Saturday 12th August

In a couple of ways I should have waited a bit before making the last post.  Later on the same day, I was able to report no less than five peacocks, three red admirals and one small tortoiseshell on the buddleia, plus a green-veined white and a small white elsewhere in the garden.

Then the next day I heard the swifts screeching again although I haven't heard them again since.

Following the garden theme, I've been taking a bit more interest in the bumblebees that visit the lavender by the pond.  I think I may have misidientified one regular species as red-tailed bumblebees when closer inspection shows that they were in fact they were early bumblebees.

Three days ago I noticed that the lavender was being bent rather more than usual by a larger bumblebee that clearly didn't have the stripes of the buff-tailed variety.  It turns out it was a tree bumblebee.

Tree Bumblebee

I got briefly excited about this when the Bumblebee Conservation site showed it as not present in Scotland but enquiries via Dumfries and Galloway Wildlife and Birding suggest that it has in fact been present in the South of Scotland for a few years now.

In the meanwhile, I have attempted a couple of butterfly trips that have yielded nothing of note - a quick forage aroung the Caerlaverock Nature Reserve in promisingly bright weather and a walk today around Rockcliffe looking for grayling and holly blue.  Unfortunately, the teatime weather forecast was way off the mark and the sun was scarcely to be seen.

There was an awful lot of this plant growing by the path and next to the beaches, so far unidentified.

???

The flowers look a bit like cowslips.