Some Hits and Some Misses - Part 1

Not for the first time, I've fallen rather behind with my nature record keeping. It's difficult keeping up with lots happening and the various distractions of the  World Cup, Wimbledon and the Tour de France.

Where to start?

Well I did do a couple of Large Heath surveys at Muckle Moss near Hadrian's Wall but the first on a windy day produced none and the second in slightly better conditions last Thursday only one definite and one suspected sighting. On the first occasion there was at least a possible sighting of the Manchester Treble Bar moth and there was a plump specimen of the oak eggar moth.

Oak Eggar Moth

It seems the season for Large Heath in the Hadrian's Wall area is pretty much over.  On the way back from the second trip, I made a bit of a detour to Bywell to see if I could find the white-letter hairstreak, only to discover that the tree where I saw it before was completely dead - presumably a victim of Dutch Elm Disease.

There was a similar disappointment a couple of days earlier when I took a bike ride to the Big Waters Reserve to see if the farmland nearby where the clouded yellow turned up was still under set-aside. It wasn't. At least on a fairly brief stay I managed to see two small skipper, a few dragonflies, a red admiral and two small tortoiseshell.

At the weekend I travelled West to link up with V&A and baby.  On the Saturday afternoon we went to Broughtonknowe Wood near Biggar, an impressive and large area of grassland.  I was quickly pleased to note a number of ringlet around. In fact there must have been over a hundred of them, considerably outnumbering meadow brown and all others.  The whites all proved to be green-veined white, a change from the mainly large whites I've been seeing at home.

Ringlet

Green-veined White

There were a couple of small skipper and a large number of burnet moths but bees were largely overshadowed by drone flies. Apart from a couple of azure damselflies, dragonflies weren't settling.

Azure Damselfly	Blotch-winged Hoverfly
Eoseristalis	Furry Dronefly

In the evening we took a walk along the old railway line near Leadhills.  The objective here was a pair of hen harriers with chicks that had been observed by V&A as recently as last Thursday.

As it happened they weren't to be seen and we speculated that they may have left the area - perhaps wisely as this is a known shooting area.

So the main birds we saw perched on posts were a very distant buzzard and a juvenile wheatear.

Buzzard

Wheatear

OH and I did catch a view of a grey heron enjoying a scratch.

Heron