31st May

Bird highlight this week was Reed Warbler singing in the magic garden but unfortunately there was no chance of photographing it as it stayed hidden deep in the small reedbed here. This is the third singing bird in the last four years and there must surely be a chance of breeding soon. The last definite record of nesting in the village was back in the 1940s so it’s been a long wait…

The other more personal highlight was to have House Martins starting to nest build on our house, this is the first time in all the years we have lived here, and this despite it seeming to be a rather poor year for the species

Otherwise it was insects which dominated the sightings. Yesterday Chris and I found a reasonably impressive total of 13 species of butterfly along a couple of hundred yards of the railway. None of them were rare but included the year’s first records of Common Blue and Large Skipper…

Up to half a dozen Wall butterflies…

And my second Small Copper after seeing one down Greenhills Lane on Tuesday…

I also had this Small Tortoiseshell…

But the more significant part of this is the flower it is on, a Cornflower. These were once a common arable weed but they are effectively now extinct in north-west Yorkshire. The likelihood is this is an ‘escape’ from a garden but there is just a chance, particularly as this field has alternated between pasture and crops, that this is a remnant genuinely wild flower.