High pressure at last

The seemingly endless cycle of low-pressure weather systems appears to have ended, and we currently have a high-pressure area coming up from the south. This will bring sunnier days and colder nights, but that's a vast improvement on the rain we've had since November.

The relative heat brought out a fresh Dandelion, although they seem to be in flower all year round nowadays:

Dandelion

We have quite a few Buzzards in the local area, and I see some most days. Now that the next-door Rooks are nest-building, the Buzzards like to survey the rookery, presumably planning future raids. I heard this one calling to its mate and got a quick shot (with macro lens!) as it flew overhead:

Buzzard

They usually fly in pairs, although later in the year we can see whole family groups flying when the youngsters are being trained up.

Work on my Donegal Wildlife database is continuing at a reasonable pace, with perhaps 400 of my 1550 species in place at this stage. It's certainly worth a look, although there are still some broken links and blank pages. You can find it here: http://donegalwildlife.altervista.org/ 

The 'News' section at the top left of the home page is always kept up to date with the latest entries.

Feedback is always welcome, whether it's here or on the guestbook page on the database.

The birds

It seems that my prediction of a locally mild winter has been fairly accurate so far: we have had a few nights with frost, but rarely anything below -2. One night delivered a couple of centimetres of snow, but it lasted barely a few hours. We have, however, had fairly unrelenting rain with dark skies and terrible light.

Buzzards are a fairly common sight in the area, and we often have a couple flying directly over the house as they circle looking for prey. A pair decided to survey the local rookery, so I tried to get a few shots. As soon as you point anything at them, they make a dash for cover, and this is the shot I got as they flew round the other side of my house:

Buzzard

The sky is the colour that I have become familiar with over the last 40 days or so.

When we arrived back from shopping today, I noticed a Song Thrush lying beside our front doorstep. It seemed to be in some distress, but it didn't move as I rattled off a few shots. After I put the camera down, I approached it to see if it had any injuries, but it flew off, apparently in good order. On close examination of the photographs, however, I see that there are injuries to each side of the head, as shown in the following shot:

Injured Song Thrush

Those injuries are indicative of a predator of some kind, but I don't think that our local cat has a mouth large enough for that.

Another mystery.

Interestingly enough, this is a new addition to my Species List.

A collection from gaps in the rain

Another Dolichovespula sylvestris, but this time I think it's a male. Angelica is great for insects.


This Ichneumonid with huge antennae was wandering over leaves, sweeping the antennae from side to side. Long antennae usually indicate the male, but I'm sure this one was searching for larvae on the underside of the leaf.



Two shots of one of my favourite hoverflies, Scaeva pyrastri:


And a good wasp mimic, Sericomyia silentis.


Most leafminers make either a gallery mine (long and thin) or a blotch mine (erm, blotchy). Agromyza sulfuriceps does both. The mine starts as a gallery, then the gallery twists are all made adjacent to each other. Finally it breaks the walls and makes the blotch. A blotch mine has a distinct advantage in that the upper surface of the leaf can be pushed upwards. This allows the larva to grow bigger due to the increased space. So maybe this is a once-little fly that's getting bigger.


I have to leave the identification of this one a bit abstract: the species complex hasn't been fully worked out, yet. So it's Chromatomyia sp. On Common Ragwort.


As I was walking back to the car I heard a Buzzard high above me. No telephoto on a macro lens.