Bishop Middleham Quarry

After a year long covid-inspired delay, a few of us from the Naturewatch group finally managed a trip to Bishop Middleham Quarry, which is one of the highlights of the Durham magnesium limestone belt.

It was indeed a productive habitat and very easy on the eye.  The flora are probably the most outstanding, notably the helleborines and orchids, of which we saw I think four varieties.  The ones not pictured were common spotted and fragrant orchid.

Pyramidal Orchid

Dark Red Helleborine

Bee Orchid

Brown Argus

Of course a large part of my interest was the hope of seeing some less common butterflies but the conditions were rather overcast and our hopes were not high.  Fortunately we got the best of it around midday wheen a number of ringlets started to show and it wasn't too long before I saw the star of the show - my first ever brown argus in this country and it proved to be the first of several.

Distinctly small in size, I was also surprised by the amount of blue on the body.  I also found myself wondering about nomenclature as the Northern Brown Argus is supposed to occur here too. However my European Butterfly Guide talks instead of Mountain Argus but they appear to be the same thing.  As the Northern version of the northern/mountain species has a white not black upperwing spot, I'm confident it wasn't what we were seeing. Never mind the fact there are examples with black spot within a white spot!

Away from the wonderful world of terminology, further butterfly species sighted were meadow brown and small heath.  Thre was just one common blue and no appearance by (perhaps surprisingly) small copper and less surprisingly wall brown (not sunny enough) and dingy skipper.

Meadow Brown

Small Heath

Ringlet

Only two burnet moths were spotted plus one other I needed to research to discover it was a blackneck but there were surprisingly few bees.  The ones that were out were mainly carder bees and red-tailed bumblebees. 
    

Six Spot Burnet

Blackneck Moth

Red-tailed Bumblebee

It's funny how you see things again not long after you've seen them.  While helping out at the tennis club yesterday there were a couple more of the common wave moth I spotted in Cumbria.  And this morning while out for a paper there was another small bumblebee on lilac that had a red tail.  The trouble is it also had a second yellow stripe on the abdomen and I had neither camera nor mobile phone on me.  So I'll have to pass on that one.

Monday 11th June

Female nuthatch

Of course the day after I complained about the jackdaws yobbish behaviour putting off other birds, a nuthatch turned up on the peanut feeder for the first time, a female.  It hasn't stopped me cutting down on the bird food over the past couple of days, though partly because I've been out most of the time.

I did a bike ride along cycle track 10 to Stamfordham and enjoyed the flatter landscape in the area.  There were some flowers just past Seaton Burn that I at first thought were orchids and haven't managed to identify, again lots of skylarks singing and most pleasingly a male redstart that appeared in some oaks just west of Stamfordham. Plus some sort of maple I wasn't totally sure about.

I held off reporting this as I knew that the Prudhoe U3A Nature Watch trip to Hawthorn Dene near Easington was coming off today, a venue that is known to be rich in wildlife because of the magnesian limestone geology (dolomite).

This inevitably lead to a profundity of less common flowers being seen and frankly I really did find it more or less impossible to keep up with the sightings.  We certainly saw some bee orchids and some mouse-ear hawkweed but eventually all the new names just swamped me. I stuck to what I know more - butterflies and birds.

And there was indeed a fair bit to occupy the attention in those areas.  Having not yet seen a blue this year, it was pleasing to see at least twenty common blues at different times and get a decent picture.  I saw my first small heath of the year and managed to get a picture of a dingy skipper (though it was very dingy) as well as a chimney sweeper moth.  I don't think I've seen as much flower meadow in one place for a long time.

Common blue

Chimney sweeper

Dingy dingy skipper

Ogling female kestrel

We did actually manage to get a glimpse of a skylark and an excellent view of a female kestrel, which some people thought was eyeing us up so it could move in to hunt in the same area once we passed on.  I was particularly pleased to see a whitethroat passing through.  There were also sand martins, a few swallows and pipits, a fulmar and a reed bunting.

The general consensus was the area will produce even more sightings in a couple of weeks in view of the delayed summer.

Maybe I will return.