20/07/2018 - Spurn Point
I spent every morning last week out catching Speckled Woods around East Yorks. We specifically needed females, to get some eggs from them for breeding purposes, but although we caught good numbers everywhere we looked, the sex ratio was almost 100% in favour of males. Perhaps a week or so too early!
On Friday, my partner's research group were heading out to Spurn Point for a day out. Plus ones were welcome and I'd never been to Spurn, so I decided to take the day off and join them! We parked at the new (and controversial!) YWT visitor centre, and a group of us decided to embark on the long walk all the way to the tip of the point.
We were barely out of the carpark when this Magpie Moth fizzed past us and dived deep into a hedge. This gave me a chance to experiment with the fill-flash techniques
MikeOxon had told me about earlier in the week! I'm not 100% happy with the results, but undoubtedly the picture with flash was better than the one without.
We set off along the beach, and a Grey Seal drifted past, keeping a close eye on us.
After a while, the peninsula widens out and there are some lovely grassy meadows with plenty of nectar. We recorded most of the common butterflies here. Among them were several fresh second-brood Common Blues, which came as something of a surprise to me - this species is univoltine in many Yorkshire locations.
This individual appeared to be, possibly, a subtle aberration - with the spots on the unh elongated into ovals. I can't find this on British Butterfly Aberrations but it may be too minor to have gained a name!
It actually wasn't until processing these photos yesterday evening that I noticed the caterpillar of Diamondback Moth
Plutella xylostella sharing the flower! Luckily, by chance, it was in focus in a couple of shots, including this - possibly one of the best 'arty' photos I've taken, and completely by accident...
Spurn was the first place in Yorkshire to get Essex Skippers and I was able to confirm a record of one, though not with a particularly good photo!
Representing the migrants, Large Whites were present in huge numbers, as were Silver Ys, but we saw only one Painted Lady and sadly no Clouded Yellows, which I had been hoping to show to the others.
Besides the Whites, the next most abundant species was probably Gatekeeper, but it was hot enough to keep them mostly on the move.
We started back for the visitor centre, recording a range of interesting non-butterflies on the way, including: Six-spot Burnet, Brown-tail, vast numbers of Cinnabar caterpillars, Common Darter (m & f), Oystercatcher, Snipe, and an obliging pair of Swallows actually nesting inside a bird-hide.
A really nice day out, and proof that you don't need to be a hard-core twitcher to enjoy a visit to Spurn!