Tuesday 24 July 2012

A day’s birding in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire and Rutland - July 21, 2012


David, Roger and I started off today at Newton Harcourt emptying Dave’s moth trap.  It was rather a disappointing morning with thirty-four moth being trapped and covering just fourteen species.
The following were recorded: Blastodacna hellerella [1]; Small Dusty Wave [1]; Riband Wave [2]; Peppered Moth [1]; Elephant Hawkmoth [1]; Scarce Footman [1]; Common Footman [9]; Heart and Dart [6]; Large Yellow Underwing [1]; Clay [1]; Dark Arches [2]; Rustic sp. [2], Uncertain [2] and Rustic [4]..

Blastodacna hellerella


Small Dusty Wave


Large Yellow Underwing


Clay

With the weather forecast being pretty good today we decide we should go to Fermyn Wood in Northamptonshire and hopefully some butterflies.
On arrival it was still quite cool and there was little sun.  We walked down the track to the first cross roads were we had three Ospreys over the wood, two of which were certainly adults.  There was several brief intervals of sun when we saw a number of Ringlets and my first White Admiral of the year and a Southern Hawker.
We eventually finished up at the bend in the track and did have a fairly prolonged period of sunshine when we had a single Purple Emperor on three occasions but unlike on previous visits it did not settle on the track.  We also saw to White-letter Hairstreaks at the same spot.  Dave also managed to catch two micros and we identified them back at the car as Brown Oak Tortrix and a Green Oak Tortrix.


Red Admiral


Ringlet

After some lunch we moved of to Rutland Water where we spent most of our time on lagoon four visiting both sandpiper and dunlin hides.  There was a reasonable selection of waders present and we recorded four Oystercatcher, a single juvenile Little Ringed Plover, ten Ringed Plovers, ten Dunlin, fourteen Curlew, a Common Sandpiper, two Green Sandpipers and four Greenshanks.  I also found a male and female Red-crested Pochard and an Osprey flew over.  There were at least five Little Egrets feeding on the lagoon and a Little Owl was heard calling on several occasions whilst we were in dunlin hide.  We spent some time just outside the hide before we returned as saw twelve Black-tailed Godwits dropping onto the lagoon and there was also a distant Hobby.
Whilst we were outside the hide we found a Four-spotted Chaser, two Ruddy Darters and an Emerald Damselfly and there were plenty of Common Blue Damselflies as well.

Four-spotted Chaser


Ruddy Darter


Emerald Damselfly




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