A Mixed Bag

Keen to take advantage of the supposed heatwave, I set out for Wallington Hall Gardens on Sunday.  In fact the weather was cloudy all day and en route I thought I might do better with bees than butterflies.

On the whole the reverse was the case.  It was certainly warm enough, the winds were low and butterflies were out in abundance.

Particularly pleasurable was to see three painted ladies, to add to the one at Havannah the other week.

Painted Lady with Comma

Apart from commas, there were plenty of red admirals and small tortoiseshells, the former predominant on the several buddleia bushes, the latter more in other areas.  I don't recall having seen a peacock.

Other sightings were speckled wood and wall brown, the latter very briefly before being scared off, partly by a deranged young willow warbler that was going through the vegetation just a of couple yards away from me and appeared at times to be actually chasing the butterflies.

Deranged Willow Warbler

Not a well bird I suspect.

However it was the bees that produced the single business turn-up as I found several specimens of what I'm fairly certain were broken-belted bumblebees.

Broken-belted Bumblebee

Here's a second photo:

As a moorland species of Scotland and the Pennines, you'd have to ask what they were doing in a walled garden.  The yellow facial hair and legs are probably due to pollen.

The only other pollinators I noticed were honey bees, one with an orange tip to its tail and a plain-faced dronefly.

I decided to spend a good part of Bank Holiday Monday in the garden, just really to see if anything interesting would turn up. It was sunnier weather, but with a fair breeze most of the time.

Meanwhile I did a bit of counting of the most frequent butterflies.  Notably several commas turned up in the morning, but I did not see any after about 1.00 pm.  By contrast, small tortoiseshells were much more in evidence after about 3.30 pm.

Large whites, which have been very frequent this year, predominated but all three main variations of white were present.  On a very unscientific count, I reckoned that again the most numerous visitor, red admiral, outnumbered peacocks by a good bit over 10 - 1.  Perhaps it hasn't been a great year for peacocks.  My memory suggests that in past years, there have sometimes been more of them than red admirals.  Still no painted lady however.

As often on these occasions, a couple of things happened within a few minutes of each other.  An unfamiliar moth turned up on the buddleia.  It showed up orange in flight but looked a good deal different when settled.

New Moth

I assumed orange underwing but they don't settle with their wings tightly together.  A helpful suggestion on facebook is broad-bordered yellow underwing as orange underwing is in any case no longer on the wing in August.  Sure enough, internet photos show its colour is more orange than yellow.

Then up in the trees a blueish shape passed by.  It was a slightly less fleeting view than the one at Bradley Hall Gardens.  I'm pretty confident that it was the holly blue.

Meanwhile, the bullfinches kept sneaking up on the birdfeeders three or four yards in front of me.

Female Bullfinch

The male was rather more elusive.

In the evening I spent an hour or so at Marden Quarry hoping the night heron would turn up.  It didn't.  There were however a good number of gadwall to keep the mallards and coots company.

Gadwall

Even More Butterflies

A quick ride round the northern part of Chopwell Wood proved that my previous laments about the shortages of speckled wood do not signal its total demise, as I saw half a dozen of them within half an hour.

Perhaps more interesting since I don't recall spotting them there before was a healthy display of orchids along the slightly remote track I followed:

Orchids

Common Spotted Orchid

I'm not sure what kind they are but they reminded me that I'd seen a cracker a few days earlier at the Spetchells - a common spotted orchid I believe. 

However I digress...

Last Sunday I cycled to Weetslade Country Park, enticed by an article suggesting the presence of small copper and small skipper, and still anxious to see as many butterflies as possible. 

I arrived about lunchtime and settled near the top of the hill and saw nothing for forty five minutes apart from a single red-tailed bumble bee.  Then just before I moved on a single common blue appeared.

Moving around a bit I didn't find anything until right near the western exit I came across a triangle of grassy heathland, where things really started to happen.

Within an hour I totalled 25 ringlets, 12 male common blue, one of which sunbathed next to me repeatedly plus 5 of what I assumed at the time would be small skipper. On inspection of photographs however they were more likely large skippers - wasn't expecting that one!

Large Skipper

Small copper didn't appear - probably between broods - but a couple of girls said they had seen several small heath and I reckon I might have caught sight of one in flight but wasn't certain.

As at the Spetchells, I noticed a lack of bird's foot trefoil.  As there the main compensation seems to be an immense number of buttercups, which is what the skipper was nectaring on.

There were also a couple of speckled wood along the woodland edge and several on the cycle track through Ponteland, proving that rumours of its demise are indeed exaggerated.

Back at home the tits have finally realised that the caged peanut feeder is indeed for their benefit.

Plus there was a brief but noticeable reappearance of female red mason bees around the bug hotel.

One of them landed on my hand yesterday but more significant was the appearance of a broken-belted bumblebee worker on the plants nearest the house.  Unfortunately, my new wonder camera let me down, only managing hopelessly blurry shots, but I got a clear view and was pretty confident of what I saw.