A sunny day with surprises

ONE of the wonderful things about going out into the countryside to watch wildlife and take pictures is that no two visits are the same and you never know quite what you'll stumble upon.  Often I have a target species in mind but quite often these do not show but others, equally delightful, come to light; today was no exception.

There were no otters or kingfishers, in spite of an impressive level of patience shown on my part (!), but other interesting things were seen on the Somerset Levels:

Swimming grass-snake

Marsh harrier fending off a crow

 

Just as I was about to leave the hide, I realised that the reason that the reed warbler had been moving around in the reeds in front of me, was that it had a nest hidden only a yard or two away.

The reserve is carefully managed to provide ideal habitats for many species.  The white admiral requires spindly honeysuckle on which to lay its eggs in woodlands and woodland rides. The adults drink the honeydew of aphids, or will visit bramble flowers in sunny spots. The adult is usually only alive between mid June to mid August and so it was a real treat to see so many today. Its a real corker...

Other insect highlights included this skipper (below), hoards of damsel and dragonflies of all sizes, and even a comma looking characteristically angular.

Serious snake action

I just can't help myself.

These serpents are fascinating and so I thought that I would share some more piccies to provide additional delight from my weekend visit to the Somerset Levels.  Of course, as you probably know, not all our scaly friends are real snakes.  Slow worms (which are the small, sleek individuals lying centrally in the group photo) are in fact legless lizards.  The ones in the photo are probably males.  One of two appeared to have lost the ends of their body - probably when successfully escaping from a predator - neat trick!

I did not want to disturb them for too long so my identification is from the piccies only.

The other snakes below are adders with one grass snake also in the bottom picture.  Interestingly adders eat slow worms - maybe these were too fast or too big for the adders.

If you are wondering why the pictures are a bit out of focus, its cos I had to hold up a big piece of corrugated iron in one hand with my Canon DSLR in the other (with a large lens), whilst getting the pictures, before my erstwhile subjects either bit me or made a hasty escape (OK- the biting bit was very unlikely).