Dabchick and Turnstone

The highlight of my sightings this month is the little grebe or dabchick. This small shy dark brown, dumpy, diving bird, once bred annually at the Pit. It often betrayed its presence with a bubbling or trilling call, from the reed bed. It fed on insects, small molluscs and small fish, but has been absent from the Christleton area for some years. There are, however, two sites locally where you can usually see them. At Burton Meres RSPB reserve, near the first open reed bed screen, and at Chester Zoo on the Islands Project area. Earlier this month I recorded three breeding pairs there, all with young, and the photographs you see below were taken of the parent bird feeding two young chicks, identifiable by the stripes on their fluffy heads. The turnstones were photographed at a regular site we visit at West Kirby Marine Lake. These beautifully camouflaged waders can usually be found near the outflow on the Thurstaston side of the lake. There must be a breeding group of 25+ there, usually spotted foraging on the old common mussel shell beds. Their camouflage is excellent, and you probably won’t see them unless they are moving about probing their beaks in the mussel shells, or crossing the shallow stream.

The Walk Mill swans continue to do well, and you can see them happily feeding on the weed on the “hidden” lake. This food supply is crucial to their development. I’m regularly asked about having swans back on the Pit. It would be possible with the support of the RSPCA who regularly need safe sites to release swans, but there is not enough food to keep a breeding pair & up to seven young at the Pit. The “introduced” carp are the major issue, because they eat all the vegetation in the water, leaving very little, if any, left for swans. Mute swans need between 4-7lbs of grass/vegetation each day, and there is an insufficient supply at The Pit, which is the main reason that the breeding pair always walked/waddled through the village to the canal, even when their cygnets were less than 7 days old. That makes it even more challenging to control, with the traffic problems we now have in the village. We know from records that the Pit pair walked through the village as early as in the 1960’s, and it became my responsibility after our “Pit Rescue” in the 1980’s to guide them safely to the canal. This relates to at least five different pairs of swans, which all had that inborn instinct to do this walk from The Pit to the canal, along Village Road or Pepper Street.

As I write in early August dragonflies and damselflies are now more in evidence after a poor start to the season. I’m now having regular sightings of common darter, brown and southern hawkers, as well as banded demoiselle damselflies. The female demoiselle although very plain, can still look attractive whilst sitting in the sun on reeds along the Gowy. There are still good numbers of the very colourful males in flight along that same area, on either side of the middle bridge.

Ragwort is a bright yellow flowering plant and is the most prolific flower in the countryside at this time of year. There are very few of the thousands I’ve seen this year, that have caterpillars or any sign of insects feeding on them. It’s another poor season, if not the worst ever, for sightings of butterflies, moths, bees etc. My census returns for the Great Butterfly Count contained three nill returns, and only the last survey before the count closed produced butterflies. They were several