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...