Monday 18 June 2012

After work this afternoon I went over to the Tree Nursery to see what insect life was about, the sun was making the occasional short appearance, and it was reasonably warm, but despite this there was little to be found  :-(  Just 1 Common Blue butterfly, 1 Red Admiral, five Meadow Browns and a single Large Skipper was all I got for an hours work, the only Damselfly was a White-legged.

Two WHITETHROAT pairs were feeding young, but they were just about the only birds in the Tree Nursery, apart from a couple of MAGPIES, plus the odd BLACKBIRD and DUNNOCK.
Whitethroat
Large Skipper
Large Skippers mating, I took this photo yesterday
Large Skippers mating
Not having much luck with the insects, I moved over to the Greenhouse Complex, here I saw a male BLACKCAP, and the Whitethroat pair, the young of which can be seen on yesterdays post. A pair of LINNETS ferried food back and forth from their nest site, and a pair of GREENFINCH looked to be doing the same, not much else to look at though.
Male Blackcap
I spent the last 45 minutes of the visit on my seat at Migrant Alley, where I watched the SWIFTS and SWALLOWS feeding, as well as both the KESTRELS up hunting, a SPARROWHAWK flew over carrying a prey item, and a HOBBY was watched as it circled over the Greenhouses, still no sign of any of the Peregrines this month, so the June list is still on 62, the 11 year mean species total for June is 63.6, so I need just 1.6 more species to reach that mark, not sure where the .6 will come from :-)

6 comments:

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Those Large Skippers didn't hang about did they ? Really nice shots .
Left a comment re. yesterday's Odonata , don't kick yourself too hard .

Warren Baker said...

Greenie,
Those skippers were the first I saw, they were making up for lost time, my first sighting of them last year was on May 31st.

Saw the comment on yesterdays Odenata page, I have taken note!

ShySongbird said...

Great photos again Warren! I'm beginning to forget what Odonata look like...and butterflies for that matter...sigh :-(

Pete Woodruff said...

More excellent photographs Warren, the butterflies are in the main in trouble.

Jason K said...

It's great to see the whitethroat fledglings isn't Warren. I've not had a sniff of Large Skipper at Shenstone yet this (supposed) summer

kirstallcreatures said...

Lovely photos Warren, nice pic of the male Blackcap and great sighting of the mating Large Skipper (oops nearly typed Large Kipper, that would have been an interesting sighting!)