Wednesday 3rd July: Butterflies At Last

I finally had some time today to go and check out Burgess Field for butterflies and although the weather was rather overcast it was at least warm. I wasn't disappointed as I managed to find a couple of  Marbled Whites, at least 8 Ringlets, 2 Large Skippers and 2 Small Skippers. They're all very late of course but at least they've finally arrived. On the bird front there were plenty of Whitethroats singing away as well as a single Garden Warbler but apart from that it was predictably quiet.

A lovely fresh Ringlet

Small Skipper

I was pleased to find quite a few Bee Orchids dotted about the place

In my garden there are juvenile Great and Blue Tits now knocking about in noisy feeding parties and two Wood Pigeons seem to have taken a liking to digging up the lawn for some reason - I don't quite understand why. On the mothing front I've finally managed to reach 100 species for the garden year list though Steve Goddard is trapping up a storm in Wolvercote where he's currently 5th in the Garden Moth Challenge league table - a fantastic effort. I've managed to add a few more to the Upper Thames region year list with my efforts including a Bordered Sallow again this year in the garden: last year I found the first one in the region as well.

Bordered Sallow - not such a common county moth

All in all it's the usual mid-summer doldrums. If there were some flood waters still then we could start to thing about early return birds soon but as it stands at present there's not much prospect of that. We'll just have to make do with the interesting insect life that's about at this time of year.

1 comment:

  1. Personally I find your Mothing adventures most interesting and I get very involved with the many thousands of Insects I find on my outdoor sojourns my problem is - due to a late start in my Insectivy interest identification is a huge problem and I feel so stupid for not knowing what others seem able to name easily.
    camboy.

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