Butterflies Strike Back

Peacocks

I certainly spoke too soon in bemoaning the demise of the nymphalidae family in my last post!  It just took a couple of days of decent sunshine and they were out in force on the buddleia and gradually outnumbering the whites - first the small tortoiseshells on Sunday and then the peacocks, which were dominant by Wednesday when not a tortoiseshell appeared.  

Red admirals were however not to be seen, reinforcing my perception that they don't appear much when there are large numbers of peacocks, one of which got up close and personal, landing on my shoulder.

Things got even more interesting on Tuesday morning, when I noticed a wall brown nectaring on the buddleia.  I thought I'd seen it the day before but took it for a comma that disappeared when I investigated further.

Not only is wall brown not a common sighting in this area, I had never seen one on buddleia before.

As if to cap it all, the following day, a comma did turn up and spent a great deal of time gorging itself.

Then the whole thing came to an end and the murk descended again.  Today there wasn't a single butterfly anywhere.

Wall Brown

Comma

All Quiet on the Nature Front

By comparison it's been a quiet couple of weeks with no new sightings.  The often dreary weather hasn't helped.

I've been bemoaning the lack of nymphalidae on my now several flourishing buddleia bushes.  Setting off on a bike ride a week ago on Wednesday, I noticed with envy that there were a couple in a neighbour's garden, since when small tortoiseshell, red admiral and peacock have appeared in mine but very infrequently and singly.  I have yet to see a comma.  It may just be that the best is yet to come but my suspicion is that it is a very bad year for these species.

By contrast there has been a larger number of whites, I think possibly more than most years.  Far and away predominant has been the large white with jut occasional appearances by green-veined and small white.  Initially it was mainly females but males have come more into prominence recently.

Female Large White

One red admiral seemed to prefer the flowery pattern on my rather tatty peg basket to the buddleia.

Red Admiral

Otherwise I've been looking out for plasterer bees but haven't seen any.  I haven't been putting out the peanut feeders in the plum trees as much as I want to give the plums a decent chance to ripen without getting pecked.  However, long-tailed tits and a male nuthatch have visited on a couple of occasions.

Yesterday I was out fishing at Brenkley and never had a bite.  It was mainly an attempt to familiarise myself with the tactics of fishing banded pellet so I wasn't too worried and reckoned a good carp could come along at any time.  In fact no-one caught a carp and there were no definite signs of carp activity so it was probably just one of those unaccountable days when they aren't feeding.

Another New Sighting

One of the buddleia on the front garden has flowered early, inspiring a couple of visits from small tortoiseshells but so far nothing more glamorous.  Peacocks have been non-existent lately and red admirals have been seldom apart from four or five seen on a walk in Cumbria.

Somthing I have never seen before is a jackdaw sprawling out on the lawn.  I thought it was in distress but it had flown off when I went to take a look.  Perhaps it was just sunbathing?

Jackdaw

Anyway the frog wasn't too concerned.

For the Big Butterfly Count I decided to return to Wingate Quarry, being aware that I had made no attempt to keep a tally on numbers when I went before looking for the marbled white.

My totals over a 15 minute sunny period around midday were:

• Marbled White 14 (making my guesstimate of approaching 100 in over an hour last time fairly credible)
• Common Blue 6
• Meadow Brown 3
• Ringlet 2
• Geen-veined White 1
• Large White 3
• Small White 2
• Small Heath 11
• Small Skipper 3

Surprisingly, The Big Butterfly Count didn't require the last two to be reported, which was a bit of a shame.  Marbled whites weren't quite as numerous as last time, when it was often possible to see five or six at the same time.

Although looking very blue in flight, the one common blue I tried to photograph was clearly female.

One photo I did get was a poorish snap of a moth that I have found it hard to identify.

Moth

It looks a bit like a feathered gothic but doesn't seem quite right.

A surprising absentee from my quarry visits has been the small copper.  I also haven't seen a dingy skipper this year.  I did however spot a couple of peacocks at distance on my way back to the car park at Wingate.

Yesterday as planned for a while I took a bike ride to Cambois to see if I could catch up with the grayling butterfly.  Luckily I saw one - by complete chance as it landed right near me as I pushed the bike back from the dunes.

Grayling

One other suspect was spotted on the wing.  Identification on the wing was however a little troublesome as there were a large number of meadow brown about.  I was expecting the grayling to be larger but in fact the one I saw was about the size of a meadow brown, whereas some of the meadow brown were distinctly bigger than normal.

There were again several small skipper and his time I did manage to catch up with a male common blue.

Male Common Blue

I noticed that the land right up to the coast has been acquired by the car battery factory, so hopefully it's not the begiining of the end for the grayling at Cambois.

My latest adventure has left me wondering what butterflies present in Northern England I still need to see.  Apart from the marsh fritillary, which is on the hitlist for next summer the obvious answers would be large skipper and small blue.  The former is reasonably abundant and it may be that I have misidentified it as small skipper in the past.

But the small blue would probably necessitate a major expedition to even find it away from a private site in Teesside.

Oh, and I suppose there is still the mountain/northern brown argus.

An Exciting Couple of Weeks

The good weather broke through in the middle of July and I have been taking full advantage by getting out as much as possible.  I'll start at the beginning...

On the 15th Malcolm and I did a fishing trip to Milkhope Pond, determined to put some fish on the bank after our previous blank at Brenkley.  The tactic was to scale down the tackle but using baits that would be big enough to put off the tiddlers.  In the end we had four skimmers and two roach, all from the margins on legered sweetcorn and no tiddlers - but no carp either.

The day after we linked up again for a dog walk through the meadows by the River Aln.  Early sightings of a small skipper and a burnet moth promised much but otherwise ringlet and meadow brown predominated.

Small Skipper

On the Saturday I took part in a bee hunt at Watergate Park organised by the Natural History Society's expert thanks to whom we were able to identify amongst others a vestal/gypsy cuckoo bumble bee (which I fortuitously came across), furrow bee (minute) and male buff-tailed bumblebee.

On the side I also noted a marmalade hoverfly and a shaded broad bar moth as well as several more small skippers, which seem to be very common this year and were to appear at further venues.

Marmalade Hoverfly

Shaded Broad Bar

This Monday I was out hunting hairstreaks and for about the fourth time visited Bywell Bridge only to find overcast weather and little sign of activity in the elms.  By contrast an evening visit to the viaducts at Hamsterley Mill provided two or three strong but fleeting purple hairstreak suspects.  Probably too early though for them to be on the wing in large numbers.

After taking part in a walking cricket session (yes it's come to that!) I went to Wingate Quarry around Tuesday lunchtime hoping to see a marbled white at the only site in Northern England where they are present.  I must have seen approaching 100!  Introduced in the hope that they would spread, they seem to be very happy where they are.  

Marbled White

Also sighted in this very scenic setting were good numbers of small heath, small skipper, common blue (though only 2-3 females) and burnet moth as well as the inevitable ringlet and meadow brown, large numbers of red-tailed bumblebee and I think a white-tailed bumblebee.

Female Common Blue

White-tailed Bumblebee

Perhaps more significant was this latticed heath moth, which I believe is somewhat scarce.  However, I see that I also have a less good photo of one at Watergate Park too.

Latticed Heath

The day after I set off late in the evening to go on a nightjar watch near Slaley.  Nightjars are rare in Northumberland but we managed half a dozen fleeting sightings as the darkness encroached and heard a fair bit of churring.  The most impressive bit was watching one hunting and returning to the same dead tree. There were plenty of toads and midges around plus an orange underwing moth but only one bat.

Thursday was nominally a day off but I couldn't resist this heron fishing on the edge of the marina at North Shields.

Grey Heron

On Friday I was back on the hairstreak trail again, this time with almost completely opposite results.  After some delay I arrived at Bywell Bridge going on on 1.00 pm, having spotted my first red admiral for several weeks on the way.

This time the sun was out and after a few minutes I started to notice suspicious activity in the elm tree at the north-eastern corner of the bridge.  It wasn't too long before I got a positive identification of my first ever white-letter hairstreak.  In the course of the next hour I must have seen 20-30 individuals, coming in little flurries and briefly settling on the tree leaves.  Rather contradicting the advice I had read on the West Sussex Butterfly Conservation site, they were mainly on the sunny side of the tree and not totally out of the wind, which I have however noticed is pretty variable in this location.

White Letter Hairstreak

By contrast my evening visit to Hamsterley came to an abrupt end after sighting just one suspected purple hairstreak when the cloud moved in and obscured the setting sun.

The weather is closing in again so I may not have so much to report over the next few days!

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.

New Species Seen

Last Saturday I took a chance on the weather improving for a trip to Campfield Marsh in Cumbria with my son and fiancee in the hope of seeing a marsh fritillary.

Unfortunately the sun refused to shine but it was still a pleasant walk in a wetland environment with some different flora and fauna.

For a while I thought the only sign of butterfly or moth would be a drinker moth caterpillar but on coming to a woodland edge I noticed a moth that I later saw a few times - an aptly named common wave.

Drinker Moth Caterpillar

Common Wave

Further into the wood I saw a couple of light-coloured bumblebees I didn't recognise visiting foxgloves.  It was frustrating trying to identify them but I think from video evidence they were moss carder bees.

Moss Carder Bee

There were also a few birds around, notably a little egret, a single speckled wood butterfly and a strange growth on a tree.

Still after marsh fritillaries we dropped in for a shorter walk at Finglandrigg Wood with no more success but I did see the first definite meadow brown of the summer on one of many common spotted orchids and another bee imitator, this time a bumblebee hoverfly... if I've got it right.

Meadow Brown

Bumblebee Hoverfly

Back at home the day after I spotted to spot a patchwok leafcutter bee, no great rarity but a first for me.

Patchwork Leafcutter Bee

The jay is still  appearing from time to time but is very shy and disappears as soon as I move around in the house.

Jay

As you can see, s/he's about to disappear again.

I thought that the baby woodpecker was now feeding independently but there was a recent visit yesterday when the parent bird obliged, I think with some reluctance.

Woodpeckers

This Tuesday another butterfly target went unachieved as, in spite of reasonable weather, I couldn't see any sign of the white letter hairstreak at Bywell Bridge but there were a couple more first seasonal spottings when I saw a small skipper by the Tyne as well as three ringlets.  The latter may have been fresh on the wing and weren't settling but I have seen a couple since.

Small Skipper

Meanwhile there has been some interesting bird activity at home.

Young birds have fledged and a series of them have been visiting the garden with their parents to be fed.  Tits often do this and this year the blue tits have been particularly brave, regularly feeding their babies in the plum tree while I am sitting on the decking no more than three yards away.

A new development has been mother and baby woodpecker doing the same thing while I watched from the kitchen.

Woodpeckers

Then the latest was a whole family of greenfinches that turned up on the lawn, as many as five or six at one point.

Greenfinches

On a day trip to meet with family in Boroughbridge, I was interested to note that there is a day fishing ticket on the River Ure.  Someone landed what looked like a pike while we were there.  Further on we happened to see another whitethroat.

Back in the garden the foxgloves are out and attracting bumblebees.  As I suspected, these turned out to be garden bumblebees, the first I have positively identified.  They are keen on foxgloves and have long tongues to reach the pollen inside.

Whitethroat

Garden Bumblebee

This morning while making breakfast, the jay turned up in the garden again and was showing well close to the tree.  I was tempted to run for the camera but would have burned my food!