Thursday 31st. March 2011

With the last work party of the year up on the Common being just a morning affair , after a bite to eat , I headed off for the Greensand Ridge , once again searching for reptiles . Although there was a reasonable amount of sunshine , the wind cooled things down and was very gusty at times . My first find wasn't a reptile at all , as one of those gusts blew a very colourful bee onto the vegetation in front of me . It was hanging on for dear life as I photographed it . Mining Bee came to mind at the time , and in the sunshine it's ginger thorax and orange abdomen really looked very smart . I did some searching when I got home , and I think it is Andrena armata ( previously A.fulva ) / Tawny Mining Bee , and I think this is the female of the species . It wasn't long before grey clouds began to roll in , and during such a time I found my first Adders , two males , side by side , waiting for the sun to reappear . The clouds also dropped the temperature even further and things were not looking good . Then , in a short sunny interval , the first juvenile Adder found this year , about the thickness of the power lead to a television . This animal was probably born last Autumn , and at that size is easy prey for Weasels , Foxes , Kestrels and Pheasants . If it survives this year and next , it might well get it's chance to increase the Adder population in the area . Another sunny interval , getting fewer by the minute , placed me face to face with the last Adder seen during the visit , a male . Only other interest found was a catkin found on a small Aspen / Populus tremula . Looking it up when I got home , it appears to be a male catkin . This tree has male and female forms , and both produce catkins , but the female ones are much more colourful . And finally , a phone call from a birder yesterday , to say he had a sighting of a Red Kite over the A20 near Swanley . Same bird that Carol spotted ?