My Sidmouth Nature Diary

  This time of year countless 'daddy-long-legs' appear; they all seem to hatch about the same time in one huge awakening. This is probably the most common species of crane fly found in Britain and whilst it can be seen during the summer months it is certainly abundant in autumn. They are attracted to light like moths are and can often be found around buildings, especially those with an outside light. This particular species is probably  Tipula paludosa . It has a close cousin, Tipula oleracae which is virtually identical but my book says oleracae has thirteen segments in its antennae and paludosa has fourteen. Try counting them without a microscope ...! Paludosa has wings a little shorter than its body whereas oleracae has wings a little longer. It is difficult to be sure from the photograph but given that paludosa is most common in autumn whereas oleracae is more frequent in spring I will stick with this being paludosa until someone can positively identify it otherwise for me...

  Until recently I have lived my entire life on the chalk dominated counties of Hampshire and Dorset where the rivers have a gentle flow and do not have rocky beds. As a result they are not the kind of rivers one finds dippers on and my only encounters with this remarkable bird had been whilst on holiday in the north of England and in Wales. Consequently I was delighted to find I now live in an area where dippers also live and that they can be seen frequently on the River Sid. My first sighting of the local dippers was last week when I found the strip of woodland that runs between the river and Margaret's Meadow. A delightful wooded valley area where one can get right down to the bank of the river and as I wandered through I saw a dipper on a rock in the river just twenty feet or so from me. Surprisingly it was not 'dipping' but stood motionless as I watched it for a few minutes. It seemed to be waiting for me to photograph it but, naturally, I did not have my camera with m...

  When I started taking an interest in natural history nearly fifty years ago, like many beginners, my focus was almost exclusively on birds and, also like many beginners, I made lots of mistakes! I clearly remember my first encounter with this species and recording in my note book I that had seen my first yellow wagtail. Well, in my defence it was a wagtail, it was yellow and it was new to me. I had made one of the most fundamental errors in bird watching, taking notice of the 'English' name. This may be a 'yellow' wagtail as its dominant colour suggests but equally dominant is its grey back and darker grey wings which make this a grey wagtail; the yellow wagtail is, yes, much yellower.   Also back then in 1970's Hampshire there was hardly a bridge on the River Test or Itchen that was not home to the grey wagtail. They were not an uncommon sight back then but slowly, over the years, they have almost disappeared from much of those rivers and, more recently when we l...