Birds, wildlife and travel
A trip to Ditchling Common today, not to see the London to Brighton Cycle Ride, but to see some Black Hairstreaks that have recently been found there. They were probably introduced to the site, but that was fifty years ago.
(We could hear the cycle ride: there must be a limit to the number of times in a day one person can say “well done everybody” to the participants, but it is in the thousands.)
A trip to Martin Down in Hampshire brought us a new butterfly, Marsh Fritillary, and a host of other butterflies and moths, as well as five species of orchid.
After a truly dreadful May in the moth trap, June started with a trap full of moths, including three Hawkmoth species.
A visit to some friends yesterday turned out in unexpected fashion. Despite being about 72 miles upriver from the Humber Estuary, there has been a Common Seal there for the last few weeks and it has featured on news reports across the world. The afternoon was spent watching the sea life rescue services attempt to catch it and return it to the sea. There is, or at least was, a lot of fish in this bit of river, so the seal was having none of it and remains at large.
Strid Woods is glorious at this time of year, but sadly worse for the lack of Wood Warblers (good job we found one in the New Forest).
Of a few singing Pied Flycatchers, one posed well for us, and Karen found a Dipper sitting quietly and close under a bridge.
A trip to the Yorkshire coast without 500 pictures of Gannets? Apparently it is possible if you spend all your time at Flamborough instead of Bempton Cliffs. You can get some smart birds too.
Back to birds today with a trip to Dungeness. There won’t be many days’ birding in the UK when a Hoopoe doesn’t get into the top three birds, but it was a rubbish distant view, whereas the Kentish Plover (still too distant for a good photo), Bittern and Great Crested Grebes, were excellent.
(These photos are better viewed at full resolution, so click on View full size below the picture.)
What no birds? An afternoon out butterfly hunting on Saturday, yielded some nice butterflies and a bit more besides.
An evening trip out to see some Turtle Doves looked to have been in vain, but one turned up as we were about to give up and gave us some cracking views. No purring, but it would have been drowned out by the Nightingale belting out from the bush behind us.
Wood Warblers aren’t doing well in the south. Not long ago they bred regularly in Sussex, but now we have to go to the New Forest to find them and they’re getting harder there too. Fortunately we had one today, and it was reasonably cooperative. There are a few pictures from last weekend too.
