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.