Friday 22nd May

After moaning about the birds' failure to eat up my leftover cumin seed in a previous post, it was a bit surprising to notice that it had totally disappeared when I put more food out the other day. How mysterious!  The only thing I can think of is that the tree sparrows were visiting recently.  Can there be an affinity between

Wood Forget Me Not

tree sparrows and cumin seed? Obviously I'll have to put out some more to see if I can find out.

Meanwhile the butterfly emphasis in the garden has shifted slightly.  A few small whites have been showing up and the orange tips tended to be female while green-veined whites continue unabated. There's also been some good sightings of red kites hovering low over the B6305.

In the colder weather I have again fallen back on photographing flowers and then find I can't identify them.  This one however is clearly Wood Forget Me Not - I hope.

The major trip out this week was to Dipton Woods in search of the green hairstreak.  I saw precisely three and one suspect, a complete contrast the the 35 I saw last year  It was probably a week or ten days too late, but my calculation was that dreary weather might have held things up.

It was actually strange to see that the development of the bilberry was quite different along the route.  In most shaded areas it hadn't even started flowering yet but when I reached the 'hot spot', it was clearly past its best

Green Hairstreak

and hanging around for 15 minutes produced only one suspect on the wing.

Then a stroke of luck - as I moved on one flew in front of me and landed on the top of a young conifer.

I eventually continued the walk through the wood, continually scanning the abundant bilberry in flower but there just didn't seem to be any hairstreaks around anywhere that was even partially shaded.

Eventually I came to an area that was on the edge of more open land, but that would have been sheltered from the sun by nearby trees for a good part of the day.  It was here that I found the other two, one of which was a bit tatty and another that quickly made itself invisible in all the greenery.

On the way back down something strange happened.  What appeared to be a minute speckled wood settled briefly in front of me - but it was so small I thought it might have been a moth.  Unfortunately, like the third green hairstreak, it eluded the camera.  I didn't find a moth that looked like it.

Monday 11th May

I held back on the last couple of items on the last flowery post as I needed to email a friend (and indirectly his Ranger daughter) on a couple of identification issues. Now the panel can reveal that one of the other items was in fact wood spurge.  I should have realised too that the other was wild cherry but had not realised they can grow to 20 metres in height and had therefore discounted the idea.

Wood Spurge

Wild Cherry

Following a lead from my sister last week, I took a longish ride to Weetslade Country Park in the hope of seeing a lesser whitethroat, a bird which didn't feature in Dumfriesshire so I was keen to get a confirmed sighting.

Social Isolation

On the way through Wylam it was amusing to see the effects that social isolation has had on the local population.  I took the road up past Close House to Heddon, seeing the odd white flattering around and a few speckled wood on the cycle track through Darras Hall.

I didn't hang around much until I got to Weetslade and quickly identified the suspect area.  I think I probably did see a lesser whitethroat but it was difficult to be certain, as birds kept scurrying around in the gorse and other bushes. The light was also very bright, making it hard to pick up the colouration well.  So much so in fact that I thought the first birds I saw in the treetops were female blackcaps.  In fact they were common whitethroats.

At one point I definitely spotted a slimmer, brighter bird, which was probably lesser whitethroat but it was so brief that I couldn't register the definite sighting I wanted.  In retrospect, I wish I'd done a bit of homework to distinguish the whitethroats but I hadn't realised there would be so many commons. Other casual sightings were lapwing and skylark, quite good views of both.

I only got one distant photo of a whitethroat at Weetslade, which the bright light made impossible to identify for certain.  Then quite by chance, one popped up at the end of Prestwick Carr.  But this one was clearly a common whitethroat.  Note the pink legs and wing markings.

Common Whitethroat

Green-veined whites have become much more apparent in the garden, and this one settled still for over five minutes on the garlic mustard.  I thought it might be laying but there were no obvious signs afterwards.

Green-veined White

Monday 4th May

One of the features of my activities is sudden and often fleeting surprises. Sometimes it's not so much the sighting as the location of the sighting that defines the surprise.

So it was no surprise to catch sight of a jay on a recent bike ride through the North end of Chopwell Woods last week but I was considerably surprised when one landed on the patio corner unit earlier this week.  In fact it was the closest view of a jay I've ever managed.

I also wouldn't be surprised to spot a marsh tit in certain locations but it certainly did surprise me when one turned up in the hedgerow of the Hadrian's Cycleway right where it passes by Leamington Centre last Friday. A good amount of mature woodland in Denton Burn nearby offered some explanation.

What they had in common was that neither hung around to pose for a photo.

Overall the good weather started to break about a week ago and butterfly sightings have become scarce, just the odd peacock, speckled wood and orange tip plus a couple of green-veined whites. Last Saturday I made the first positive sighting of a female orange tip on the garlic mustard in my garden.  On the whole the whites are still performing flypasts without coming in to land, unlike most aircraft which are doing the opposite.

This Wednesday the rains finally moved in bringing a drop in temperature and I decided to indulge in a bit of flower spotting on my last visit to the Woods before it hit. It had caught my eye that most of the things I was seeing were white.  I'm not strong on wild flowers but managed to identify the following as wood sorrel, wood ruff and (I hope I've got this right) greater stitchwort.

Riding back home from Swalwell along the old railway on Friday, I suddenly picked up a whiff of garlic and so was able to add that to the gallery as well.

Wood Sorrel	Wood Ruff
Greater Stitchwort	Wild Garlic