Always a good feel factor when the phone rings and the garage tell you that your car has passed its MOT. So it was off to pick it up via the Butterfly Reserve and The Copse behind the Fire Station Here. Surely this small woodland has a name. I will endeavour to find out.
So what did Ted and I see on our travels, well we had a Common Whitethroat in the reserve along with several Swallows and a Swift overhead. Also here was a Jersey Tiger moth as well as a few butterflies including Common Blues, Chalk Hill Blues and Gatekeepers. And what a Summer it has been for the latter, with good numbers seen daily, whilst the likes of Marbled Whites and Ringlets have come and gone in the time the "Keepers" have been around.
Here are a few images from today:
A Common Whitethroat in the Butterfly Reserve
Also here a Chalk Hill Blue
A Jersey Tiger Moth on Hemp Agrimony.
It looks like it's having a good top up.
Something tells me I got a bit too close 😂
This is Field Bindweed (Convolvulus Arvensis)
Butterflies Recorded: Large White, Small White, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Red Admiral, Common Blue and Chalk Hill Blue
Moths Recorded: Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctaria)
Bees Recorded: Honey Bees (Apis mellifera), Common Carder (Bombus pascuorum), Red-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) and White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum)
Crickets and Grasshoppers Recorded: Grasshopper sp.
Bugs and Beetles Recorded: Common Red Soldier Beetles (Rhagonycha fulva)
Wakeham
Before I got the phone call to say the car was ready to be picked up I spent the afternoon in the back garden. Lots of butterflies, with mainly Large and Small Whites, plus singles of Red Admiral and Gatekeeper.
So many Honey Bees on the Lavender, there must have been a good 30 with two different colourations. The "normal" orange abdomen and a few "dark grey" forms. Other bees noted were Red-tailed and White-tailed Bumblebees.
A Red-tailed Bumblebee
A Single-dotted Wave
A male Semaphore Fly
And a female Semaphore Fly (Poecilobothrus nobilitatus)