Wednesday 24 June 2015

Early morning cloud soon started to break, giving some warm spells of sunshine for the rest of the day, a brisk SW breeze sprung up by midday.

I spent most of the morning, plus a couple of hours this afternoon out on my patch, but little if anything has changed, I didn't add anything to the June list, so I still need one more species to equal the lowest June tally recorded here. No different newly fledged species were found either, but the WHITETHROATS at the Greenhouse Grounds must be on the verge of doing so, both adult bird were busy bringing in food to the nest site, similarly, the KESTRELS were feeding their young, but I expect the Whitethroats to fledge first   :-)

An early Sky Watch from my seat at Migrant Alley was pretty poor really, with GREY HERON, LESSER BLACK BACKED GULL, HERRING GULL and a few SWIFTS being the sum of my hours vigil. I could see a pair of BUZZARDS perched up in a pine tree over at the Ashes Lane Fields from where I sat, and the ROOKS were in the nearby sheep pasture feeding their offspring.


Rook

Over at the woods and lake area most of the regulars were picked out, except Long Tailed Tit and Bullfinch. Numerous species of birds had families noisily feeding in the canopy of both the Wet Woods and Scrubby Woods, including GREAT TIT, BLUE TIT, GOLDFINCH, ROBIN, DUNNOCK,WREN, NUTHATCH, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER and GOLDCREST but the lakes were home only to 15 CANADA GEESE, a usual scenario for June though.

Later in the morning and into the afternoon, I spent some time looking for Butterflies and Dragonflies, with only limited success as there were few of either about, just 1 Beautiful demoiselle, a dozen White Legged Damselflies, plus a similar number of Azure and Common Blue Damselflies were about it for the Odonata, while Butterflies included a dozen Large Skippers, 1 Small Skipper, 1 Red Admiral, 1 Large White, 2 Small Tortoiseshell, and 20+ Meadow Browns.


Large Skipper


Meadow Brown, Male

2 comments:

Derek Faulkner said...

I had one Clouded Yellow butterfly on the Swale NNR this morning.

Marc Heath said...

Nice butterfly shots Warren. Hopefully a good year for them.