4th July – Fermyn again
Arrived at 0830. Not much activity for the first hour then my goodness didn’t things get going!
I had definite goals today. No more photos Purple Emperors on the ground – I already have plenty. But I wanted pictures of them on vegetation. I also targeted White Admirals.
Both species were in very good numbers, but until late morning, White Admirals insisted on pretending that they were Purple Emperors and flittered around just above the ground. One Emperor was very small and could be compared to a normal White Admiral when the two landed near each other; sizes were remarkably similar.
Both species tended to fly higher as the morning progressed although one PE was still coming down late as 1310 hours (so much for the received wisdom that they land on the ground during the first part of the morning).
Richard Mitchell and I wandered to Souther Wood (incorrectly called Lady Wood in earlier version of this diary) and were rewarded with plenty of PEs, some obligingly landing on bushes at head height. One took a great liking to a pair of trousers; the wearer was able to take pictures.
I got my “foliage” shots.
We then set off to return to the car park at the northern end of the wood (opposite the gliding club). Stupidly, neither of us had adequate maps – I knew the wood so didn’t need one! We somehow took a wrong turning and it was a while before we realised our error. But as the general direction required was north, with the sun a useful compass, it was an easy matter to regain our route by following one of the generally northerly tracks through the wood. Wrong strategy! Every “short cut” turned out to be a dead end. Finally, we gave up and back-tracked completely. I was now getting pretty tired and at one point, I got a twinge of cramp in a calf muscle. We met some ramblers who had a map. We were pretty well where we thought we were and within 20 minutes were back in Fermyn Wood.
We then heard the news of a PE form
iole and two WA
obliteratae had been seen. I was too tired by now to go back to Souther Wood for the
iole.
One nice sighting was a Marbled White, a species I had not before seen in Fermyn although with the recent expansion of range, it was only a matter of time.
On arrival back home, found that my Internet Service Provider was having an “outage” that lasted almost 0900 on Monday.
Jack