Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Monday 30th. June 2014

A picture catch up on a few visits , grabbed between rain , tennis and football .
A full transect at High Elms produced 12 species , numbers still low , but Ringlet (230) exceeded Meadow Brown (177) . Marbled White (12) well down on last year .
Finally managed to photograph a male Silver-washed Fritillary , 6 in total seen at High Elms .
Also managed the White Admiral that had been eluding me , 2 seen on the visit .

And a pair of Ringlet doing their bit for the species .

A trip up onto the Common found a confiding Jay ,

a Leaf-cutter Bee / Megachilidae sp. , complete with cut section of leaf ,
and a mating pair of Oedemera nobilis , male with the 'guns' on his rear legs .
A depressing visit to the SSSI chalk grassland site , Salt Box Hill . The figure in the centre is one of the goats that is meant to be keeping down the vegetation , the regrowth behind says it all . Just 9 Marbled White were seen , I used to have counts of 250+ on the site .
A return to Dene Park did produce an open wing shot of a male Purple Emperor , and 3 were seen flying above the master tree , just 2 SWF and a few WA apart from them .



With cloud rolling in and rain approaching , I had a look at the heathland area of close by Tudeley Woods . Not a lot found , apart from this Knot Grass caterpillar .
but the visit did produce my first Gatekeeper of the year in the dull conditions .
And finally , the Wood Mouse has no fear of us around , I was only a couple of metres away when I
took this shot , and even closer for the second . If you look closely , I am reflected in it's eye  .

3 comments:

Warren Baker said...

That Goat just aint hungry enough greenie!

Love that Mouse Eye reflection :-)

Ken. said...

Greenie.
Love the shot of the wood Mouse eye, and the mirror image. looking into it's eye I can see more than just you.
What with me and my Blackbird and you with your Mouse, who's next?

Phil said...

Those last two shots are just taking the Mickey Greenie!