No show for ‘Big Yellow’ bee orchids in drought year

First, the bad news. On my annual visit today (4 June) to Big Yellow Self Storage on Canary Way in central Norwich, the bee orchid count was zero. That’s the first time I’ve found none in 17 years of visits, since I first found a few flowering spikes in 2009.

I wasn’t surprised. Bee orchids are known to respond to weather conditions, and they will have stayed dormant in England’s driest spring for more than 100 years – see Met Office story via this link.

Oxeye daisies outside Big Yellow Self Storage, Norwich. You can come by bus to see them ...

The good news is that, despite the spring drought, the ‘meadow in the city’ continues to provide a visual treat, mostly on account of its oxeye daisies, and a wildlife refuge.

Some of the supporting cast of flowers is shown in this collage of photos.

Collage of flowers from the meadow. Left: a lemon yellow mouse-ear hawkweed. Top: ragged robin and part of a patch of black medick.
Below: scarlet pimpernel, more usually found on disturbed ground, and hedgerow cranesbill (also known as Pyrenean cranebill). This was one of four cranesbill species here; the others were dovesfoot cranesbill, herb robert and round-leaved cranesbill.

Flowers were attracting a good range of insects, including two meadow brown butterflies, which were too quick to photograph. Goldfinches were singing, there were common blue damselflies, despite being some distance from water, and several small beetles and bees. Many of the beetles were probably female thick-legged flower beetles – the females lack the male’s thick legs – an idea supported by an obvious male which I photographed.

Male thick-legged flower beetle on an oxeye daisy.

Common blue damselfly, perching on an adjacent hedge.

A red-tailed bumblebee fed on the flowers of creeping cinquefoil and, especially, black knapweed.

Red-tailed bumblebee on a black knapweed.

I called into see the Big Yellow team, and we agreed not to be discouraged by the lack of orchids in one dry year. The advice here is the same as for anyone with uncut grass: there will always be wildlife benefits of adopting No Mow May, as encouraged by conservation charity Plantlife, and ideally extending that into June.

Sunburst lichen Xanthoria parietina on a birch trunk; a common broomrape, presumably parasitic here on oxeye daisies.

An intriguing bee on an oxeye daisy. Best guess is bare-saddled colletes Colletes similis, from advice from bee recorder Tim Strudwick.

Years will vary, and there is always something of interest to find in a meadow, including in the centre of a city.

 Chris Durdin

 Previously on Big Yellow’s bee orchids (selected):

‘Big Yellow’ bee orchids 2024

Photos on Facebook 2022

Bee orchids bonus in lockdown (2020)

Bee orchids bounce back (2019)

Bee Orchids get my vote (2017)

Big Yellow bee orchids are back (2016)

The Meadow in the City (2015)

‘Big Yellow’ bee orchids 2024

Honeyguide and GOB Menorca

Guest blog by Honeyguide leader Chris Gibson, highlighting the long partnership between Honeyguide Wildlife Holidays and the  Grup Balear d'Ornitologia i Defensa de la Naturalesa (GOB – the Balearic Ornithological Group) - here GOB Menorca.

In Menorca, as usual, our group was visited one evening by GOB, the recipients of our conservation contribution. That donation was £560 this year, bringing the total over the years to £13,598 (mostly GOB Menorca, also some to GOB Mallorca during the 1990s). We always value those visits as they give us great insight into the wonderful and varied work that GOB Menorca manages to do on a relative shoestring, from advocacy in relation to new developments, agricultural stewardship, marine conservation, animal rescue and recuperation, environmental education and running a native drought-tolerant plant nursery. In the UK it takes half a dozen major charities to cover such a wealth of activity! 

This year we welcomed Carlos Coll (past President of GOB) and his wife Deborah, both old friends of Honeyguide, and the new President of GOB, Margarita Masferrer. As always they gave a delightful presentation and stayed with us for a lovely informal meal at Matxani Gran. Margarida this year wanted to mark the valuable contributions we have made, the only wildlife tour company visiting the island that does this, by presenting us with two books. 

First, a copy of a sumptuous new photographic book that has emerged from the seemingly booming Spanish birding scene, inscribed ‘With love and gratitude from GOB Menorca’. Of course we reflected those sentiments back to GOB, with love and gratitude for all they do to keep the island so special.

'With love and gratitude from GOB Menorca'

And secondly, perhaps even more meaningfully, as it is published by GOB Menorca, an educational guide from their series ‘Little Animals of Menorca’, this one the story of a family of black-winged stilts. The illustrations and much of the text is aimed at kids, but each page has a section of ‘grown-up information’ intended to encourage families to learn together. That is the future!

Chris Gibson, April 2025

Note: This holiday, in April 2025, was Honeyguide's 24th group on Menorca, all based at Matxani Gran. Twenty of these have been in the spring and four in autumn. We took five groups to Mallorca in the 1990s, three in the spring, two in the autumn.

Signs of Spring

What was the first butterfly you saw this spring? The bright yellow brimstone is a distinctive early species, the ‘butter that flies’ that probably inspired the word butterfly. More likely as a first-sighting, though, is a comma or a peacock butterfly. What all three have in common is that they spend the winter as adults so can wake to take advantage of early-season nectar. Butterflies that overwinter as a chrysalis, such as orange tips, appear a little later (my first orange tip was in the garden today, 1 April).

Comma, this one was in February.

We all love spring flowers, and perhaps primroses, cowslips and violets come to mind, then bluebells a little later. Often less glamorous species are commoner and overlooked. Dead-nettles – red and white – are two of these, and can be found easily. Red dead-nettles are often on roadsides, patches of grass or unmanicured lawns, sometimes with dandelions. These ruderal flowers – a fancy word for growing on waste ground – provide valuable nectar sources for early season bees and other insects.

Red-dead nettle, late March 2025.

In gardens we tend to choose cultivated flowers that bloom early as they lift the spirits. These can benefit wildlife. A good example is lungwort (Pulmonaria), which is very popular with the hairy-footed flower bee. Though strictly speaking called a solitary bee, often there will be several feeding in the same place.

Hairy-footed flower bee on lungwort. This is a male, which looks similar to a common carder bee. Females are black.

Now is a good time to think about ‘No Mow May’. This idea is promoted by conservation group Plantlife, and the name says it all: having an area of grass that remains uncut to benefit wildlife. Naturally you can start this in April and extend the idea into June. If it’s not practical for all your lawn to be long, then do what you can. It can be surprising to see what flowers are just waiting to emerge, helped by sympathetic management. Take time, if you can, to witness the extra wildlife activity on a patch of mixed long grass and flowers, compared with a cut lawn.

No Mow May collage, all in my Thorpe St Andrew garden.

Spring and birds singing go together, and the greatest variety and volume of bird song is during April and the first half of May. A dawn chorus at a nature reserve may be a lovely experience, but it isn’t for everyone. Happily, some of our best songsters are birds of parks and gardens, such as blackbirds, robins and dunnocks. And here’s a lazy alternative to a dawn chorus: step outside and try a dusk chorus. For birds, a simple logic applies, morning or evening: when light levels are low, feeding is less practical, so they concentrate instead on establishing territory and attracting a mate.

Chaffinch in song (Barry Madden).

Article written for Just Thorpe St Andrew magazine, here as a blog. Chris Durdin lives in Thorpe St Andrew. He runs Honeyguide Wildlife Holidays  www.honeyguide.co.uk and is the guide for the monthly guided walks at NWT Thorpe Marshes.

Cruise to N Africa and Iberia, February 2025

This blog is to help answer questions such as ‘Did you enjoy your first cruise?*’ and ’Where did you go and what did you see?’ Yes, I did enjoy it, and no, I didn’t get seasick.

The cruise was with Julie on Fred Olsen’s Borealis, a relatively small cruise ship (up to 1500 passengers, not quite full); dates were 15 – 27 February, departing from Portsmouth. After three days at sea, we had two stops in north Africa and four on the Iberian Peninsula.

Wildlife at sea: gannets, some guillemots and kittiwakes when near France, a couple of great skuas, though long periods of nothing. Dolphins only when I was somewhere else. The best sightings were when we were in the Strait of Gibraltar when half a dozen short-toed eagles and 20 black kites were making the crossing from Morocco to Tarifa. Dragonflies flying around the moored Borealis at Ceuta were vagrant emperors, probably also about to migrate to Europe.

White stork, Rabat.

First port of call was the huge and mostly modern coastal city of Casablanca, though we chose the excursion to Morocco’s capital, Rabat. This included three stops in the city centre, including a garden with bulbuls, blackcap & chiffchaff and many nesting white storks. An excellent lunch in Rabat, too.

Where do lesser black-backed gulls go in winter? For many, to Casablanca to sit on containers, it seems.

At the next stop, the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, we chose the excursion that went over the border to Tétouan. The border crossing was a long bureaucratic process speeded up by our guide’s “cousin”, a border official. Pity those who must cross the border twice a day for work. Noting the interest shown, the guide kindly stopped by a tree-nesting colony of cattle egrets and glossy ibises, with more nesting storks nearby. The main excursion was through narrow streets combining a souk and residential properties, where (as in Rabat) there was a house bunting. There was another excellent meal, Moroccan style, and the group was steered into a store for a health & beauty products presentation and sale, a typical Moroccan trick (we don’t know if this was ‘official’), though entertaining.

Tétouan collage.

The first port of call in Spain was Málaga, where we’d chosen a tour to the Natural Park of El Torcal de Antequera. This karst landscape has impressive limestone columns and cliffs, eroded by water into interesting shapes. Unfortunately, it was all in cloud, some group members hadn’t taken on board the advice about robust footwear, and it was a little early in the year for much botanical interest. There was a tame rock bunting in the reserve centre’s car park. The sunshine appeared for our walk around the attractive small town of Antequera. We had some time in Málaga, where we encountered confiding monk parakeets. Lisbon’s parakeets, though, were ringed-necked.

El Torcal: left photo from Wikipedia, right as we saw it.

Monk parakeet, Málaga.

Compact Gibraltar was geographically ideal for a DIY excursion on foot, though it rained steadily and we were soaked to the skin. But we made it to the nature reserve on the top of the Rock, potentially botanically rich, at least: we passed Scilla peruviana, Spanish hedge-nettle, two-leaved gennaria orchids and more. We made it as far as the Barbary macaques and returned to the ship to dry out. Then the cloud lifted – but it was time to leave. That evening the ship moored at Cádiz from where Julie and I joined a group bussed to Jerez for a performance by a fine flamenco trio.

Casemates Square, Gibraltar, in the rain.

Happily, the next day was sunny for the smallest group we joined, on bikes around Cádiz. A highlight was the Roman Theatre only discovered in 1980. By the coastal Castle of Santa Catalina there were swallows, and a V-formation of birds coming in off the sea were glossy ibises. This fortress had an exhibition about a huge explosion of stored armaments in 1947, causing many deaths and thousands of injuries.

Bike tour in Cádiz.

Lisbon was the final port of call, where we took a general tour of city highlights.

There was no official on-board naturalist on Borealis, and I was unable to resist being the unofficial nature guide on occasions: wearing binoculars meant “You’re the bird man” was said a few times. I missed the company of Honeyguiders, though we were quick to make friends.

I was impressed by the activities available on Borealis, especially on days at sea. We attended lectures and several excellent evening shows. I joined a ukulele group and ‘singing for fun’ sessions, did three dance classes and played a lot of table tennis. The ukulele and singing groups put on a performance for other passengers during the final afternoon at sea.

Any down sides? One was being turned away from dinner for not wearing a jacket & tie when I’d forgotten it was a formal night. That time I changed, and after that we ate in the more informal dining area, which worked better for evening show times. I lost my wallet in Lisbon, presumably to a pickpocket, meaning time spent cancelling and re-ordering various cards. Lastly, it’s taken a couple of days to adjust to being on dry land with no swaying floors!

Would I go on another cruise? Potentially yes, if the dates and destinations are good. Though now there are several Honeyguide trips to look forward to …

*Well, first paying cruise. Tucked away on the old holiday reports web page is very old (1980s) Mediterranean cruise report from when I was a guest lecturer in a period when there was a collaboration between Swan Hellenic and the RSPB.

Chris Durdin, 1 March 2025

Brugmansia (angel's trumpets) in Rabat; Borealis in Casablanca; dragon tree in Cádiz. 

Red-necked grebe at Thorpe and Whitlingham

A scarce bird for the Norwich area has been attracting birdwatchers to two different wetlands by the River Yare.

The red-necked grebe was on St Andrew’s Broad at Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Thorpe Marshes nature reserve on 14, 15 and 16 January, before moving to Whitlingham Country Park.

Red-necked grebe at Whitlingham Country Park, 29 January 2025 (Drew Lyness)

“The grebe’s stay at NWT Thorpe Marshes helpfully coincided with the monthly guided walk on 16 January”, says Chris Durdin, from Thorpe St Andrew, who has been leading guided walks on the nature reserve for more than ten years.

Ann Greenizan from Trowse was on the guided walk. Ann says: “It was a privilege to observe this winter visitor to this location, being so close to Norwich. Chris pointed out the red-necked grebe on the open water. The group watched it dive repeatedly before it swam away from us."

Alison Ward of Norwich said: 'it was exciting to see something rare on our doorstep – it shows the value of local nature reserves.”

Many other birdwatchers came to see the red-necked grebe as word spread. One of these was John Sharpe from Norwich, a former RSPB colleague of Chris's and currently vice-chair of Norfolk Wildlife Trust. John is an advocate for ‘zero carbon birding’, and was pleased to see such a good bird locally – he came to Thorpe Marshes by bike.

Red-necked grebe at NWT Thorpe Marshes, 15 January 2025 (Drew Lyness)

Isabelle Mudge. NWT’s Wilder Learning Manager was on the guided walk. Isabelle said, via email: “It feels like we were very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time! Another sighting that puts Thorpe Marshes on the map 😉"

Red-necked grebes are similar to great crested grebes when in winter plumage. “The yellow base to a rather stout bill is a good identification feature,“ says Chris. “It helps that many adult great crested grebes are already in their spring plumage.” The red neck in the bird's name refers to its breeding plumage.

“Though red-necked grebes are fairly regular in Britain in winter, especially by the coast, they are never numerous – the British Trust for Ornithology estimates 50-60 wintering birds. I expect it was the recent cold weather that brought this bird inland to Norwich,” said Chris. Red-necked grebes occasionally breed in the UK.

The most recent records of red-necked grebes in the Norwich area, according to Norfolk Bird Reports, are a single bird at Whitlingham Country Park on 31 December 2013, one day only, and a longer staying bird, also at Whitlingham Country Park, from 17 January to 20 February 2010.

This winter's red-necked grebe moved from Thorpe to the Great Broad at Whitlingham Country Park on 17 January and was still there until at least 9 February.

This blog is an expanded version of an article first prepared for Just Thorpe St Andrew magazine. With thanks to Drew Lyness for the photographs of the red-necked grebe. More reports of wildlife from NWT Thorpe Marshes are on www.honeyguide.co.uk/thorpemarshes.htm 

Chris Durdin, 12 February 2025

Rare Plants

I have been reading Rare Plants by Peter Marren, the latest (no 14) in the ‘British Wildlife Collection’. What struck me was how few I’ve seen of the book’s rare plants within the UK, but how many were familiar from holidays overseas.

In a way this isn’t surprising: geography dictates that the UK is on the edge of the range for many species. It’s also a reminder that when searching for an identification of a plant overseas, sometimes the answer may be within a UK field guide. This blog describes just a few of the plants written about in Rare Plants, along with encounters of them on Honeyguide wildlife holidays.

Strapwort Corrigiola litoralis in Extremadura.

Strapwort Corrigiola litoralis, a rather obscure member of the pink family, is in a list of 35 Critically Endangered native plants. It is found, in the UK, only at Slapton Ley on the south Devon coast, where it is dependent on disturbed patches of bare gravel. Being dependent on disturbed ground is a theme that crops up for several rare or scarce species – for example, all those dependent on arable habitats. This reminded me of finding and puzzling over this species in Extremadura in March, at first an unknown flower growing on disturbed ground by tracks or quiet roads on the plains. I couldn’t find an ID in Iberian references, and found the flower instead in the Fitter, Fitter & Blamey that I use at home. Strapwort is on Honeyguide’s Extremadura flowers web page, for flowers we see here — mostly on our March holidays – that are tricky to find in field guides. More recently we found strapwort at Castro Verde in Alentejo, Portugal, in November 2023.

Goldilocks aster, an autumn-flowering species.

There is a photo in the Rare Plants book of goldilocks aster Aster or Galatella linosyris on Berry Head, Devon, described as one of several natural rarities from limestone headlands on the west coast. This was another that prompted a ‘I know that flower’ thought. Most recently it was pictured in our Spanish Pyrenees holiday report from October 2024. This curiosity always looks a bit scruffy: the same could be said of the photo above from La Brenne, France in September 2023.

Field eryngo. Left with Graphosoma italicum; right at Castang.

Field eryngo Eryngium campestris is so commonplace in much of Europe that it’s a surprise to read that this flower is also on the Critically Endangered list for the UK. The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) says “In Britain E. campestre is currently considered to be an archaeophyte [an introduced species in ancient times] but it has been thought to be possibly native in Kent and Devon.” Predominantly southern in distribution, one wonders if this species may become more common as the climate changes. The photo reminds us of good times at Castang in the Dordogne, where field eryngo is common.

Sea daffodil, Tarifa, 8 September.

A sprinkle of records in recent decades of sea daffodil Pancratium maritimum in south-west England might also be put down to climate change, though the current thinking is that these are either deliberately released or naturalised from gardens. Though autumn-flowering, we see masses of leaves and a liberal sprinkling of seeds of sea daffodils on the beach at Plakias, Crete, every spring (and Menorca, and just about every Mediterranean beach). It is pollinated by long-tongued hawkmoths, which might be a constraint to its spread.

LImestone woundwort and St Dabeoc's heath, both from Picos de Europa.

Two flowers have a connection to our Picos de Europa holiday. I remember looking at limestone woundwort Stachys alpina in the Picos and thinking that – as a British species – I really ought to know this. Delve a little deeper and in the UK it’s only found in one place in the Cotswolds and in Denbighshire (a good excuse for not knowing it from ‘home’) and its status – native or otherwise – is uncertain.

St Dabeoc’s heath Daboecia cantabrica has been known from Ireland for several centuries. With that scientific name, it’s no surprise that we find it in the Picos de Europa. Recent research, published in British Wildlife, has shown that the strawberry tree Arbutus unedo, once thought to be native to a few places in western Ireland, could well be an archaeophyte, brought in by ship-borne traders as long ago as around 1500BC. Might St Dabeoc’s heath have arrived in a similar way?

Tongue orchid Serapias lingua, Dordogne.

Not surprisingly, Rare Plants features several orchids, such as those with just a foothold in the UK. Examples include the critically endangered red helleborine, military orchid and monkey orchid. However, it was the accounts of tongue orchids that caught my eye, previously entirely absent from the Uk, yet three species have been discovered in Britain during the last few years. The first was small-flowered tongue-orchid Serapias parviflora, first seen in 1989. The book has a photo of a typical ‘swarm’ of the (or greater) tongue-orchid Serapias lingua in a field near Tiptree, Essex, in 2017. Long-lipped tongue-orchid Serapias vomeraceae was found in Kent in 2020. The consensus seems to be that these occurrences are natural and wind-assisted. What next? Perhaps sawfly or woodcock orchid?

You’ll see that the cover picture of the Rare Plants book is lady’s slipper orchid. This has a long and complicated history in the UK, too long to summarise here, and it is well-known for being exceptionally rare as well as being as glamorous as they come. I’ll simply note here that they are a feature of wonderful wood-meadows in Estonia.

Rare Plants (here on NHBS).

Chris Durdin

Conservation donations from Honeyguide in 2024

Honeyguide’s conservation donations in 2024 totalled £5705 (£4530 in 2023). This blog summarises the donations during the year. Our running total for donations is at the end of this blog. 

Most of the donations come from £40 per person included in each holiday’s price, topped up by Gift Aid for those who are eligible. In several cases there are additional donations from Honeyguiders included within the sums sent; for Valencia in March there were two additional donations from group members.

Little bittern caught, ringed and released by ringing group Pit-Roig in Valencia, March 2024 (photo by Julie Durdin). More photos here from this holiday.

·  February, Extremadura: £330 sent to SEO (BirdLife Spain) in Extremadura.

·  March, Valencia: £630 sent to bird ringing group Pit-Roig

·  April: Crete and Lesvos combined: £1370 sent to Hellenic Ornithological Society (HOS, BirdLife Greece).

·  May/June, Danube Delta: £500 sent to SOR (BirdLife Romania)

·  June, Picos de Europa: £930 sent to Zerynthia, a butterfly conservation NGO in Spain.

Marsh fritillary Euphydryas aurinia beckeri, on acanthus-leaved carline-thistle, Picos de Europa.

·  June/July, Bulgaria’s Western Rhodopes: £450 sent for survey and monitoring of Rhodope lilies (more information here.).

·  August, guided walk at Hickling Marshes raised £125 for Norfolk Wildlife Trust. Another guided walk in August, at Plumstead and Holt Country Park, donations totalling £400 were kept as useful unrestricted income in the Honeyguide Charitable Trust.

·  September, Falsterbo: £550 given to BirdLife International’s Flight for Survival campaign.

·  October, Spanish Pyrenees: £820 sent to SEO Aragón (BirdLife Spain)

Honeyguiders in a field of Rhodope lilies, 29 June 2024. Honeyguide has funded survey and monitoring here since 2012. 

Part of the ethos of Honeyguide Wildlife Holidays has always been to contribute to the protection of the wildlife that we enjoy, put into effect by donations to conservation projects and organisations linked to our activities. These donations were all through the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust, through which we can claim Gift Aid and increase our charitable activity.

During the year, the Honeyguide Wildlife Charitable Trust received a bequest from the estate of the late John Durdin. The Trust’s trustees are considering how best to use this money, though for practical reasons it may be some time before this happens.

The £5705 donated this year brings the running total for all donations to £155,517 since Honeyguide started in 1991.

Chris Durdin