Ratty twoee

Went out with Andy and Mark on Sunday and decided to chance on the East Coast, we started with a seawatch at Flamborough and even though there was a strong westerly wind we were quite surprised that there was a good passage of Skua's particularly Arctics during the morning, a walk along Old Fall hedge later though yielded nothing birdwise but a good selection of Butterflies included our first Painted Lady of the year. With nothing doing on the coast we decided to head back inland to North Cave Wetlands where we hadn’t been for quite a while, there was nothing out of the ordinary here but quite a few Common Terns were still around and on investigating a small gathering by the Dragonfly Pool we discovered that a pair of Water Voles had taken up residence plus one was out posing nicely.

a very flighty Painted Lady

Large Gulls moving along the coast at Flamborough

some nice Lily's on the pond

juv Common Tern

juv Little Grebe

Ratty

Fairly quiet locally this week although the Goldfinch flock on Clifton Park has increased, close on 150 birds now, I took an oppurtunity on Thursday evening to nip down to Askham Bogs for an hour to see the Water Voles three or four were showing very well and if you keep very still they will come fairly close, a few Dragonflies were about as well unfortunately the Brown Hawkers didn't pose.

the Autumn crop

Migrant Hawker

Common Darter

Another try for the Brown

Still nothing much around birdwise and as there was a good weather forecast me and Andy decided on another try for the Brown Hairstreaks at Chambers Farm Wood, it was a slow start but eventually after checking out a different area to the prime location we found a female egg laying although the sighting was all too brief, fortunately there were quite a few other people also searching and on returning to the prime area it wasn’t long before we were put onto a couple more females and two males, the males in particular were very confiding, there was also a good supporting cast of other Butterflies and Dragonflies including Brown Argus and although we didn’t take much notice of any birds a couple of tatty Buzzards were noted flying over. We ended the day at Blacktoft again, it was fairly quiet but there was still a good number of Spotted Redshanks about plus a Wood Sandpiper and two Knot today.

the first female

all above another female with a chunk of wing missing

a couple of males

a good supporting cast

Scarlet Pimpernel

Scabious, very popular with the Butterflies

Common Darter

Southern Hawker

immature Migrant Hawker

mature Migrant Hawker

a couple of rather tatty Buzzards

most of the waders were too distant today