Saturday 29th June

Ringlet

The week just gone has been very rewarding in terms of nature spotting.

On Wednesday I took advantage of being in Northumberland to make a late afternoon diversion to Cresswell Pond.  Striking out along a path I erroneously thought would lead to the bird hide, I was soon seeing painted ladies and red admirals, together with a few speckled wood and a single ringlet, the first I have seen this summer.

Eventually finding the right way to the hide, the sightings continued and there was briefly half a dozen painted ladies visible at the same time.  Maybe it's going to be a painted lady year?

Faded Lady

I noticed that one or two of them had much lighter colouring on the upper forewing and vaguely wondered about an obscure variation but I think in fact it was just the result of wear. They were all of a large size.  In the end the totals were 25 painted ladies and 13 red admirals but zero peacocks.

Quite a lot of bird life was visible around the pond but the main thing that caught my eye was a couple of avocets preening themselves amongst a distant group of gulls.  They have recently worked their way up the East coast and have been seen a few locations recently.  I was also pleased to identify a few sedge warblers buzzing around the bushes as well as a few singing reed buntings.

Avocets (2) on left of sand bank

Walking back to the car along the dunes, I noticed that there were some static brown birds I couldn't readily

Linnet

decide on.  It turned out they were female linnets as was confirmed when a male posed nicely on the fence at the end of the field.

Yestreday I decided to go along on the U3A walk to the Spetchells, hoping to see some common blues. There were a couple of bonuses when I saw a grey wagtail cycling to the meeting place and my first meadow brown of the year as we ambled along the banks of the river.

There were good numbers of ringlet but once up the chalk hills, it took a while before some common blues turned up on bank of scrub sloping down into the sunshine.  There were also some small skippers, a couple more meadow browns and also a number of burnet moths.

Meadow Brown

Common Blue

Small Skipper

Here issues of identification started to creep in as the markings on the skipper were quite similar to that of a large skipper.  I don't think anyone was clued in about the differences between the six spot and five spot burnet moths. I checked one at close quarters and to my eye it had four wing spots.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo that was clear enough to settle the matter.

We also found quite a nice cluster of  spotted purple orchids. On the way back down speckled wood were about, including one couple that were mating.

Orchids