Saturday 22nd June

Baby blue tits and some baby great tits have been dominating the scene in the garden, with occasional visits from woodpeckers of either gender and a greenfinch again visiting the niger seed feeder.

There hasn't been a reappearance of the marsh tits since the heavy rain last week.  I coudn't replace the fatballs they seem to like and the ones I did use were of superior quality, attracting bigger numbers.  I sense

Red Admiral on horse dung

that one or both of these factors have put the marsh tits off for the time being.

On Monday I took a long bike ride to Fenwick Pit via Ponteland and back via Percy Main.  Red admirals appeared at various points on the route, though never more than two at once.  There were no peacocks though, reinforcing my developing idea that a good year for one might be less good for the other.

At Fenwick Pit itself there was a very large painted lady and five more to my surprise by the track just North of the Shiremoor bypass.

Painted Lady at Fenwick Pit

Yesterday I took my first trip to the Havannah Nature Reserve since visiting the former drift mine there in 1974.  I immediately took to it, liking the variety of paths it is possible to follow through woods and undergrowth and the level of management which ensured both tidiness and strong vegetation. 

I don't know if it is something to do with the proximity to the airport but birds there seem to be quite tame.  Even though there are no feeders I spotted two willow (presumably) tits moving through the bushes, as well as a blackcap, a couple of willow warblers, a pair of bullfinches and a few long-tailed tits.

My main purpose in visiting was to see where reports of purple hairstreak sightings last year may exactly have come from.  Although there were relatively few mature oak trees, there are a number of immature ones so I still wasn't sure where to look when I come back.

There were however a couple of great areas for butterflies and I saw 15 speckled wood, 10 small heath and, interestingly, another seven painted ladies that were equally as large as the ones I saw on Monday.  I suppose that the size - positively massive compared to the ones I saw in Cyprus in April - suggests that they have overwintered but maybe it will be a painted lady summer. Also spotted were two large whites, one green-veined white and a single red admiral.

Small Heath

Speckled Wood

Although I scanned the heathland area quite carefully, meadow brown and dingy skipper were not seen.  Neither was common blue, in spite of an abundance of bird's foot trefoil.

One nice surprise near a ditch was a large brown dragonfly, which I have proudly identified as a male four-spotted chaser.

Four-spotted Chaser