Saturday May 21 - A walk in the woods

This morning I was joined by an old friend, Richard B, who was keen to accompany me on a wildlife wander. Normally this takes place at Morton Bagot, but I recently got some gen about the last bird on my "summer migrants I should be able to see locally" list. So I took Richard on what was effectively a twitch.

We arrived at the Morgrove Coppice car-park in good time, and followed the footpath towards Spernall Park. Plenty of woodland birds were singing, especially Blackcaps, but actually seeing any of them was extremely difficult. I managed to point out a Treecreeper, and a newly fledged party of Long-tailed Tits, before I got distracted by some displaying longhorn moths of the species Nemophora degeerella. Not what we had come to see, but pretty impressive nonetheless. I thought I had seen the species before, but I can't find any proof of that, so maybe they were a tick.

Antennae that go on forever

We continued into the wood to the area we understood we needed to be, and pretty soon found a single singing Spotted Flycatcher, #LocalBigYear tick number 123. When I say singing, this needs a pretty wide interpretation. The species' song consists of occasional "sip" calls, and it probably rivals House Sparrow for the worst bird song award.

Spotted Flycatcher

Also present in the area were singing Garden Warbler and Willow Warbler. In attempting to film the Spotted Flycatcher singing, I also picked up the Garden Warbler, plus Blackcap, Blackbird, Chiffchaff, Robin, and Chaffinch. 

We then proceeded to lose the footpath and get a bit lost. This was not necessarily a bad thing, because in the course of trying to extricate ourselves from the wood we heard a muffled hoot from a Tawny Owl, and found a patch of Early Purple Orchids.

Early Purple Orchid

Not being a flower buff, I had to look it up when we got back. As far as I know they are the only ones I have ever seen.

Many thanks to Neil D for the Spotted Flycatcher tip off. The species used to be fairly common, but is now rather scarce. Hopefully I'll be able to find some more before the summer is over.