Saturday 14th July

Last Saturday, I took a slow cycle along the banks of the Tyne from Newcastle westwards, looking for butterflies.  Interestingly, the best area was the lower meadows alongside the cycle track just before

Shaded Broad Bar

Scotswood Bridge.  Common blues, small skippers, meadow browns, ringlets and six-spot burnet moths were all to be seen in good numbers. Once again there was no small copper but I did spot the shaded borad bar moth I previously saw at Spetchells last year.

My attempts to cut down the number of jackdaws and magpies hogging the feeders in the garden have met with a degree of success.  At least I'm making it more difficult for them but unfortunately they have not been replaced by more visits from smaller birds.

Orange moth

So there hasn't been much to see apart from a couple of red admirals and the odd speckled wood.  But one
interesting occurrence was when a moth flew into the summerhouse during a coffee break a couple of days ago. I still find moths quite puzzling.  Research suggests it should be some kind of orange underwing but there are a couple of problems with that theory.  Firstly both species of orange underwing fly much earlier in the season and secondly, the wing pattern as far as you can make it out doesn't match up to the website illustrations.  So I don't really know.

Today I took a non-nature trip to Hexham and wasn't sure for what reason I decided to take a camera with me.  However, on approaching the Wentworth Cafe, I happened to notice this tree.  Following on from earlier dicussions about types of oak tree, I'm fairly confident it is a red oak.  What struck me first was the size of the leaves.  The acorns have started to fruit and look like they will be far smaller than those of other oaks.

Red Oak

Friday 5th July

I forgot to mention last time that things have deteriorated in the garden as the larger birds are now hogging the feeders and I've had to put them on half rations to at least discourage them a bit.  The only bright spot has been the appearance of a squirrel who had a good nose around the garden and the feeders before deciding to retire to a safe distance. And there was a brief red admiral on Wednesday.

Wednesday turned out nice and I was glad to make a repeat trip to Havannah Nature Reserve while my car was getting fixed, this time together with Malcolm and Arthur the Retriever.

This time the ringlets were present in force and outnumbered the speckled woods. There were a good number of meadow browns and we managed to see a dozen or so common blues and a handful of six spot burnet moths.  A noticeboard indicates that there also narrow-winged five spot burnet moths on the site but this time I checked carefully the ones we managed to catch up with and they were definitely six spot.  There was also a couple of small tortoiseshells, a few painted ladies, two small skippers and one red admiral but only a few small heath and again no small copper.  They aren't mentioned on the noticeboard so maybe aren't present, though I would find that rather surprising.  Given the presence of Malcolm's dog, few birds came near aside from a pair of bullfinches. And again the red squirrel area looked uninhabited.

Meadow Brown	Small Tortoiseshell
Common Blue	Siz Spot Burnet

We spent some time at the West end of the reserve where we found quite a number of oak trees, but reckoned that the smaller trees I had seen near the middle car park weren't oaks at all.  So I think I have a better idea where to try for the purple hairstreak. Malcolm reckoned that one of the oaks could have been a red oak, which isn't infeasible if there has been replanting as in other former mining areas.  He also identified some clusters of loganberry in a nearby hedgerow that I wouldn't have spotted at all.

Loganberries

Saturday 1st August

A week of interesting bits and pieces...

Last Saturday Malcolm and I took a quick run down to the Caerlaverock Nature Reserve.  The intention had been to attempt the Big Butterfly Count but as we never had 15 continuous minutes of sunshine, the survey conditions were not satisfied so we turned our attention to a bit of tree spotting, during which I managed to remind myself what an alder really looks like.

Strangely, the best spot was on our way out of the pub that evening, when we noticed that there is a large-leaved lime growing in front of the churchyard on St Michael's Street. Shocking in a minor way that I must have walked past it several hundred times without noticing it was there.

As Malcolm has only seen a red squirrel in Wales, we went to Eskrigg Nature Reserve the day after as I reckoned the chances of seeing them there were odds-on. Unfortunately there was a lot of gardening and maintenance work going on round the lake, which clearly intimidated the local birdies from visiting the feeders and no doubt the squirrels as well.

So we took a long perambulation around the reserve seeing nothing worthwhile but sure enough, on returning to the lake the volunteers were away and the squirrels were already invading the feeders, so we had a good long session watching their antics. The curious thing that no birds of any real interest approached the feeders apart from briefly one female nuthatch and a woodpecker. The scene was heavily dominated by a large number of juvenile chaffinches in feeding frenzy mode, which may accounted for the lack of other species.

On the way out we managed another interesting tree spot, which after much discussion we think we identified as a red oak.

On Thursday I went down to Gretna with the bike to check out the River Sark and the Kirtle Water in the hope of perhaps seeing a few chub lazing around. After an enjoyable diversion to the Auld Acquaintance Cairn near the first house in Gretna, I was astounded to see that the Sark was running at a far higher level than when I last visited in wintertime.  So fishspotting was out of the question, but I would have to say that some spots looked incredibly chubby.  I found it hard to believe that the otters have got them all!

So a week of variations which has highlighted for me how much of nature I have not been taking in as a result of ny preoccupation with birdlife, butterflies and fishing.  I have even bought myself a book on wild flowers, about which I know practically nothing, so who knows...

Meanwhile it appears that there are a pair of bee-eaters nesting near Brampton - after I went all the way to Provence last month to see them!

Large-leaved Lime	Red Squirrel Invasion
Red Oak??	River Sark