Saturday 14th July

Last Saturday, I took a slow cycle along the banks of the Tyne from Newcastle westwards, looking for butterflies.  Interestingly, the best area was the lower meadows alongside the cycle track just before

Shaded Broad Bar

Scotswood Bridge.  Common blues, small skippers, meadow browns, ringlets and six-spot burnet moths were all to be seen in good numbers. Once again there was no small copper but I did spot the shaded borad bar moth I previously saw at Spetchells last year.

My attempts to cut down the number of jackdaws and magpies hogging the feeders in the garden have met with a degree of success.  At least I'm making it more difficult for them but unfortunately they have not been replaced by more visits from smaller birds.

Orange moth

So there hasn't been much to see apart from a couple of red admirals and the odd speckled wood.  But one
interesting occurrence was when a moth flew into the summerhouse during a coffee break a couple of days ago. I still find moths quite puzzling.  Research suggests it should be some kind of orange underwing but there are a couple of problems with that theory.  Firstly both species of orange underwing fly much earlier in the season and secondly, the wing pattern as far as you can make it out doesn't match up to the website illustrations.  So I don't really know.

Today I took a non-nature trip to Hexham and wasn't sure for what reason I decided to take a camera with me.  However, on approaching the Wentworth Cafe, I happened to notice this tree.  Following on from earlier dicussions about types of oak tree, I'm fairly confident it is a red oak.  What struck me first was the size of the leaves.  The acorns have started to fruit and look like they will be far smaller than those of other oaks.

Red Oak