August on Hothfield Heathlands

The yellow-green caterpillars of this moth are important food for young blue tits, the more they can eat, the better their greenish-yellow plumage. The catch of that night was the goat moth (Cossus cossus), which is listed as a Nationally Scarce species. The heaviest UK moth, its larva, which smells of goat, spends up to five years burrowing into and eating the wood of broadleaved trees like oak and ash. 

Volunteer and keen-eyed photographer Anne Rowe has recently identified a new mushroom, on the pile of woodchips; the magenta rustgill (Gymnopilus dilepis). She reports:

The scientific name is derived from the Greek, gymn means naked, pilus means cap, hence baldcaps; dilepis means with two scales, or scales in pairs.

There are some scientific bird names that just stay with me. Emberiza citrinella is one; maybe it’s the z. I may not remember it first thing in the morning when gazing down from a window at what look like bright yellow canaries foraging under the bird feeder. With my glasses on and a cup of coffee in hand I know of course that yellowhammers are gracing my garden. One of the first bird-calls my father taught me to recognise was the yellowhammer’s a-little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese, the territorial call of the male from some prominent perch. Heard so frequently in the open countryside in the 1950’s, they were already heading into free-fall, due to the loss of their farmland and grassland habitat, resulting in a drop of over 400 million across Europe. The Yellowhammer is now one of the sixty-seven British species on the Red List of Conservation Concern.

This is one of the reserve’s ground nesters and ground feeders that needs our help by keeping humans and dogs on paths and leaving them undisturbed. The nest is a neat cup of grass and leaves lined with fine grasses and hair (another benefit of the grazing animals) either on the ground at the foot of a bush or low down in a hedge or thicket. The female builds the first nest in April, incubating the eggs for up to two weeks then feeding nestlings for up to two weeks. With luck there will be three broods. After all that the adults moult, which may take eight weeks to complete. They feed on starchy wild flower seeds, cereal grains and fruit, adding insects, larvae and small invertebrates during the breeding season, to provide protein and moisture for nestlings. Resident all year round, look for them in winter feeding in communal flocks with finches and other buntings and sparrows.

The yellow plumage is a beautifully complex and subtle mix of greys, brown, black, tawny red and white, yellow top of head and undersides in the male.  They are the most widely distributed of the European Bunting family, emberiza being derived from the German Embritz, for bunting, citrinella the Italian for a small yellow bird, Ammer, another German word for a bunting.