Thursday 23rd April

 A fellow member from the Prudhoe U3A Naturewatch group thinks that the speckled wood I saw last week (see previous post) may have been variant specimen.  I did consider this possibility on writing the entry but dismissed it as far-fetched.

As it happens I saw my second speckled wood of the year on a bike/hike trip to the Spetchells two days ago.

Somewhat More Speckled Wood

Here we can see that, while the speckles are pretty much 'out', some are still not as clear as the others.  Assuming this one has been on the wing slightly longer than last week's, I'm still inclined to think that it's a case of more colour showing up with wear as happens with some bird species. It would be nice to see what an expert says though.

The main reason I went to the Spetchells was in the hope of seeing an ashy mining bee as I've started doing a bit of bee recording for the North East Bee Hunt  There weren't any but there were rather lot of buffish mining bees...

It was like that pretty much everywhere, including the odd one that landed on my scruffy trainers.  They weren't aggressive except towards the odd buff-tailed bumblebee that occasionally turned up. I'm glad I didn't have to count them as my nearest estimate would have been in the range 10,000 - 1,000,000!

On the way back I also finally managed to get a snap of one of this year's chiffchaffs in full song. 

Chiffchaff singing chiff-chaff

The same thing happened last year. I heard loads before I actually saw one to photograph.

There were also a few butterflies by the Tyne, including one small tortoiseshell where I saw several last August.

In the garden, there have been one or two tree sparrow appearances plus also a lot of orange tips and the odd peacock and a few other whites that tantalisingly won't settle.  It's also clear that the dunnocks have mated successfully and I suspect a pair of blackbirds have too, having several times seen the male entering a gap in the conifer hedge looking somewhat furtive.