Tuesday 26th August

Some butterflies have started to show up in the garden, if only in small numbers - small tortoiseshells, a handful of fine peacocks that seem larger than usual and just one red admiral, plus small whites.

Rode from Annan to Dumfries yesterday, stopping off briefly at Applegarthtown Nature Reserve, which was pretty much deserted. It was really to see if the sand martins were around and indeed one solitary specimen flew around for a couple of minutes. Notes in the logbook there suggest that they are being predated upon by a sparrowhawk and, sure enough, a large brown shape passed briefly right

Aspen

in front.

I checked out a couple of trees in the same area and was able to identify this aspen on the boundary of the reserve car park. Quite pleased with myself as I'm sure I've never noticed them before.

Again very little butterfly activity in spite of reasonable sunshine.

Meanwhile I submitted the pictures from the last post to Dumfries and Galloway Wildlife and Birding, as a result most of the plants featured have been identified. So I'll add a comment with the details.

Friday 21st August

This is a bit of a catch up on miscellaneous happenings over the past ten days.

Grey alders?

Bike rides haven't produced much except a few close ups of kites and jays, partly because I've been more focussed on the exercise part more than the nature part. Did manage some nice weather for an extended run through the Glemkilns, during which I took a break by the reservoir dtream and spent a happy half an hour feeding bits of orange pith to the minnows. Surprisingly some of it got eaten. There was also a tree spot.  I took this group of trees to be alders but of course the bark is too smooth for a common alder - possibly grey alders?

The day after I took a walk on at the south end of Mabie Forest, mainly looking for butterflies.  Once again the tally was disappointingly small - a few ringlets, meadow browns and a solitary couple of common blues, none of which were keen to settle.  Everyone seems to agree it's a bad year for butterflies. Instead I took a few photos of the flowers I saw but couldn't readily identify.


Now I'm pretty new to this wild flower stuff. I suppose the yellow one in the first snap is some kind of vetch or trefoil (bird's foot trefoil?), otherwise a bit bemused. The main lesson here is that I need to take the photos closer up as it's necessary to see clearly what the leaves and stems are like as well.

A similar experience this week, when I couldn't get very far identifying wading birds at Warkworth without my better binoculars.  Got as far as identifying cormorant, oystercatcher and some common terns that were taking small fry in the shallows.  But the apparent golden plover on the edge of the rocks at the Amble breakwater presumably couldn't have been.  And wasn't sure about the fluffy-looking starling lookalikes on the rocks. Let alone the small waders running across the sand at high speed.

Still lots to see and lots to learn...

Monday 10th August

Finally managed to have a go at the Big Butterfly Watch, aided by a whole morning of reasonable sunshine.

Not surprisingly, the results weren't wonderful.  I decided to try the beginning of the path from Loch Stroan to Loch Skerrow after the farm track turnoff, where there were large numbers of scotch argos at the end of August last year. In the allocated fifteen minutes I managed just six scotch argos and

Golden Ringed Dragonfly

three meadow browns. Outside the time frame, I did see several more examples of the same species, plus a couple of ringlets and two common blues but overall it was distinctly sparse and the scotch argos weren't keen to settle more than momentarily.  There were in fact a good deal more dragonflies around than butterflies, mainly golden-ringed dragon flies, testimony to the wet weather this summer if any was needed.

The picture in the garden is similarly bleak.  Buddleia has been out in large quantities for a week but all it has attracted is one small tortoiseshell. Early days yet though.

I attempted a bit of flower spotting and photographed two plants, neither of which seem to be represented in my Book of Wild Flowers. Also observed were a couple of low-flying red kites as on my last visit here, a juvenile robin and a juvenile bullfinch drinking out of a puddle on the road. Have not however heard a chiffchaff for a couple of weeks at least.

Wednesday 5th August

Continuing cool, damp and windy weather is confirming my suspicion that a lack of any consistent warmth by the end of July means that Autumn will start by mid-August, and so it is already proving this year when the temperatures have struggled to reach 20 Celsius since June.

Currently the Big Butterfly Count is still on hold as far as I am concerned as I cannot guarantee the 15 minutes of sunshine required.

This week's bike ride has also been a rain off, but I did manage on of my rare twitches yesterday in response to the news of two pairs of bee eaters breeding in a quarry near Brampton. Now obviously I managed to see bee eaters in Provence in June but this was a definite news item and I vaguely hoped that it might be possible to see them closer to.

The temporary site put up by RSPB has been really heavily visited and I wasn't too surprised to see a number of twitchers on arrival.  It was also no real surprise to find that the observation post was in fact at some distance from the nest.  However we did catch several sightings of bee eaters flying to and from the nest and occasionally perching on the fenceposts above it. They were too far away to photograph without top-notch equipment but I could make out the colours through my binoculars and it was possible to see them in reasonable detail by telescope. You could also see the hole they were nesting in perfectly clearly.

Twitchers Twitching

The Nesting Hole

Apparently, the only time that bee eaters have nested further North than this was in 1922 at Musselburgh. The chicks are expected to be on the wing in about a fortnight's time, so it may be that even better viewings will result then.

Also in the area were many sand martins, some linnets (spotted by twitchers with very powerful lenses) a couple of crows as well as a kestrel that arrived to interrupt proceedings for a while.

Saturday 1st August

A week of interesting bits and pieces...

Last Saturday Malcolm and I took a quick run down to the Caerlaverock Nature Reserve.  The intention had been to attempt the Big Butterfly Count but as we never had 15 continuous minutes of sunshine, the survey conditions were not satisfied so we turned our attention to a bit of tree spotting, during which I managed to remind myself what an alder really looks like.

Strangely, the best spot was on our way out of the pub that evening, when we noticed that there is a large-leaved lime growing in front of the churchyard on St Michael's Street. Shocking in a minor way that I must have walked past it several hundred times without noticing it was there.

As Malcolm has only seen a red squirrel in Wales, we went to Eskrigg Nature Reserve the day after as I reckoned the chances of seeing them there were odds-on. Unfortunately there was a lot of gardening and maintenance work going on round the lake, which clearly intimidated the local birdies from visiting the feeders and no doubt the squirrels as well.

So we took a long perambulation around the reserve seeing nothing worthwhile but sure enough, on returning to the lake the volunteers were away and the squirrels were already invading the feeders, so we had a good long session watching their antics. The curious thing that no birds of any real interest approached the feeders apart from briefly one female nuthatch and a woodpecker. The scene was heavily dominated by a large number of juvenile chaffinches in feeding frenzy mode, which may accounted for the lack of other species.

On the way out we managed another interesting tree spot, which after much discussion we think we identified as a red oak.

On Thursday I went down to Gretna with the bike to check out the River Sark and the Kirtle Water in the hope of perhaps seeing a few chub lazing around. After an enjoyable diversion to the Auld Acquaintance Cairn near the first house in Gretna, I was astounded to see that the Sark was running at a far higher level than when I last visited in wintertime.  So fishspotting was out of the question, but I would have to say that some spots looked incredibly chubby.  I found it hard to believe that the otters have got them all!

So a week of variations which has highlighted for me how much of nature I have not been taking in as a result of ny preoccupation with birdlife, butterflies and fishing.  I have even bought myself a book on wild flowers, about which I know practically nothing, so who knows...

Meanwhile it appears that there are a pair of bee-eaters nesting near Brampton - after I went all the way to Provence last month to see them!

Large-leaved Lime	Red Squirrel Invasion
Red Oak??	River Sark