All things small.

Well what a week it’s been at Lackford, with lots of new arrivals to be seen. A common sight this week has been lots of ducklings and goslings wandering around with their very protective parents keeping an ever watchful eye over their precious young. One of these new families was our only pair of red crested pochard’s who were spotted swimming around happily showing off their new additions.

Red crested pochard and young.

Ben Alder managed to capture this shot of the Canadian geese and their young down near Ash Carr and posted it to our Facebook page.

Lackford lakes is ideal for families © Ben Alder

A little bit further afield and harder to see are the chicks of the shelduck’s, but it’s still worth trying to get a peek if you can and the best place for this is either at Bill’s hide or the double-decker hide looking arose to the Slough.

Shelduck’s and young

We also have several great crested grebe’s nesting around the reserve and the best place to see this is at Bess’ hide where 2-3 nests can be seen, one of which is almost in front of the hide. It won’t be long now before we begin to start seeing the grebe chicks, fingers crossed.

Great crested grebe on nest outside Bess’ hide.

If you go to our Youtube channel, you can see the above grebe doing some bond affirming head shaking.

Moorhhen’s and coot’s  are also hatching chicks on the reserve at the moment and some of these are actually visible on the visitor centre pond. However, here is a clip from Reed hide taken earlier this week.

Of course, it’s not just about the waterfowl. Josephine Sweetman visited Lackford recently and her sharp eye managed to capture these superbly camouflaged treecreepers.

Newly fledged treecreepers © Josephine Sweetman

Such amazing camouflage © Josephine Sweetman

As the weeks progress, we are bound to see many more fledglings around the reserve and we look forward to seeing your photos of them. If you are lucky enough to capture these in the viewfinder of your camera and want to share it with us, then please send it as a .jpg file to lackford.centre@suffolkwildlifetrust.org where we will do our best to feature it in the blog. Or you could share it to our Facebook or Twitter (@SWTLackfordLake). We look forward to seeing your photos as do many of our expanding army of followers.

Sarah Steggall emailed us her photos from her visit this week. Sarah was lucky enough to capture another two new arrivals, banded demoiselle and red-eyed damselfly.

A male banded demoiselle © Sarah Steggall

Red-eyed damselfly © Sarah Steggall

Dragonflies and damselflies can be seen in most places around the reserve as was the case earlier this week when several were ticked off our ‘Return of the Dragons’ list, which can be seen in the centre.

Busy as a bee!

This time of year sees a lot of bees buzzing around the reserve, only a couple of weeks ago, a swarm of honeybees escaped from a hive on an adjacent property and spent the night sleeping on a fencepost on a non-public part of the reserve.

Honeybees resting on a post.

Not a lot of people realise this, but in the UK, there are around 250 species of bee. 24 are bumblebees, 1 species of honeybee and the rest are known as solitary bees. These are small bees that do not live in social groups like honeybees and bumblebees. Instead, they create their own burrow, or find a previously created burrow and fill it with pollen and an egg before sealing it up to allow it to develop over the winter before hatching the following year to begin the process all over again.

Some of these bees can be found on the reserve and they are usually much smaller than honeybees. One of these species of bee that has already been found this year on the reserve is the two-coloured mason bee (Osmia bicolor). This bee is rather special in that it lays its eggs inside empty snail shells before filling the shell with small gravel and then it goes off to collect bits of straw and grass to build a teepee around the shell to help camouflage it.

Then there are leaf cutter bees that find old holes in wood or even the holes in bamboo canes that many people have in bug boxes inter gardens. These bees do the same thing but create a chamber inside the hole out of very carefully cut pieces of leaves, before laying an egg in the hole and filling it with pollen and then sealing the chamber with another perfectly cut piece of leaf.

Some bees are tiny, so tiny that they will build their nest chambers inside holes left by nails removed from timbers.

A tiny (7mm) mining bee.

Some bees to keep an eye out for on the reserve are tawny mining bees, early mining bees and chocolate mining bees.

Chocolate mining bee

Early mining bee

Brown carder bee

A mining bee seals off a chamber in a bamboo cane.

Some of these bees are not mining bees, for just like in the bird world there are cuckoo bees! These bees are kleptoparasites of mining bees and do not build nests or chambers for their young. Instead, they look for the nest holes of other bees and when the host bee is away, they sneak in and lay an egg. This egg will hatch before the egg of the mining bee and will eat all the provisions stored for its original host. Cuckoo bees even exist in bumblebee species, where a similar looking in appearance queen bee, will seek out a nest of its host species, sneak in and will kill the host queen, then it forces they worker bees of the host species to rear the young of the cuckoo bee.

If all this talk of bees has whetted your appetite for more, there will be a one day course on mining bees next year at Lackford, details of which can be obtained by phoning 01473 890089.

Wild for the Weekend

This weekend is Wild for the Weekend -Things with Wings. Come down and see what you can find on the reserve. We will have Wildlife guides around the trails to help you spot the things on your spotter sheet and at 1pm, we will be showing the moths that we caught in our traps the night before. 

It’s not only the things that fly in the daytime either, we will be holding a special bat walk on the Saturday (23rd) to hear and see the bats that hunt on the reserve at night. This will start at 9pm and will end around 11pm. This event has limited spaces and BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL. Please phone 01284 728706 to do this, price is £2.50 per person.

Sightings

Turtle dove’s have been spotted and heard on the reserve this week. The best place is on church walk in the early morning or late evening. Nightingale is still singing at the reserve, although not as much as in previous weeks. This week might be the last chance to hear this beautiful song. Hobby’s can still be seen around the sailing lake and over the double-decker hide. Common sandpiper has been spotted from time to time at Steggall’s hide and redshank from Bill’s or double-decker.

Red kites are being seen on a more regular basis at the reserve now and it won’t be long before they are a common sight on the reserve. Hirundines are gathering in large numbers now and often the skies over the reserve are often filled with swifts, swallows and house martins. However, we have yet not been able to coax the swifts into using our swift boxes.

Reed, sedge, garden, willow and cettis warblers can still be heard singing around the reserve, many of these just from the centre car park. Another bird often heard but not seen on the reserve is the cuckoo. This is often heard calling around the sailing lake. Lesser whitethroat and whitethroat can be heard and seen down towards Reed hide and treecreepers and nuthatch’s in Ash Carr. 

Don’t forget to pop into the centre to see the sightings board when you arrive, things move around all the time and it’s worth checking first. Also please pop into the centre to add your sightings to the board regardless of how common you may think it is. We have visitors from across the UK and further afield who don’t see the birds that we get in their regions. 

Stoat was seen to chase and catch a rabbit down at Ash Carr this week as well as still being seen around the visitor centre much to everyones delight. Also spotted this week and causing a commotion for some birds were otters. These were spotted from Bess’ hide and captured on camera by Andy Johnson and share on Twitter (@SWTLackfordLake).

Otter gets mobbed by a black-headed gull © Andy Johnson

Tucking into a tasty crayfish snack © Andy Johnson

A close up shot from © Alan Reynolds

Not the loch ness monster, it’s an otter © Alan Reynolds

Butterflies are still everywhere to be seen and this will be one of the last weeks where you will get to see orange-tip’s as the end of their season approaches.

Don’t forget, we want your sightings, so pop into the centre and let us know, you can even sit down with a nice slice of cake and a cuppa tea whilst you tell us about it. 

A welcome return

Yes, a very welcome return this week to the very endangered Red Data Book species. Yes, turtle dove's have been heard and spotted  around the reserve, but only solitary or pairs of birds have been spotted at this stage. 

Another new visitor to the reserve this week is our first dragonfly, which has always been present at the reserve lurking at the bottom of a pond, but has now emerged into adulthood to begin the summer days looking for a partner. A broad-bodied chaser female was spotted and photographed by Tony and Sandy (@tonyandsandy) on twitter.

Broad-bodied chaser by Tony and Sandy

They also managed to capture this beautiful and a first for this year, brown argus butterfly.

Brown argus by Tony and Sandy

Butterflies have been in abundance this week too with still lots of orange-tips, small white, green-veined white, speckled wood, comma and peacocks about. 

Comma by Duncan Fletcher Brown

Another bunch of new arrivals came  in the shape of long-tailed tits and was captured by Terence Chaplin.

5 newly fledged long-tailed tits await for the parents to bring back food. © Terence Chaplin

Terence even spotted this slow worm making its way along the path near Reed hide

Slow worm by Terence Chaplin

More damselflies have been spotted on the reserve this week and our wildlife guide Colin Robson managed a photo of a blue-tailed damselfly.

Blue-tailed damselfly by Colin Robson

A grand day out

We had a lovely review this week from a couple of visitors at Lackford, who enjoyed their day so much. they decided to write a blog about it. You can read all about their adventure in their excellent blog here.

Sightings

Well, the sightings are still coming in and there's lots to be seen here at Lackford, as the sightings boards testifies to and the eagle eyed among you will have noticed we are now on 127 species of bird at Lackford.

Sightings board at Lackford

Our newest species to hit the list are a pair of redstart and turtle dove, which we mentioned earlier. Common sandpiper, hobby's, cuckoo and the warbler's (Cettis, garden, reed, sedge, willow, etc) can be seen from all around the reserve, starting in the car park where many are heard when visitors get out of their cars.

Reed warbler by Ian Goodall

Marsh tit with spiders web nesting material by Ian Goodall

Kingfisher's are still nesting down at Hawker pool, although they are often spotted as a blue flash as they dart back and forth from the nest.

Buzzard's, sparrowhawk can be seen from time to time around the reserve and we are getting more sightings of red kites drifting over. This species has made a spectacular recovery since breeding projects began in the late eighties/early nineties and have spread eastwards across the country ever since. So in time, these magnificent birds will soon become a regular sighting at Lackford.

SPECIAL BAT WALK 23RD MAY

As part of our themed Wild for the Weekend -Things with Wings event on the 23rd May, we will be having a bat walk at Lackford to explore that we don't often see. Places are limited, so booking is essential and you can do this by phoning 01284 728706. 

Don't miss out, book your place now!

The darling bugs of May.

Wow, where does the time go? It only seemed not too long ago the reserve was getting a dusting of snow, now leaves are on the trees, flowers are in bloom and people are beginning to venture out in t-shirts. This was especially the case over the bank holiday weekend at Lackford, where we had the latest in our themed Wild for the Weekend event called May Bugs!

The weather, all except for Sunday, held out for us and the bug hunting and pond dipping sessions were well attended by eager adventurers wanting to explore unknown worlds. Saturday and Monday saw Visitor Assistant Hawk out on the reserve encouraging children to get involved in bug hunts. Armed with sweep nets and bug pots, the children got down to finding the creatures that inhabit the long grass and hedgerows near the double-decker hide. A variety of bugs were caught for Hawk and volunteers Joe and Ollie for them to identify, the majority of which were spiders. The air was alive with orange-tip butterflies, which had many children eager to capture one, in hot pursuit but often without success.

Lets get bug hunting!

One regular captive of the bug pot was ladybirds, with 7, 22 and 24 spot ladybirds being caught and recorded. The were plenty of small beetles being caught too including this beautiful green tiger beetle.

Green tiger beetle.

The green tiger beetle is one of those insects that has some fascinating facts about it. These are fast running insects that are indicative of heathland as they love bare sandy soil which they scuttle over to catch their prey, which is mainly other insects.

They can run so fast that they have to stop frequently to allow their eyesight to catch up with them! Their large bug like eyes, allow them to see for long distances making them very hard to catch as they can see you approach from a distance.

The Monday saw a welcome return to the lakes, damselflies! Yes, there seemed to be a small emergence event down by Atlas hide of blue-tailed and large red damselflies. They could just be seen as their fine gossamer wings flitted in the sunlight just above the grass. Lackford has a Site of Special Scientific Interest designation for its 17 species of dragonflies, so these two species are just a taster of what is to come.

The pond dipping event on Sunday saw Visitor Officer Mike and volunteer Joe outside, but under cover exploring the depths of one of our ponds. Lots of interesting things were found from horsehair worms, diving beetle larvae, shrimps and dragonfly larvae. Despite the weather, everyone who came said they really enjoyed and were amazed at the diversity of life often unseen in such a small pond.

Sightings

The lovely weather over the weekend saw many people seeking out the wildlife at Lackford, so the sightings were many. Hobby’s seemed to be the highlight for many with 5 or 6 being spotted at a time towards the rear of the sailing lake.The nightingale is still in full song in the scrub near the education meadow and lesser whitethroat, garden and willow warbler’s are being heard from around the car park. Redshank is still being seen at the Slough and buzzard’s can often seen circling from all over the reserve. 

Lesser whitethroat © Ian Goodall

Buzzard © Ian Goodall

Also to be seen in numerous places are blackcap, reed and sedge warbler’s, marsh tit’s and treecreepers. Swifts, swallows, house and sand martin’s continue to be seen and the common sandpiper can occasionally be spotted down at Steggall’s.

A rather busy sightings board.

Butterflies have been busy too with many orange-tips and peacock butterflies around. Brimstone’s and comma can be seen near the double-decker hide and small copper’s are to be found along the path between the centre and Tickner’s hide. Keep your eyes peeled ahead of you along this path and you may even spot a green tiger beetle. 

Binoculars

Some of the wildlife above can be seen quite easily around the reserve, however, some of it we all need a helping hand to see. Not all of us are lucky enough to own a pair of binoculars, or sometimes through plain forgetfulness, we leave them at home only to realise this when you park the car in the car park. If this sounds familiar, fear not. Pop into the centre and see a member of staff and you can hire some binoculars so your visit isn’t a wasted journey. 

We also stock a range of fine binoculars from Viking. These binoculars are excellent for wildlife spotting and are of a good quality that is built to last. 

A fine range of optics

So whether you fancy making the step to buying your first pair of binoculars, or fancy upgrading your old faithfuls, pop in and try our new range at Lackford. All of our staff will be able to give you expert advice and help you find the ideal binoculars for you.