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