Recent sightings

Jon Stagg · Post by **Jon Stagg** » Sat Jul 15, 2006 9:22 pm

Hi Pete, thought you'd be interested in some recent observations.
First, I've been working down near Blackpool airport recently and the abandoned north-east part of the airfield (scheduled for redevelopment) is quite amazingly full of buttterflies at the moment. For the last week there have been loads of Meadow Browns, but also every day I've seen around 5 Gatekeepers and 10 or so Small Skippers, Looking at the maps on the site, both must be close to the northern end of their distribution areas. OS ref is SD325316. Three weeks or so ago I was seeing 5-6 Common blues there each day, and last week numbers of a largish fritillary which I don't yet have the skills to ID. However both have now gone.
Today I was walking on the "Carnforth Slag Heaps" - an abandoned Victorian attempt at a 50+ foot high sea wall made using iron furnace waste. Behind it sits part of the marsh at the east end of Morecambe Bay, with Leighton Moss and Warton Crag a very short distance away. I was surrounded by Graylings.
The slag heaps are around a half mile long, and there were four or five Graylings or more within close range all the time as I walked along. I guess the attraction is the dune grass growing on the heaps, or maybe the Marram on the Marsh. The local birders website has recent records of Graylings at Warton Crag, but not on the Slag heaps. A lot of the time the butterflies seemed to be on the bare "rock" - maybe taking in minerals? Interesting sight anyway in an unusual environment, especially for someone like me not really familiar with them.
The slag heaps run from roughly SD479705 to SD474713

Post by **Pete Eeles** » Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:46 pm

Thanks Jon - I'll add appropriate site information to the UK Butterflies website.

Cheers,

- Pete

Jon Stagg · Post by **Jon Stagg** » Thu Jul 20, 2006 8:29 pm

Hi, I went back to the Slag Heaps the following day and found a few High Brown Fritillaries. Probably just flown from Arnside or Silverdale, as there dont appear to be any suitable food plants there. Interesting to see though.
The Grayling poulation had dropped a bit - possibly due to predation by the local pied wagtails, some of which were showing a keen interest.