This Friday, Saturday and Sunday we are going to be at Keswick Mountain Festival!

We will be running a variety of activity's, including crafts and exploring the festival looking for wildlife! So hopefully we will see you there!

This week’s species of the week is the Willow warbler!

The Willow warbler is a small olive-green bird with a pale underside and a distinct long pale stripe above its eye. They can be seen around throughput the summer in most of the UK from March to October, Migrating for the winter to Sub-Saharan Africa. This migration covers about 5000 miles which is impressive, for a bird that weighs as much as a box of matches. They eat a variety of things but mainly they are insectivores. Willow warblers make their nests very near the ground and create impressive domed nests that often has a built-in escape route.

The Willow warbler can be easily confused with a Chiffchaff, the main difference between these species is the Chiffchaffs distinctive song. However, if they are not singing or you do not feel confident on your bird song then there are a few other small differences to look out for; eye stripe length the Willow warbler has a longer eye stripe, size the Willow warbler is slightly bigger and leg colour the Chiffchaff has dark grey legs where as the Willow warbler has pale more pinkie coloured legs.

The Willow warbler is found throughout the summer across Cumbria with only a handful wintering here. In comparison the Chiffchaff has higher numbers of individuals who winter in Cumbria, though the Chiffchaff is less abundant in Cumbria in the summer particularly across the fells.

Image shows Willow warbler.

We had a fantastic day at Oak Tree Animals' Bioblitz!
Thanks to everyone who came we managed to record 107 species!

These included birds, a roe deer and lots of fantastic bugs. Including this Green Longhorn moth which is a first for this 10km square since 1897 recorded by F.H Day.

We also got a variety of more unusual invertebrates that we will be telling you more about soon after they have been verified

The species of the week this week is a species of Ichneumon wasp, Ophion obscuratus.

Recently, while moth trapping at Glasson Moss, Guy Broome came across an individual identified as Ophion obscuratus. This is an exciting find as, though considered common throughout the UK, CBDC thinks this may be the first record for vice county 70 and only the second recording in Cumbria.

Ichneumon wasps can be really difficult to ID, as they can look very similar with only slight differences. Tanyptera Regional Entomologist Gary Hedges kindly ID’d this ichneumon as it is one of the very few species that can be ID’d to species level from photos, owing to the distinctive pale thoracic stripe. It is apparently nocturnal and often comes to moth traps. Females lay their eggs in various noctuid moth eggs and because of this they do not have the long ovipositors seen in other species.

Ichneumons are parasitic wasps and prey on a range of invertebrates throughout the UK; the size of prey varies greatly as some species of Ichneumon’s in the UK can reach up to 4cm! Ophion obsuratus is between 15 to 22mm.

It is thought that there are around 100,000 different species worldwide, though this number could be a lot higher.

If you want to know a bit more about UK Ichneumons take a look at this beginners guide on the Natural History Museum’s website. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/content/dam/nhmwww/take-part/identify-nature/british-ichneumonid-wasps-id-guide.pdf

Below shows an image of the individual found and photographed by Guy Broome.