Thank you all for your very warm welcome. It is great to be back but I have a lot of catching up to do and I do so enjoy reading what others have been up to.
It is always hard to close my diary for the winter but it is inevitable as so many chores beckon. However, although my outings are considerably reduced, it is certainly possible to lure me out and reports of a LTB sighting at Warnham nature reserve did just that. I had not been to that venue before but I remembered it was close to where Goldie stayed on one of her visits down south.
Seems it is only 45 mins away and the weather was good so off I set. To cut a long story short, I did not find the LTB – just Vince (nice to see you Vince) and a couple of Kingfishers, but it is an interesting reserve and I passed the time taking some shots of a couple of Small Coppers, given that they had been such a rarity on home turf. I decided to call it a day and made my way to the exit but just before I got there I saw what I thought was another Small Copper, posing nicely on a dead flower head. As I got closer I realised it was way too big for a Small Copper. As I watched it flitted from the grass to various stalks, not staying in any one place for more than a couple of seconds, but totally ignoring me, until it landed on my shorts and opened its wings. Yes, I was watching a female Brown Hairstreak but only managed a couple of record shots, my surprise was that great – the last thing I was expecting to see on 14 September – and something of a rarity at that site I was told.