A day finally for butterflies, the weather forecast wad good so I headed to Fermyn Woods along with loads of other people, I arrived early and got a parking space and headed into the woods. ringlets started to appear and as it warmed so did white admirals and white letter hairstreak and eventually a silver washed fritillary gave a flyby. It took a while but we found a purple emperor in the canopy. Then one flying along the ride and then they started landing on the track showing well, in all at least 5 on the track.
We also had a couple of southern and brown hawkers.
I had to go somewhere else unrelated but there was a pond that had good numbers of banded demosille and comon blue damselflys.
Saturday 11th July
The monthly Stortford crew trip and Norfolk tempted us again, an early rendezvous to balance the cars followed by drive by fulmar before hitting Tichwell. The mega must have been elsewhere as the car park was empty bar the car park attendant in the sentry box, and a muntjac. Assured that there was no blue cheeked bee eater down the road we headed into the reserve. And within minutes were totally soaked, we hit the hide greeted by both godwits, ruff, spotshank, greenshank and common sandpiper. The highligh was the little gulls at least 6 of last years birds on the freshmarsh. We had a few short views of the elusive bearded tits in the improving weather before heading for the sea. A spot of seawatching produced red necked grebe mega distant as were the artic skua's. eider and summer plumaged sanderling on the beach which were stunning. Excellent bearded tits on the return walk and some fledged reed warblers showed well in the now warm and sunny weather. Ideal conditions for monty's and two females oblidged as did a buzzard. We got into the east bank car park at Cley, (that bee eater must have been showing elsewhere) we had some baby avocets and an excellent marsh harrier lots of terns giving a show just off shore and a very stringy roseate from the north hide. Passing on the bee eater, we headed to Sea Palling for the long staying Red backed shrike. We found the site, but were not expecting the rave party in the next field, we were not hopefull and after a while we met the horse owned who knew nothing about the bird-strange, hare, rabbit and chinese water deer were more showy. The car drivers had to move the cars before the car park closed and as we did the phone went with the news that the bird was back. Complete with cars we returned. The red backed shrike was on show. While the car drivers were away the rest of the group
met the 'famous' local birdwatching resident and were suitably unimpressed. His report of a Roseate tern was suitable treated. But we did investigate the beach for kittiwakes. A rather relaxed day but not too bad at all.
Thursday 10th July
The fine weather was not to be wasted so another Bird Atlas tetrad was completed. Not much out of the ordinary, confirmed skylark and whitethroat breeding and kestrel was of note. Othewise a fox, southern hawker and several small tortoiseshell butterflies were the highlights. Strange that I could not find either House sparow or starling in this square!
Sunday 6th July
I had to go to Hampshire for the morning in the torrential rain as it happens. But the afternoon brightened up so I tried Wildmoor heath as suggested in the Steven Dudleys dragonfly book for scarce blue tailed damselfly, despite the good conditions no damselflys were seen at all. The dragons were performing with emperor, brown hawker and a keeled skimmer. The place was alive with green woodpeckers and meadow pipits a rather good roe deer gave some excellent views and I indulged in some photography for a while. There were good numbers of butterflies but not much else. I headed to my rendezvous with Farnborough John for a bit of mammaling. The first stop we saw nothing but damselflies although a turtle dove was present. The later stops produced some otter signs but the weather conditions were not helpful. We eventually tracked down a mammal - a rabbit with the weather deteriorating we headed for cover and a cup of tea - better luck next time.
Saturday 5th July
A day to catch up on things and sort those videos out take a look - links to the right.
