Last butterflies, fox and geese

Although family matters have recently intervened to delay this post by several days, I did manage to keep an accurate memory of late butterfly appearances.

The last one in the garden was the 2nd October, whilst decapitating a huge dog rose, when a damaged small tortoiseshell landed briefly on my green wheelie bin.

On the 7th October, out cycling in cool, windy conditions, there was a single white flying through the Countryside Park at Newburn.  Incidentally, I thought I glimpsed a willow warbler in the trees a bit afterwards on stopping for a break.  Surely not?  They should be out of the country by now.

Anyway, the latest contender for the Last Butterfly 2021 award was a red admiral seen flying into a tree

Cormorant

on a brief visit to Dumfries on Friday 15th.  This wasn't too surprising as the temperature reached 15C for most of the day.

A Naturewatch trip to Big Waters a week ago on Monday was an enjoyable change as I haven't been out with the group for a while.  We were greeted by a large numbers of big black birds and noted that some of them seemed to have a green tinge to their plumage.  We wondered if they were shags but closer investigations suggest all the ones I saw were cormorants, as I think the photo (right) confirms.

Birds I also saw included gadwall, teal, great-crested grebe and little grebe but I missed out on shoveler and, annoyingly, snipe.  I didn't spend much time looking out for woodland birds, but did notice a couple of tree sparrows on one of the bird tables.

Also slightly annoying was that virtually all the photos I took that were any good were of wigeon.  Interestingly all the males were in eclipse, apart from one fellow that still retained some of his summer markings.

This one bird I did manage to capture in a group of others, albeit in profile.  Somewhat out of the ordinary was the appearance of ssssome sort of an exotic pheasant.  I wondered if it was an escapee or an inhabitant of the Washington WWT site.

Wigeon

Strange pheasant

But the best photo of the day was taken by another member of the group, who managed to capture a scene of natural harmony on the other side of the lake.

Fox and Geese

Quite remarkable.  Perhaps it's a bit like the relationship between small fish and pike or barracuda.  They live in perfect harmony - until the predator gets hungry!  

Somewhere there must be a pub called "The Fox and Geese".