Buddleia bonanza

Sunday August 19 was a warm, largely sunny, and slightly humid day. I arrived at Netherstead Farm and, before I had really started logging birds, noticed that the Buddleia by the horse paddocks had rather a lot of insects on it. In the next 15 minutes I counted 60 Peacocks, three Brimstones, a Large White, several Meadow Browns and three Small Tortoiseshell butterflies on the three Buddleias in the compound. So impressive was the bush that I took Lyn to see it this afternoon, and we added a few more Large Whites, a Skipper sp (Small?), and a Red Admiral.

Back to the birds, the small reedbed contained three Reed Warblers, while about 50 Goldfinches, 50 House Martins, 30 Swallows and 30 Linnets were zipping about the area. I slowly headed to the flashes, seeing a male Redstart, the first of three, the others being an immature male and a female, en route. The pool contained an adult and an immature Little Grebe, two female Tufted Ducks plus the brood of six, and the first of two new broods of Mallard.

As I approached the flashes I was joined by Mike Inskip. He and John had seen just one Wood Sandpiper this morning, plus the Common Sandpiper. We scanned the left hand flash and eventually found that there were actually two juvenile Wood Sandpipers, 10 Green Sandpipers, the Common Sandpiper, and eventually 21 Common Snipe plus 120 Starlings,  67 Lapwings and seven Teal. Pretty good.



The brighter of the two Wood Sandpipers

 Mike headed off while I meandered back, adding only the female Redstart and three Tree Sparrows to the daily tally.