Kestrels, Whitethroats and my first ever encounter with a Giant Wood Wasp, at Cranford Park

Warning !!! It's going to be a long blog post, so pour yourself a cold one, put your feet up and read my ramblings at your leisure.....

 

I was at Cranford Park with the infamous 'Fewy' today. I had four things on my agenda, Fewy was just tagging along for a pleasant day out.

 

My agenda was.....

1) check if there were any Little Owlets out yet

2) check the Great Spotted Woodpecker nest hole that I mentioned last week

3) check if the fledgling Kestrels had left their nest tree

4) check on the Swallows nest

 

Well..........Number 1 - no they are not showing yet.

Number 2 - they must have fledged during the week as there was no noise at all from the nest hole

Number 3 - see below

Number 4 - the Swallows nest is still going strong, and I could hear the little chicks 'cheeping'. Great news for Cranford Park with this being our first recorded Swallows nest that I know of.

 

So back to the Kestrels. They have definitely chosen a new nest tree this year. I should have known really as twice I accidentally flushed both parent birds earlier this year when walking along a woodland path I don't normally go down.

The fledglings haven't yet reached the age where they are practising to hunt in the meadows. They can be seen on the edge of Cranford Woods from time to time though, and that's where I got my photos from today.....

 

I don't know how many young they are, but when they are a bit older and in the meadows practising hunting skills on the many grasshoppers and crickets, I'll have a much better idea.

Again great news for Cranford Park. Another successfully raised family of Kestrels, and less than a mile away on one of the British Airways buildings is another family of thriving Kestrels too (as mentioned in last Sunday's blog post)

 

After ticking everything on my agenda, the Fewy and I found ourselves spending quite a bit of time in the Headland area of the park. This is a triangle shaped area of wild flowers, plants, bramble bushes and long grasses with several criss crossing mown paths. On two sides it is surrounded by hedgerow, and on one of those same sides there is a huge nettle patch between the path and the wild hedgerow. Needless to say it is a haven for insects, and therefore a good place to watch small birds feeding at this time of year.

 

Common Whitethroats are regular migrant spring breeders at Cranford Park and today they were very active, vocal and viewable. They do breed in other parts of the park, but the majority of them prefer the Headland and you are almost certainly guaranteed views of them there.....

 

 

 

The area is also popular with other birds. We saw Blackbirds, Song Thrushes, Blue Tits, Chiffchaffs, and this young Great Tit....

 

 

and a huge flock of both adult and juvenile Long-tailed Tits were taking advantage of the easy pickings on the wild plants.....

 

We also had brief views of three female Linnets moving through.....

Fewy will have got some lovely shots with his huge stonker of a camera lens, I managed just one hastily grabbed shot with my 75-300mm zoom lens.......

 

 

We were walking back through Cranford Woods when our high-light of the day happened........

My regular blog readers will know that an old coniferous tree fell across one of the paths a while ago, and I had asked our local Conservation officer if it could be made into a seat for me. She granted me my wish, and for a short while I had a tree trunk seat pinned to the ground, with a foot rest. The following week I found my seat, the aptly named 'Wendy's Perch', had been decimated and was now a chopped up trunk. I still don't know who is responsible, but it was good while it lasted.

 Anyway, enough moaning about that......we were just walking past there when I caught sight of a huge black and yellow critter. It really was nothing like I had ever seen before.

 

It was over 2inches long with a huge stinger and wings. We both concluded it could only be a species of hornet, and on the one occasion it did fly to settle on the foot rest log, both Fewy and I swiftly moved out of the way. Once it had settled again we observed some really odd behaviour. It appeared to be disorientated, almost 'drunk' and twice falling on it's side. It also appeared to have two black tubes descending from the rear of its abdomen, one of which seemed to be embedding itself in the wood.....

 

The pound coin in my first photo is for size comparison......and yes it was Fewy that placed it there, I wasn't quite brave enough......

 

 

After getting home and editing my photos, I posted them on to the Facebook page 'UK Bees, Wasps and Ants'. Ryan Mitchell almost immediately identified this as a Sawfly species, Urocerus gigas, the Giant Wood Wasp......not a hornet at all and completely harmless. Chris Ayre then provided me with some more information, and both Karen McCartney and myself asked loads of questions.

This is a female, and those long black tubes are what she uses to probe into the wood and lay her eggs, a.k.a oviposting. This prompted me to have a look on Wikipedia and the below is a section copied from that site..........

 

Reproduction

Mr. K. G. Blair has given an interesting account of the proceedings of a female he watched on a felled larch, in which, when discovered, she had her ovipositor embedded deeply; but it was soon withdrawn. "The insect then wandered off, walking rather jerkily over the log, the ovipositor held in its sheath beneath the body, its tip dragging along the bark behind her. As she went her antennae were in constant action, tapping the bark in front of her. About six inches from the spot where we first found her, having apparently discovered another position to her liking, the body was raised as high as possible on her legs, the ovipositor slipped from its sheath and the point inserted in the bark beneath the middle of her body, i.e. some distance, about an inch, away from the spot last explored by her antennae. The ovipositor was then perpendicular to the bark and to the general axis of her body, though this was now somewhat arched, while its sheath remained in its original position. Gradually the ovipositor was driven farther into the log, a slight side-to-side motion of the body being perceptible, until finally it was buried almost to its full length. Though we watched carefully, we saw no sign of the passage of any egg down the ovipositor, either when walking over the surface or during the thrusting in of the ovipositor ; neither does the ovipositor sheath appear to afford any support during this operation. This time she wandered further without finding a suitable spot, then suddenly flew away." It has been stated that she lays about a hundred eggs; but Mr. Blair's account may modify this estimate—a boring not be

Growth of the egg

The right conditions having been found and an egg discharged through the boring instrument, from this in due course issues a six-legged, whitish larva, which sets to work with capable jaws on the solid wood, beginning the excavation of a long tunnel that will occupy several years before the larva is full-grown. That stage reached, it spins a silken cocoon, and changes into a pupa which has all its limbs of maturity formed and folded beside its body.
Before making its cocoon, however, it takes the precautionary measure of advancing its tunnel close up to the inner bark, so that in its winged state it will have only to bite a way through this softer impediment to its liberty; not that it is now incapable of dealing with anything firmer.

 

You will have to forgive me the font, I just copied and pasted it from the relevant Wiki page.

But what a fascinating thing to observe ! How lucky were we to walk past Wendy's old Perch at exactly the right time ?

 

And thank you Chris, Ryan and Karen for the help in identifying this beautiful critter.

 

Elsewhere around Cranford Park it is going to be a bumper year for blackberries...

 

The area around the orchard is choc-a-bloc full of flowers and growing fruit.

 

There were several Skippers out today, but not in huge numbers.

 

Large Skipper - female

Small Skipper - male



Small Skipper - female

 

The Cinnabar moths are emerging all over the park. Once the meadows have grown a bit more, we'll soon see the striking caterpillars of this moth on the ragwort plant....

 

 

Other flying beauties seen today.......

 

Green-veined White - male

Red Admiral - male

Red Admiral underwing - male

Speckled Wood - male - with half of it's wing missing

Comma



Lacewing sp. ? Jury is still out on this beauty

male Thick-legged Flower Beetle, but a bronze variety rather than my usually photographed green ones

 

By the back of the stable blocks we found a few Dock Bugs...

 

 

and of course as to be expected at this time of year, there were plenty of 7 spot Ladybirds...

 

 

and their youngsters......

 

We spent a good six hours on site today. The 'Fewy' was very well behaved and provided the flask of coffee as instructed, whilst I provided my fantastic and witty company and a couple of Greggs sausage rolls.

For a change I probably swore more than he did today. My calls of  'what the duck is that ????' when we found the Giant Wood Wasp was possibly heard by every visitor to the park.

 

I was going to be nice and not post any photos of the 'Fewy' that he didn't know I had taken. But to be honest, that's not really my style.....being nice I mean......

 

 

It was a great day wandering around Cranford Park.

 

There was one other sighting we both saw but didn't photograph.....

We were over the other side of the park when we saw a distant Red Kite soar low over Cranford Wood. We both stopped and watched the action through our bins but were too far away to grab any photos. The Kite was soon mobbed, but not by the Carrion Crows and Jackdaws as is usual, but by one Hobby and one Kestrel.

I owe Fewy a drink for missing the chance to photograph that sighting. Had we gone back to the Headland area after our coffee break, we would have seen that action above our heads, but little ole me wanted to explore the meadow for Skippers and other butterflies instead and that took us to the other side of the Ice House Copse.

My bad. Sorry Fewy. Tomorrow is another day.....