The day after I finished writing the last post, I saw something I'd never seen before - in the dining room.
Apparently this is a moth fly (also known as a drain fly) of the pericomini genus but apparently you'd need to be a serious expert to identify one more closely. It was tiny and had a wingspan of about 3/8".
Another pleasant surprise occurred on 30th August, when a painted lady was finally spotted in the garden and reappeared several times until the sun clouded over. With the weather now on the change I doubt if it'll be seen again...
Unlike the bullfinches, which will probably keep turning up while sunflower hearts are available. This time I managed to capture the male. You can't quite see the sunflower heart in its beak.
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| Male Bullfinch |
Today I took a trip to the Big Waters Reserve, where something interesting has been reported. I have mainly known it as a fishing and birdwatching venue, but was quite impressed on wandering around that there's quite a fair amount of invertebrate-friendly territory in the form of meadows (now mostly dead) and woodland clearings.
Near the Little Waters area there were a good few speckled wood and a few dragonflies. I think the ones that actually landed were common darters.
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Moving further around the area, I was pleased to come across some small coppers.
Even more were to turn up when I searched an area by the path near the track to the bird eyes, probably about twenty and also a good number of common blues, both male and female.
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I wished I had taken the trouble to get a better photo of the small copper. There were plenty of opportunities but they didn't land for long.
I was heading back to the car park when I bumped into a chap who said he knew where I could find what I was originally after. We went back to the same area a bit further along where the farm fields have a good covering of bird's foot trefoil and after a fair bit of messing around (and me starting to head for the car park again) we found it.
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| Clouded Yellow |
I'd never heard of the clouded yellow being observed this far North and had thought it might be rare here. This isn't so as there have been scattered sightings in the past but it is distinctly scarce locally and I don't think I've seen one elsewhere in the UK.
There was actually a very large amount of farmland with a good covering of bird's foot trefoil, so who knows whether there are more of them at Big Waters?
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