The undoubted birding highlight this week (but depressing that it is) was a ‘singing’ Cuckoo by the river at Morton. This is the first ‘cuckooing’ bird I have heard in the village in at least the last five years.
Best sighting though were outstanding views of two Stoats in Morton. They were almost oblivious to my presence and I got some great photos…
The only other sightings of note were an Emperor dragonfly
on the river and my first Large Skippers of the year…
A bit different this time having just come back from a week in the French Pyrenees. It was my first visit there and what a superb place! Stunning landscapes, great range of plants, butterflies and birds, lovely food and a really nice ‘vibe’ to the way of life…
Cirque de Gavarnie (1400ft high waterfall!)
Birds included daily sightings of Lammergeier, Golden Eagle
and both Choughs. We saw three species of vulture, Short-toed Eagle and Honey
Buzzard from our bedroom window.
Snow finch
Water pipit
Rock Thrush
I also tallied up over 40 species of butterfly (despite the late spring)
Swallowtail
Southern White Admiral
False Heath Fritillary
Large Wall
And a handful of day flying months including this striking alpine
species Psodos quadrifaria…
As well as other insects including the superb Sulphur Owlfly…
Marmots of course…
And a few reptiles…
Western Green Lizard
Apart from the mountain peaks perhaps the most striking features of the landscape were traditionally
managed meadows and road verges brimming with wild flowers
Horned Pansy
Vanilla Orchid
As well as Pyrenean and high mountain specialities...
Ramonda
Alpine Gentians
Alpine Snowbells
Alpine Buttercups
All in all an amazing week.
This blog mainly reflects the pleasure of being interested in nature, but when you care about something then you feel it when it’s damaged. This spring has been the worst I can remember.
I went for a six mile walk around the village last week, in
good weather, and I managed a total of two bumblebees and two hoverflies. Bird
numbers are hugely down too with hardly any swifts and very low numbers of
hirundines (I have so far only found a single House Martin nest!). Resident
birds too don’t seem to be faring well with, for example, only three singing
Corn Buntings (against a typical count of 7-8)…
It’s an intensively farmed area so I don’t expect Amazonian levels of biodiversity but genuinely in 30 years of nature watching in the parish I have never known it like this. The optimistic half of me says it might just be a blip because of poor early spring weather etc. but the pessimistic (realistic?) side says this is the inevitable outcome of a constant year on year decline, particularly in insect numbers.
Anyway, on to more positive things because despite it all I
did have a couple of additions to my village list. Pick of these was this
superb Broad-bodied Chaser…
This is a species that has been increasing significantly in
the north and there have been a couple of recent records in the parish but this
was my first village sighting.
The other was a chance find on the garden wall, Small Dusty
Wave…
These following three are relatively common species but I haven’t consciously recorded them (or at least photographed them) before…
Splayed deerfly – a fearsome looking beast!
Bumblebee hoverfly
Narcissus Bulb Fly
And talking of keeping positive, it’s important to remember
there are some good news stories like the resurgence of the Common Buzzard. I can
still remember the buzz of seeing my first village flyover and now there are
between 5 and 6 territories in the parish. I photographed this one near the
river last week…
