems. The aim seems to be to build the nest high out of the water to guard against any rise in water levels and possible flooding of the nest.

Because moorhen, like coots, are so common, they are usually treated with disdain by bird watchers but they are attractive, colourful birds and amusing to observe going about their daily lives.

A close up view of a moorhen shows it to be subtly coloured in soft greys and browns with silver trim and set off with scarlet forehead shield and bill tipped with yellow and complementary red eyes.

Moorhen feed on plants gathered from the bottom of the pond or river and dive from the surface to reach their food.

Diving is a slightly ungainly process for moorhen and their oversized, yellow webbed feet seem more of a hindrance than a help but they only have to reach the usually shallow bottom and if they fail, well, they can try again.











Still waiting for the kingfisher, a number of other birds and animals came close to the hide, some too close to photograph. There was a time, in fact, when there was more going on inside the hide than outside. Robins, great and blue tits, a blackbird, a squirrel and even a nuthatch, all after a few crumbs from the sandwich box. The mallard stayed outside though!

Finally, a young magpie landed on the kingfisher's perch and posed for a photograph. Not the halcyon blue beauty I was hoping for but since magpies are surprisingly difficult to catch in any kind of pose, a satisfying shot for me.

Amphibious Affairs

Back at the pond edge there was toad drama as a big female and her chosen paramour were being persistently hassled by a second male trying to get in on the action and oust the current suitor.

 The female was hopping as fast as she could with her amorous partner riding piggy-back and she clearly wasn't interested in a replacement but the second male kept on trying to get aboard.

But every time the intruder tried his luck, the first male kicked violently to throw him off, before they continued their bid for privacy. 

Male frogs and toads, certainly in Europe, always outnumber females, so there is fierce competition to fertilise the eggs. So desperate are the males that large numbers of them will sometimes cling to a female and drown her because she cannot reach the surface to breathe.

And the kingfisher?

Well, the kingfisher did visit the perch twice while I waited but was too skittish to stay for a photograph. There were a couple of male buzzards battling for the skies above the reserve for a couple of hours so they might have spooked some of the birds including my quarry. So no kingfisher images today but here is one of the images from my much more fortunate previous visit a month earlier as a reminder of the beauty of this spectacular bird.