Thanks to some breaks in the otherwise depressing July weather, there have been outbursts of increased activity, particularly amongst the butterflies - at last I'm tempted to say.
For it was just five days ago that the commas made their first appearance and sightings of red admiral, large and green-veined white and small tortoiseshell became more regular. Promising additions were fleeting appearances by holly blue and humming bird hawk moth.
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Around the same time a female woodpecker appeared on the peanuts, closely followed by a male and the latter has visited daily ever since.
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I did the Big Butterfly Count yesterday and red admiral came out in the lead with nine sightings in fifteen minutes.
On Friday I led the Prudhoe U3A Naturewatch visit to Chopwell East Field, a recently declared nature reserve, uncertain what we might see.
In the event, it was a lot. There were dozens of meadow brown and small skipper as well as a good few ringlets, green-veined white, speckled wood, red carpet and both five and six spot burnets as well as a small copper, small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock. We also managed to observe all four common species of bumblebee as well as a drone fly and a bumblebee hoverfly.
Birds were less in evidence but perhaps the most surprising sighting occurred on the way back to the car park at Chopwell Woods, when a jay, normally a shy bird, casually worked its way through the trees above our heads for nearly five minutes while we took photos of it.
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