Saturday 16th. April 2011

After yesterday's excitement , today was much quieter . I spent a couple of hours up on the Common before lunch , hoping to find the butterfly found yesterday afternoon , to get a better shot of it , but it was nowhere to be found . The Kent Butterfly recorder has looked at my shot , and it's a 'might be' , and he has sent it on to others for their opinion . I still await the decision . I was pleased to find at least 7 Brimstones on the Common today , including three females laying eggs on the Buckthorn that we didn't clear over the Winter . I watched them for quite some time , and once again , it was the young , just opening leaves that they were interested in using , not the leaves that had been open for several days , and therefor tougher . I even watched one female lay her egg on the branch of the Buckthorn , adjacent to a bud that had hardly opened at all . Whilst amongst the Buckthorn , I spotted a red/black beetle , resting on an Oak sapling . I only had one chance of a shot , and the light was not good . I knew I hadn't seen it before , but didn't have a clue what it was . Since getting home , I have done a bit of digging , and think it is Corizus hyoscyami , a species that was rare and found only in dunes on the South coast , but now starting to be found further inland . Also found on a felled trunk , The Hawthorn Shield Bug . Many thanks to Dean/DDD for pointing out that this in fact the Sloe Bug/Dolycoris baccarum . One of the egg laying Brimstone females was found by a wandering male , who proceeded to court her , with the obvious intent to mate . I followed him , following her , over quite a distance , but , after several minutes , the pair rose higher and higher , eventually disappearing over the surrounding trees and out of sight . I returned home for lunch , and afterwards headed for Burnt Gorse at High Elms , again in search of early Skippers and maybe a Green Hairstreak . As is usually the way , my arrival meant the departure of the sun , but I still spent an hour and a half wandering . I did find some butterflies , including 2 Peacocks , one pictured , but not the species I was hoping for . 4 Orange Tip , 4 Brimstone , 1 Small Tortoiseshell , 1 Speckled Wood and a Small White were also recorded . A few more wild flowers were found ,Herb Robert/Geranium robertianum , a member of the Geranium family , Bugle/Ajuga reptans and , Yellow Archangel /Lamiastrum galeobdolon , both members of the Labiate family , and the first Lords and Ladies/Arum maculatum , found this year with it's finger-like purple spadix showing within it's pale green hooded spathe . On the way home , as I passed the horse field on the bottom lane , a girl was grooming a horse that I recognised from yesterday . I stopped and had a chat , and was told that it had got out a couple of times over the Winter , but she has never found where it manages to do so . She told me that the horse's nickname is 'Houdini' , so it might appear again on this blog .