Padfield

[Goldie M]

Love your Butterfly shots Guy but the ones of Minnie and friend are the best Goldie

[David M]

...Perhaps I should add this animated gif of Minnie and her new friend, Boo, doing the synchronised tail-wag. Boo looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth here, but it very definitely would..

Absolutely love this, Guy. Yes, I'm sure Boo is far less innocent than she looks (aren't they all?)

[millerd]

It's great to see buddleias festooned in butterflies again like the one you depicted, Guy - another childhood memory revived this year. I also agree about the Gatekeepers - they had a relatively poor year in my locality last year, but this year they reached the single highest day count for any species - 93 on 18th July, even outstripping Meadow Browns (quite a feat). I wonder what the factor involved in this one is, since it appears to be the same in all locations (there were loads up at Arnside on 8th August too).

Cheers,

Dave

[Padfield]

Thank you for your comments, Wurzel, Goldie, David and Dave. I knew there were a few softies out there who would fall for the Minnie Boo pic!

Yes, it's interesting, Dave, when a sedentary, single-brooded species like gatekeeper does well everywhere one year, especially if it had a poor year locally the previous year. I presume caterpillar mortality was particularly low this season - but whether the chief difference was over the winter or this spring I cannot guess. To me, this is why raw numbers of a given species are a misleading guide to its fortunes. Numbers go up and down from year to year. More important are presence and absence, advance and retreat &c. In the Woodbridge region, during my lifetime, development (housing principally) has terminally fragmented - in many cases destroyed - the available habitat for many species.

No surprises today on the butterfly front, but an osprey circling over the Deben more than made up for this:





What a magnificent, long-winged, elegant bird this is!

That's my second osprey on the Deben in the last year, the previous one being on 21st September 2018. Before this I've only ever seen them in Scotland.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Great shots of a cracking bird Guy Did it hang around for a while of just pass through?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Padfield]

HI Wurzel. It was circling but drifting further and further away and I didn't see it again. There's good fishing for it here - in fact, it was very near a fishing lake - I didn't think of that - so it might hang around for a bit before continuing its journey.

Guy

[Padfield]

A propos: I'm not at all sure what raptor I saw a couple of days ago at Shingle Street. It flew low over the bank and away from me along the track, into the sun unfortunately. Size: small - sort of large thrush size, or maybe cuckoo. Wings falcon-like, slate grey above, tail longish. I didn't think it was a sparrowhawk - and I see a lot of these - but it's always possible to be fooled by angles and light, especially when surprised by the briefest of views. It landed on the track a long way off. Not having binoculars with me, I took shots on zoom, into the sun, first of it sitting there, then of it flying off.





Is there enough information here for the birders to say what this is?

Guy

[bugboy]

Going by your description alone (it took a while for the images to load) I was prepared to suggest Merlin but the pictures scream Sparrowhawk. The way the primaries separate into 'fingers' rules out a falcon for me and the profile of the head is all Sparrowhawk to my eyes. Given the size it must be a male.

[Padfield]

Thanks Buggy. Funnily enough, I also wondered about merlin, but from my description after the event, not from what I actually thought in the field!

I shall put it down as sparrowhawk. I normally see these in the sky, and as I say, the angle of view and the brevity of it could easily have misled my naked eye as it came over the bank - and after that it was flying directly away from me.

Guy

[Wurzel]

For some reason the second image opened up first for me Guy and I was looking for a white rump as the straight looking wings suggested a possible ringtail though it wasn't there, when the top images loaded though it became a Sparrowhawk That's the thing with wildlife - waht you see on the page and what you see before you very seldom match

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

I'm no bird expert so I'll pass on the latest one, but your osprey is magnificent. I've only ever seen one, and that was a few years ago in Pembrokeshire, but it made a lasting impression. Beautiful creatures.

[Goldie M]

I've seen an Osprey in the Lakes at Foulshaw Moss when I was looking for Large Heath Butterflies but I'd to look through a telescope to see it and it wasn't easy, it was a hot day which slightly Blurred every thing, seeing your shots Guy gives me a good Idea of what they really look like, " fantastic " Goldie

[Padfield]

Thank you Wurzel, David and Goldie.

Long time no butterfly reports from me. I've been quite busy in other ways, not least with my father's book launch last weekend, for which we travelled down to Brixham, in Devon. In 1957, my father was one of the lucky crew of the replica Mayflower, Mayflower II, when she sailed from Plymouth (UK) to Plymouth (US) in the footsteps of the Pilgrim Fathers. He kept a daily diary of the voyage in the form of letters to his mother, as well as shooting cine film and stills and making countless sketches of the ship and her rigging. We have just published these in a slim volume and launched the book at the very same moment the newly refurbished Mayflower II was relaunched in Mystic. Next year is the 400th anniversary of the original crossing. If anyone's interested, there's more information on the adventure here:

https://www.mayflower400uk.org/news/201 ... -atlantic/

Minnie's favourite picture from the event:



Loads of red admirals zooming around Brixham (where Mayflower II was built) but the weather wasn't good for butterflying and nor was there much time.

When I photographed this pipit in the harbour I took it to be a rock pipit:



It doesn't look much like the pictures now I compare it with them, though it has got suitably dark legs. Perhaps a birder could enlighten me.

Guy

[Wurzel]

Interesting looking Pipit - judging by the habitat and the scruffy streaking I'd go with Rock Pipit - there is a Scandanavian race - littoralis - which is can be slightly lighter in markings than the British race though it's very difficult to distinguish - the only reason I have it on my list is because and expert pointed it out to me one time
I had a read of the article, fascinating and including that great and unusual sentiment of (paraphrasing) 'having an excellent time in the doldrums'
Have a goodun

Wurzel

[David M]

That's fascinating, Guy. I knew your father was a military historian but I had no idea he was involved in that!

Good to see everyone enjoying themselves (including Minnie, of course). Nice that you still kept a sharp eye out for any wildlife!

[Padfield]

Thanks Wurzel and David.

Very little butterfly or posting action from me recently, for various reasons. Most recently, I have just been to Switzerland on a flying trip to scatter some of my mother's ashes at her favourite site in the mountains, as she wished.

There - at altitude - a few butterflies are still flying, including small tortoiseshells, red admirals, a fritillary I presumed to be dark green, clouded and Berger's clouded yellows and Adonis blues.





I was very lucky with the weather:



Lower down, I had an hour or two to search for early stages on the day I arrived. There was almost no evidence of white admiral caterpillars. I found just one leaf that seemed to have been eaten, and an egg on the same leaf that was either damaged or badly hatched. The weather was poor that day - misty and rather dark - so I couldn't take great close-ups, but this is the idea:





There was also a strange structure on one honeysuckle leaf. I wonder if someone could tell me what it is:



Guy

[Wurzel]

I can see your mother loved that area Guy - stunning! I think that weird structure is the pupal casing of a moth (case bearer or bag worm or some such)?

Have a goodun

Wurzel

[Mikhail]

As Wurzel says, it is a case of a Psychidae a family regarded as microlepidopterous in GB but often placed among the macros in Europe. Yours looks very like the case of Psyche casta, a very common species in this country.
See: http://www.lepiforum.de/lepiwiki.pl?Psyche_Casta.

M.

[Padfield]

Thank you Wurzel and Misha. I've seen caterpillars crawling along dressed up like this but strangely never noticed these structures attached to leaves before. Doubtless I'll see them everywhere from now on. Psyche casta is recorded from Switzerland but not from my local patch, where I found this. I'll have to do some research to see what related species fly here.

Guy

[Padfield]

I've had limited time for idle postings recently - and no butterflies for a week or so now. Three out of the last four night-time dog-walks have been under clear skies though, so I've caught the passage of time with photos of the moon.

Here she was on 8th December:



You can only really see detail at the shadow's edge, not in the illuminated face.

One night later:



And finally tonight (last night was cloudy). She is not quite full, as you can see from the slightly rough left-hand contour:



Full moon is tomorrow morning, just after 05h00.

Guy