Overnight thunderstorms looked set to continue if you believed the weather forecast. Dave did, and duly baled out. As it turned out, the morning was warm and fairly sunny with not a hint of rain.
Barely a sniff of any decent birds either though. The only discernible change being the presence of two drake Teal on the nearest flash.
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| Teal |
Apart from that, at least two of the Lapwing chicks look virtually fledged. There may have been others in the field. A Treecreeper and a Lesser Whitethroat were singing, and the Little Grebe is still here.
In the absence of ornithological interest I turned to odonata (that's dragonflies if you don't like posh latin names). New for the year was a freshly emerged black-tailed Skimmer, and evidence of further emergences was provided by some exuviae (the cases of the larval forms left by the dragonflies as they crawl out of the water). These may have been of Emperor Dragonfly and Four-spotted or Broad-bodied Chaser, but I am not sure.
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| Black-tailed Skimmer |
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| Possibly Emperor Dragonfly exuvia |
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| Possible Broad-bodied Chaser exuvia |
The rest were mainly damselflies; about 20 each of Large Red and Azure, five Beautiful Demoiselles, and three or four Common Blues. I did also see one Four-spotted Chaser.
My invigorated interest in moths was pandered to by sightings of several Silver-ground Carpets, a Mother Shipton, and a tiny micro on a buttercup which turned out to be a Cocksfoot Moth
Glyphipterix simpliciella.
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| Cocksfoot Moth |
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| Mother Shipton |
Finally, there were relatively few butterflies on the wing, apart from lots of Small Heaths. However, I did see my first Common Blue of the year.
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| Common Blue |
As far as birds are concerned it looks like a long wait for autumn ..... July.
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