6 minute read
Your wild summer
The best of the season’s wildlife and where to enjoy it.
MARK HAMBLIN
SUMMER SPECTACLE
Aerial acrobats
Swallows are one of our most beloved summer species; their swooping ight and distinct cheerful appearance are a real symbol of summer. Swallows eat insects, so they are commonly seen around water or farmland, catching their prey on the wing, and only coming to land to feed themselves or their chicks. These muddy and wet habitats also provide swallows with another essential for their lifecycle - mud. They construct intricate cup nests from mud and vegetation under the eaves of buildings, which earns them their full name, the barn swallow.
Their closest relatives on our shores are sand and house martins. The deep fork in a swallow’s tail and its red bib di erentiates them from the martins, and the tail shape helps them manoeuvre after insects as they y.
Swallow populations are relatively stable in the UK for now, but drier summers mean less muddy material available for their nests and rapidly declining insect populations are leading to a shortage of food sources.
Swallows can be seen across much of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, especially in late summer, when they rear a second brood of chicks or feed up ready for the ight back to Africa.
SEE THEM THIS SUMMER:
St Cross meadows often has swallows nesting in the barns. Admire them as they y around the farm and river, catching insects to feed their chicks. Hockley meadows are home to swallows and martins; look out for then along the Itchen Navigation path.
Thank you
Thanks to your support, we have been able to create and maintain habitats for swallows and other farmland wildlife in our two counties. www.hiwwt.org.uk
Swallows collect mud and twigs to build their cup-shaped nests under eaves or on ledges.
PHILIP PRECEY Common knapweed
A pop of colour
At rst glance, common knapweed (also known as black knapweed), might look like thistles, but they lack the thistle’s formidable prickles. Common knapweed is a hardy meadow and grassland plant found growing in all kinds of habitats, including gardens and road verges. The owers contain goodquality nectar, so they are very popular with pollinators, including bees, beetles and butter ies. Later, as the weather cools, the u y seed heads provide food for birds. Greater knapweed is similar, but the owers are richer in colour and the petals form long rays.
Common knapweed is easy to grow and is an excellent addition to a wildlife garden as the owers can last for months, from July onwards, attracting many insects.
URBAN FIELDCRAFT
Small-spo ed catshark
This shark had a re-brand recently; previously it was known as the lesser-spo ed dogfi sh. If you are a keen snorkeler or diver, you might see this harmless li le shark in the shallows. They are a very common species that feed by night on crabs, small fi sh and other molluscs. When catsharks feel threatened, they quickly curl up into a doughnut shape to protect themselves and to look larger than they are. Bigger sharks can predate the small-spo ed catshark.
As the small-spo ed catshark is nocturnal, the most many of us will ever see of them are their egg cases, known as ‘mermaid’s purses’. Once the young shark has hatched, the empty egg case may wash up on the shore. In this species, the cases are around 5cm long and have curly tendrils which would have a ached them to seaweed or rocks. They are good indicators of the health of the seas locally. Small-spotted catshark
HOW TO IDENTIFY MERMAID’S PURSES
Fill a bucket with fresh water and leave your egg case to soak for an hour or two. Use the Shark Trust’s ID guides at www.sharktrust.org to fi nd out which species your eggcase came from, log your record with them and keep the case as a souvenir of your time by the sea!
SEE THIS
Look out for fox cubs born this year, starting to follow parents on hunting trips and play above ground.
ANDY AMES
DO THIS
Sit under a large broadleaf tree like an oak and see how many shades of green you can see in the canopy.
SPECIES SPOTLIGHT The sound of summer
Top tips
3 SPECIES TO SPOT
BOB CHAPMAN Male woodland grasshopper
Here in Britain, we have 33 species of orthoptera - the order that contains grasshoppers, crickets and bush-crickets.
As you walk through long grass in the height of summer you might notice these species pinging away just ahead of you, jumping using their powerful back legs. Orthoptera is a noisy group of species, chirruping and singing to a ract mates. Species of grasshopper and cricket can be distinguished using just their songs! Most species make sounds that can be heard by humans, but some bush-crickets have a song that is so high-pitched they can only be picked up by a bat detector. Using detectors has been very helpful to ecologists who want to fi nd out more about where bush-crickets live and for estimates of their population size, as they are o en well camoufl aged and hard to spot.
Insects in this group can be tricky to identify, as some have diff erent colour morphs within a species, and they can be hard to see up close, but there are some simple ways to narrow them down: Grasshoppers have short, stubby antennae and those that sing do so by rubbing their large hind legs against their wings. In contrast, crickets have long, thin antennae (o en longer than their body) and sing by rubbing their wings together. Crickets o en look fl at, as their wings fold one on top of the other, rather than side by side as with grasshoppers.
Orthoptera lay their eggs in pods in bark, soil or plant stems, where they hatch into tiny, wingless versions of the adults.
Healthy populations of orthoptera are vital for other wildlife which feed on them. Many declining farmland birds rely on grasshoppers and crickets for food, including skylark, grey partridge and the cirl bunting. Reptiles and small mammals also depend on this food source in the summer.
Great green bush-cricket
CHRIS BUTTON Only found in Southern England, they can grow to 7cm long and are easily identi ed by their size. If you are lucky enough to nd one, they are best left alone - they can give a painful bite!
ED MERRITT
Meadow grasshopper
Among the most common grasshoppers, these are mostly green but there are also brown and purple morphs. Meadow grasshoppers are found on damp grasslands from late April.
ED MERRITT
Long-winged conehead
A type of bushcricket with an angled head, this species is widespread. They feed mainly on plants, but will also eat small invertebrates.
