Great view of the Kingfisher early Tuesday morning. It was accidentally disturbed by some dog walkers and the kingfisher flew up onto a branch overhanging the Winterbourne Stream. It then flew down into vegetation out of site. A couple of minutes later it flew fast and low above the water back up the Winterbourne Stream [...]
As promised in my last post, ‘Wildlife Afternoon on the Reserve’ this post focuses on the amazing water stick insect that we found last Sunday. The Water Stick Insect looks remarkably like its terrestrial namesake but they are not closely related. In fact that are closely related to another fascinating pond inhabitant the water scorpion. [...]
Some fascinating views today of greater water boatman right in front of the underwater cam in the Leighside pond. There appeared to be two greater water boatman, also called backswimmers. On two occasions that I saw, one of the water boatman swam over and grabbed the other, this could have been an attempt at courtship. The [...]
Working late and treated to an amazing view of bats feeding over the winterbourne stream just after midnight through the winterbourne stream cam. The bats fly back and forth, twisting and turning coming in and out of view. There are many night flying insects over water and the stream providing a useful flightpath and a [...]
Today we added a new pond creature to our list of animals observed through the webcams. Attached to the housing of our pond cam Paul spotted a beautiful green and rather amazing Hydra. On the screen it looks huge but it’s only about a cm in length. Paul has changed the focus of the camera [...]
The heavy rain yesterday evening and duri9ng the night left a few muddy puddles around the reserve. To us it was an inconvenience, wet feet if we did not have boots on. With the school that visited today we had to keep taking our footwear off before we went into the Linklater Pavilion because we [...]
The beautiful and spectacular dragonflies and damselflies that add a splash of colour to our ponds and ditches in the summer spend most of their lives underwater as a dull brown or greenish nymphs (larva). Why do you think that the nymphs are such a dull colour? We have many damselfly nymphs during the RLL [...]
Two species of warbler return to the heart of reeds each year, the reed warbler and the white throat. REED WARBLER The reed warblers have now returned in the Heart of Reeds where they will nest. Their arrival on the reserve follows a long migration as the warblers fly to the UK from their winter [...]
Starting in the spring, small blobs of jelly appear on the underside of many of the pond plants. These are the small egg masses of pond snails and a careful examination under a microscope may reveal the tiny snail embryos. The eggs hatch within a few days and tiny snails with almost transparent [...]
We have been seeing some very interesting views of sticklebacks through pond cam and Heart of Reeds cam. Sticklebacks are very hardy little fish that are often found in ponds and ditches. There are two different types on the reserve, three-spined stickleback and the less common ten-spined stickle back. The three-spined stickleback is the most common species [...]
