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
Orange-spined Drone Fly	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

Out and About

Last Wednesday I took a trip to the Tees Estuary hoping I might be in with a chance of catching up with a couple of rarities - the glossy ibis and the small blue butterfly. In the event I was successful with neither but still found a few things to catch my interest.

Starting at Saltholme RSPB I headed initially to Paddy's Pond, having found the pollinator garden virtually free of pollinators.  Here the view was largely dominated by a huge number of black-headed gulls with just a few pochard and shovelers for a little variety.  Turning back afterwards however, I did start to see some butterflies and was pleasantly surprised to find, on a path interestingly marked "Wrong Way", my first wall brown of this year.

Not sure how I missed it earlier, but I then immediately happened upon a nice area of banked flower meadow where there was another first of season sighting - at least 15 common blues, all but one of them male.

Wall Brown

Common Blue

A couple of orange-brown butterflies passing over the same area couldn't be identified.

The common blue turned up at several points as I wandered around the site but only one other female appeared.

Adjourning for lunch in the café, I was able to observe some common (I think) terns hovering to hunt insects from the surface of the water, the view occasionally interrupted by hunting sand martins from a man-made nesting wall. 

Tern hovering...then diving

Unfortunately I didn't manage to film one of the terns actually splashing into the water.

Here again there were a few pochards and shovelers.

Pochard

Next destination was the Fire Station Pond, which was where the glossy ibis had been reported. However I knew the chances of seeing were slim as the last sighting noted on the whiteboards was a few days earlier on 21st May, after having appeared fairly consistently for some while beforehand.

What I did see was two juvenile and one mature avocet and still more shovelers. Simply because it was so big and placid, I finally persuaded myself to photograph the single black-headed gull.

Young Avocets

Female Shoveler

Black-headed Gull

It seems I forgot to get one of the male shoveler.  A bigger miss however was a flyover by a marsh harrier which was too brief to do much about.

Next I drove to nearby Dorman's Pool, the possible site for the small blue.  Being unfamiliar with the site though, I made the error of following the signs to the hide, which turned out not to be the right place at all and only resulted in me seeing a damselfly.

Azure Damselfy?

A more promising area proved to be the walk along the private road and North towards the viewpoint.  here there was some kidney vetch, the larval food plant for the small blue, though much more bird's foot trefoil and hence several more common blue, this time including several females.

Female Common Blue

There was another wall brown and, noticeably scarcer this year, a speckled wood as well as - so hard to find last year but hard to avoid this - a single dingy skipper.

Speckled Wood

Dingy Skipper

It was more than a little frustrating that, with other things to do, I ran out of time to complete the whole of the path. So no small blue but hopefully I'll start looking in the right place next time!

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