circa.4300
BC to 2018 AD
| circa.4300
BC to 2018 AD
|
| Wildlife
Newsletter for the Township of Dalkey September 2015 - Michael Ryan |
|
Hummingbird
Hawk Moth |
Thankfully,
after a long cold and wet recess in July, summer returned again in August
and on a few days the temperature was almost at the seasonal average.
In the cold days of July it was only in sheltered warm spots there was
any discernible butterfly activity. On one of the milder mornings in
mid- July the bottom level of Dalkey Quarry had dozens of Ringlet butterflies
flitting around the long grasses which are the foodplant for their larvae. According to the excellent website, irishbutterflies.com, Ringlets have a short flying season from late June to early August so these were in the middle of their flying season and looking very smart. The following week the same area of the quarry had families of feeding Willow Warblers moving among the vegetation. These birds were probably on the move from their breeding area gradually building themselves up for their migration to Africa. We’d had lots in the garden as well and I was quite upset to find one dead, having evidently crashed into the living room window. Willow warblers are almost identical to Chiffchaffs, another common summer migrant, and although their songs are very different the other features that differentiate them can be very variable in individuals. The primary feathers of willow warblers are a couple of millimetres longer then chiffchaffs because they have a longer migration distance but you’d be hard put to tell that unless you had the bird in your hand. |
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| Since
I did have this unfortunate little creature in my hand I got in touch
with a friend who is far more knowledgeable then me and is also compiling
a report on birds killed through collisions with windows. He brought
a formidable book which goes into exceptional detail on identifying
not only species but ages and sex of birds. The book is a handbook for
bird ringers who may have trapped the birds in mist nets and who will
record all the bird’s details before ringing and releasing them
and referring to it we were able to see the diagnostic identification
of the narrowing margin along the edge of the bird’s primary feathers.
Although fairly certain already as to what it was, we were able to confirm
it was a willow warbler, probably a juvenile by it’s very yellow
breast. It was in the quarry again, but higher up on the next level,
a few weeks later on a very warm sunny morning in early August that
we saw one of our highlights of the summer. On the path through the
quarry towards the car park there’s a spectacular clump of very
deep purple buddleia bushes. It is believed butterflies sense of colour
makes darker flowers more attractive to them, possibly because they
produce more nectar and these bushes are always worth checking out.
On subsequent days we had Red Admiral, Peacock, Painted Lady and Ringlet
butterflies feeding on the same bush as well as loads of bumble bees,
honey bees and hoverflies but what got us excited this morning wasn’t
any of those. A whirring blur of wings beside a buddleia flower signified
a wonderful little visitor from Europe, a Hummingbird Hawk-Moth |
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Instead
of landing on the food plant they hover in front of it and send their
long proboscis into the flower while beating their wings at a spectacular
speed. They are often actually mistaken for hummingbirds and people
ring up BirdWatch Ireland’s headquarters adamant they’ve
seen a hummingbird. Although Hummingbirds are strictly New World species,
confined to North and South America, and there is no record of any ever
turning up in Europe, apparently some of the callers to BirdWatch get
quite irate when told it’s a moth and refuse to believe it’s
not a bird. Hummingbird Hawk-Moths are known to return to specific food
plants at almost exactly the same time on subsequent days but they’re
probably moths breeding in that locality and this one, being a migrant
visitor, was probably on the move and may have kept going. I’d
seen them before but not for many years and it was possibly a combination
of warm weather and the right winds that brought it to our shores. Afew
days afterwards, out of the gentle breeze, the Killiney Bay side of
the hill was very still and humid and we wondered as we walked around
the ‘Green Road’ might we see another particular insect,
not as rare as the Hawk Moth but certainly not common. |
 Painted Lady Butterfly Photo: M. Ryan |
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| On
previous years, at almost the exact same spot, we’d seen what
we initially thought was a Cricket but on reflection we decided was
almost certainly a Common Field Grasshopper. It’s quite difficult
to tell them apart but the Grasshoppers have much shorter antenna. This
day the conditions were perfect but the part of the hill where we’d
seen them before had been badly burnt leaving only a grass margin a
few feet wide. Then my companion Lucy, whose hearing is as impressive
as her eyesight, said she could hear a ‘churring’ sound
then she spotted a grasshopper, moving across blackened ground under
burnt gorse branches. A very impressive size, this individual was well
camouflaged with beige body and brown striped rump. Individual grasshoppers
can vary greatly in colour as we saw seconds later when she spotted
another one a few feet away. This one was also crouched on blackened
earth but this one stood out vividly since it was bright green. There
were at least four individual grasshoppers, all within a few yards of
where we’d seen them on previous years and we were particularly
happy to see them because we’d actually forgotten about them when
contemplating all the possible animal and insect casualties of the fire
that had burnt for a week in June. When we reached home we saw another
beneficiary of the warm spell flitting around the garden, two Holly
Blue butterflies. Holly Blues lay their eggs on ivy and only some of
them, in warmer parts of the country, have a second brood during the
summer so I presume these individuals were second broods, enjoying the
nice weather as much as we were. |
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