Sunday 21 June 2009

Cool and cloudy once again for this mornings patch walk, and it was ''as you were'' for the species count, although the 50 species today did have two not seen yesterday, a Juv. GREY WAGTAIL seen by the college stream, which could not have been raised far away, and also a SPARROWHAWK that was seen carrying off some unfortunate victim across the tree nursery, and into the wet woods.

Not much singing was heard this morning, but those who were trying included, the migants birds of BLACKCAP, CHIFFCHAFF, WHITETHROAT, and TURTLE DOVE, while the resident WREN, DUNNOCK, ROBIN, BLACKBIRD, CHAFFINCH, GOLDCREST and SONG THRUSH all gave some song.

I noted a family of LESSER WHITETHROATS being fed in the college grounds, this pair have been very elusive birds, I only heard the male sing once!

This afternoon, the sun shone (at times) so I roamed around the Tree nursery boundary, looking for butterflies. I really wanted to find that Brown Argus again, but I failed. However I did get some pics of -
A Male Common Blue Butterfly, Ive had a female on my patch, but this is the first male, what a cracker!




Below is what i'm sure is a Small Skipper, and represents another new Butterfly species for my patch
I also saw another Small Tortoishell, lets hope they are on the raod to recovering some of their losses.

When I got home from ''butterfly hunting'' I was surprised to see this young Grass snake in my pond, it was only as thin as my finger and about 30cm long (about a foot in old money)
I couldn't have a post without a bird in it! So here's a Juv. GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER, taken this morning in the gloom!








11 comments:

swatson said...

beautiful shots of the butterflies and cant believe a snake in your pond OMG
Sheila

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Male Common Blue and male Small Skipper in the same afternoon , can't be bad .
Essex Skipper in a couple of weeks with round it off nicely .
Getting into the reptiles in the garden as well I see !
Well done .

Steve said...

A snake in your garden, you lucky git. Nice Woodpecker shot.

Anonymous said...

Well done again, Warren. The Grass Snake is a great garden record.

Chris said...

Hi Warren,
You still did it ok even if it was a cloudy day. You still saw or heard quite a lot of things and this series of butterflies shots is wonderful.... Nice to abe able to see woddpecker too... I missed them a lot...

Jann said...

I can't believe we both posted Common Blues on the same day! Too funny! Nice photos, all!

Kelly said...

wow...wow...wow....those first two photos are stunning. I've never seen a male Common Blue butterfly...or a female either for that matter ;-)
The blue of the wings is so fresh and soft...beautiful and peacful--like fairy wings. I bet fairy artists over the years have been inspired by this butterfly.

ShySongbird said...

The Common Blue is such a pretty butterfly, I like the female as much as the male. Well done on the snake, very impressive! Great shot of the juvenile Woodpecker. Lovely set of photos!

Anonymous said...

That blue butterfly is a winner in my book.

NW Nature Nut said...

You have such wonderful butterfly diversity! And I like the bunny in the last post. Cute!

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Warren: You got some neat butterflies and that blue one is neat.