Saturday 26th May

There has been an outbreak of gang warfare in the garden between the jackdaws and the pigeons.  I was surprised to see that it was the pigeons who seemd the more aggressive.  Maybe it was a case of size matters.

Wednesday was forecast to be sunny so I rode up the Tyne valley some way past Bywell in the hope of spotting some butterflies.  But it was one of those days when the forecast couldn't have been more wrong.  It was overcast the whole time and not a single butterfly to be seen.  In fact the most interesting thing I did see was possibly this farmer's field full of blue flowers.  I'm not sure what they were or what they were grown for but it did strike me as kind of odd.

There were quite a few skylarks singing high up in the gloom and it took me most of the day before I saw one.  On the way back along the Tyne, there was an area on the edge of the Spetchells near Prudhoe where trees have been cleared to allow sand martins to nest and there were a few flying about.

By coincidence, the next U3A Naturewatch walk on Friday was to the Spetchells, and this time the forecast was spot on - very gloomy and so I gave up hopes again of any butterfly spotting.  One orange tip did turn up just as we set off, but that was it.

Apart from sighting a kestrel above the river, we were soon into flower-spotting. Once again I was straight out of my depth but I did manage to identify a few items as below:

Germander Speedwell

Orchid

Bird's foot Trefoil

There was a bit of argument about the orchid as it might have been an early purple or a marsh orchid. Obviously I couldn't possibly comment. It does seem that there is some hybridisation anyway.

What interested me more was the amount of mining bees that were around in spite of cooling temperatures and a shower.  There were holes all over the place in some parts. All of a sudden a moth turned up and landed on the chalk.  At first I thought it was a common carpet, but further research proved it was a treble-bar. Quite pleased to have worked this out as I don't normally do moths.

Buffish Mining Bee

Treble-bar