North Yorks Moors

Out with Mark on Sunday and we spent the day on the Moors starting with a slow drive around Bransdale, there seems to be a good number of Redstarts about this year and at our first stop we found an area with several pairs, one pair nesting close to the path showed well. We carried on and were pleasantly surprised to find there wasn’t much other traffic about early on allowing us a few photographic opportunities from the car with Red Grouse, Curlew and Golden Plovers posing, as we reached the head of the valley the day had started to brighten up and with it came an increase in visitors so the journey back down the other side was a bit quicker although we stopped by the little bridge as always, we soon located a singing male Whinchat on top of a tree but there were no Ring Ouzels showing today. Early afternoon we headed over to the Raptor Watchpoint at Wykeham to be greeted by the news that no Honey Buzzards had been seen during the morning, we gave it a couple of hours without success although several common Buzzards and Goshawks showed well, we headed home via Troutsdale and  a walk along the stream at Hilla Green found several Grey Wagtails and a pair of Kingfishers plus a couple of Willow Warblers were acting more like Wagtails, perching and flycatching from the rocks, a bit further along we got good scope views of a perched Goshawk and several more Buzzards including a very pale individual, almost pure white on its breast and belly, it really stood out.

Common Heath male

Common Heath female

Duke

After reading a snippet of news regarding the Duke of Burgundy Butterfly at a site on the NY Moors last weekend I did a bit of investigating, I saw them many years ago at Ashberry Pastures near Rievaulx but that colony has since died out so it was a good opportunity to catch up with this little beauty again, I gleaned some info from the Bird Clubs Butterfly man, thanks Paz, and I went to check it out after work today, it was a big area though and by the time I sussed out where the Butterflies would be the afternoon had become early evening, I managed to locate at least two and one posed for a few photos but it probably would have been better earlier in the day, a few birds typical of the area were present including a singing Tree Pipit.

 

some moths too, Common Heath

Brown Silverline

Sunny Spurn

A nice sunny day on Sunday and I thought a trip out to Spurn would be the best bet, unfortunately there had been a big clear out overnight, however at least one male Red Backed Shrike remained at Sammy’s and eventually showed well, but the Thrush Nightingale that had been seen and heard first thing had then stopped singing and wasn’t seen thereafter which was a shame, I know it wasn't a poser like the Hartlepool bird but it would have been a Yorkshire tick, it was just a potter around after that, the Triangle was fairly quiet although there was a nice family party of Common Lizards by the Canal Scrape Hide and a walk out to Beacon Ponds for a Curlew Sandpiper found a good number of Little Terns present, nice to see the colony doing well again, the Sandpiper had been flushed though, late afternoon found me back at Sammy’s photographing the Shrike and a posing Cuckoo again.

a few Butterflies, Painted Lady

Wall Brown

courting couple

juv Lizard

unlikely perching companions

A Purr-fect find

A couple of local birders found a pair of Turtle Doves last weekend at Acaster Selby near York, now 20-25 years ago although not what I would call abundant in the area they were fairly easy to come across, a very uncommon bird now and this is a quite rare sighting for the area, I went down to see them a couple of times in the week, its a very nice little area with quite a bit of other stuff there as well including Garden Warbler.