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.

Canal du Midi - Part 2

The third day on the road was devoted to a round trip to Minerve, one of the oldest villages in France.  However I was at least as much interested in the huge gorge that stretches out to the West, as I reckoned there was a chance of seeing some wallcreepers, a bird I have wanted to see for a long time but isn't too predictable and varies its nesting sites.

It wasn't to be.  In spite of extensive work with the binoculars, all I could see apart from a few crows and other hirondelles was a good number of crag martins flying around the gorge, plus a fleeting sighting of a red-rumped swallow.  Notably the River Cesse was totally dry, so one suspects this may have had an effect. The absence of birds of prey was disappointing as some quite exotic species have been seen here in the past.

I got a bit distracted into looking at butterflies again in a flower meadow, where a wall brown, a grayling and another brown argus were to be seen.  The latter is interesting in that the black spot on the upper wing is encircled by white. This is normally a characterstic of the French version of Spanish Argus but other aspects of this worn specimen don't suggest any further similarity.

Wall Brown

Grayling

Brown Argus

After still not seeing interesting birdlife in Minerve itself, I managed to catch up with a couple of chalkhill blues 'at it' by the roadside. Again there are several subspecies to choose from but I think they were pretty much the standard offering.

Chalkhill Blue

After that the wind got up and I headed for the swimming pool in the B&B at Olonzac.

Long-tailed Blues

Day 3 was another canalside run through to Narbonne, some delightful scenery breaking up some of the more monotonous sections. Again the butterflies got active once the afternoon was underway, and there were a few nice common blues on the hook in the Canal just past Paraza. Then, on passing a lock just after Le Somail, I noticed some faster flying blues homing in on a single plant. They didn't settle very long so photographs were hard to get but the distinctive underwing pattern shows that they were long-tailed blues - even though one was hard put to see the actual tail, which is basically just a bristle.

A little later I managed to identify at least one bird, a black redstart.  It was surprising not to see more of them in the wine producing areas which are common around here.

Riding past a woodland area next top the canal, I then caught sight of a swallowtail which didn't settle.  At first I thought it wasn't the stadard variety as it was flying rather delicately.  Past the Port de la Robine, I followed another for ages without it settling before I finally got a shot of a delapidated specimen, clearly a standard swallowtail.  Something similar was happening with coppers, as I thought, but when I got one to settle on the path, also just past the Port de la Robine, it proved to be, as far as I could determine, a sparsely marked spotted fritillary.

Swallowtail

Spotted Fritillary

Following a cross country diversion away from the Canal, I managed to see a couple of decent-sized fish, probably dace or carp but they bolted under a bridge as soon as they saw me and couldn't be induced to re-emerge by flicking a few sundry titbits into the water.

Canal du Midi Part 1

A good deal of time has elapsed since the last post, the reason being that I have spent a long time trying to verify the butterfly sightings on my latest trip abroad, a cycle tour along the canal du midi from Carcassonne to Beziers. I've actually been back just over a week.

Overall, the most surprising thing about the trip was the extent to which butterflies dominated the nature sightings. Apart from the hirondelles, there were remarkably few birds around and other cyclists said the same.  There were scarcely any ducks until nearing the Mediterranean and the only land animals I saw were a couple of goats playing on a woodpile in a timber yard.  I wondered whether the hot, dry weather was at least partly responsible.

The first day was a circle to the Lac de la Cavayere.  All the streams leading into the lake had totally dried out and I gradually worked out that the best place to look was the point where the streams flowed (or didn't flow) into the lake as there was here at least enough moisture to sustain some flowers.

This is where identification problems begun and it's possible I have made the odd error. I was quickly able to identify wood grayling*, clouded yellow, silver-washed fritillary, wood white, white admiral, bath white, spotted fritillary and brown argus. However I encountered some very bright blues that were larger than common blues (also present) and didn't open their wings on settling.  My thinking is that they may have been adonis blues although they lacked the white markings on the underside of the bottom wing.  One I photographed I suspected was more likely to be a chalkhill blue.

Apart from a heron, I did get a quick sighting of a firecrest at the far side of the lake.

Bath White	Black Tailed Skimmer	Adonis Blue?
Chalkhill Blue?	Brown Argus	Clouded yellow**
Meadow Brown***	Wood Grayling*	Silver-washed Fritillary
White Admiral

Spotted fritillary

Wood White

Notes:

* Apparently it is however impossible to distinguish wood grayling from rock grayling without detailed examination

**  The pale form opens up the possibility of Berger's Clouded Yellow or Paled Clouded Yellow, both of which are present at this time of year.

*** Not quite the same as our own version - probably the hispula form

The second day was a trip to Homps along the Canal du Midi and started in light rain - hopefully a bit of relief for the forest fire that could be seen burning in the hills behind Carcassonne.  On the way out of the town there was a chap setting up to fish for carp with some large boilies and heavy tackle, unsurprisingly suggesting that there are large carp in the canal.  But I never at any stage saw them feeding or topping.

Apart from a few finches in a tree on the other side and butterflies already noted yesterday, the only sign of wildlife today was the large number of snails that were clinging to plant stalks along the bankside.