Saturday 30 March 2019

30th March


All of the floods have drained now but on a gloriously sunny day yesterday I walked along the river anyway. Pick of the birds were my first Sand Martins of the year with a couple of dozen seen in total. This is early for significant numbers to arrive and Chris Knight also reported around 40 birds excavating at the big river colony near Thrintoft.
In a large ploughed field near Swalefields I saw a small group of Golden Plover drop in, as I walked up to the field there were obviously bigger numbers there and I tallied up almost 350 birds, a really good count for the parish…




Quite a few were in near full summer plumage. It was interesting when they were flushed later around 300 flew off but a group of 50 remained on the ground. This latter flock had a much higher proportion of summer-plumaged birds. Was this group from a separate population with different moult timing? Perhaps from further north with less contact with humans hence their relative ‘tameness’?

Also along the river were three Little Egrets (which now outnumber Grey Heron sightings on the patch) and two Green Sandpipers…



I photographed this tiny bee (together with around 20 others) on a small bank along the river. It’s a species of Miner Bee and it could be seen excavating small holes in the bank. Unfortunately there are 67 species of miner bee in Britain so identification is not easy but I think its appearance (and the fact it has emerged in March) point to it being a Gwynne’s Mining Bee, one of the commoner species…


Not surprisingly given the sunshine and warmth there were some early butterflies around with a smart Brimstone in Ainderby, Peacock and also at least half a dozen Small Tortoiseshells…


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