Where are the Nymphalidae?

It was perturbing to note, while writing up my notes on the Butterflies of Slovenia, that the carefully encouraged buddleia in the pots in the front garden have been in and past full bloom without a single sign of a small tortoiseshell (normally the first to appear), red admiral or peacock.  Entries I'm seeing on social media suggest that others are having the same experience. Since I returned from Slovenia over two weeks ago, I have literally seen two butterflies in the back garden.

In order to improve the situation and record at least some data for the Big Butterfly Count I went with Malcolm to Branton Lakes near Powburn in North Northumberland.

After a quiet start checking out some puzzling tree foliage on the East Lake, we started seeing plenty of butterflies on a circuit of West Lake, though once again no Nymphalidae.  At some points there was quite good coverage of bird's foot trefoil and I hoped in vain for common blue but we did get a number of burnet moths.

The grand tally of sightings was: Ringlet - 20, Six-spot Burnet 12, Meadow Brown 10, Green-veined White 2, Small Skipper 2.

Ringlet	Six-spot Burnet
Meadow Brown	Small Skipper

Green-veined White

Now I'd be the first to admit that I'm not the world's greatest expert in identifying burnet moths but close investigation of the photos I took (which didn't include all twelve) do suggest a separation of the uppermost marking into two spots.

Azure Damselfly

It was also interesting that the ringlets were all of a muddy brown rather than chocolate brown colour. Plus the green-veined white seemed a shade or two greener than the ones in Slovenia.

Other encounters were with several damselflies and one unidentified dragonfly. 

Interestingly again the damselflies were clearly the azure damselfly, said by one website 'not to be found' in the uplands of Northern England. 

We also encountered the blue-tailed damselfly a couple of times, but no photo.

Slightly strange half-light conditions made it difficult to see the plumage of the ducks on the lake apart from a cormorant, but in the distant trees on the East Lake we did make out two or three very white birds that looked rather too big to be seagulls. With some difficulty I managed to get enough of a photo to indicate that they were juvenile little egrets.

Juvenile Little Egret

I had heard of a heronry before but it appears there may be such a thing as an egretry! Notice the yellow legs, which fooled me for a while.

On the bee front the most noticeable event was the appearance of heavily sun-bleached buff-tailed (presumably) bumblebee and a tiny early bumblebee with a missing abdominal stripe.  Seemingly this can happen sometimes.

Early Bumblebee

Bleached Bumblebee

Back home in the garden there has been no very noteworthy action but I did get a nice view of a thrush on a rare visit.

Mistle Thrush