Sunday June 30

Yesterday's hot weather was cleared away by an overnight cold front leaving a cooler day of sunny intervals and a brisk south-westerly.

Another thing cleared away last night were some of the pages I have allowed to clutter this blog. They are now in temporary retirement while I concentrate on my listing mission, sad old chap that I am.

One bird not on my list this year is Feral Pigeon. In fact I made the decision not to count the species shortly after I started listing annual totals, although I had cause to regret that move when I entered the Patchwork Challenge competition as they regard it as countable. The main problem as I see it is that most apparent Feral Pigeons on the patch are clearly racing pigeons which are no more wild than domestic chickens. So to count one I need to know its not a racing pigeon. I have devised a criterion. If its ringed its a racer, if its not its a Feral Pigeon.

This morning a small flock of multi-plumaged pigeons circled a weedy field repeatedly. They did not bomb straight over on a mission to get home asap.

Eventually they landed. Every flipping one of them was ringed. So they were just Racing Pigeons doing what I used to do in the cross-country runs of my youth, slowing to a walk and buying sweets in the local shop. Disgraceful.

You'll probably have guessed from this long digression that I didn't see much today. The flash field contained two Green Sandpipers which were barely visible behind the grass, and four adult Little Ringed Plovers. An adult Shelduck was in full view, but the vegetation prevented me from establishing how many ducklings survive (I could only see one).

Eventually I spotted a Brown Hawker dragonfly which was the first this year. In fact odonata provided most of the interest as I finally got a shot of a Four-spotted Chaser, and added Common Emerald Damselfly to my year list.

Four-spotted Chaser

Common Emerald Damselfly

The butterflies were much the same as on my last visit, with more Ringlets. After grilling scores of Large Skippers I finally got my reward in the form of a Small Skipper.

Small Skipper

The strength of the wind made insect watching hard work and I was unable to find any interesting day-flying moths. The best I could do was a Yellow Shell, and a terrible shot of a Blue-bordered Carpet.

Blue-bordered Carpet

I'm not expecting to visit again until next Sunday as my Mum's house move hit another delay, and the back end of next week is the new deadline. It's starting to dissolve into a farce that rivals Brexit.