www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Thanks David, I’ve reached that time of life where I need reminding it’s that time of year again so it’s handy its written down somewhere

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January 2022

I kicked off my new year with a wander round Bookham. After the previous days deluge, and the general wet weeks we’ve had, most of the site is ankle deep in mud and standing water, but most notable thing to see was the amount of work going on here this winter, paths and rides being widened and cleared all over the place, unfortunately at the cost of my Orange-tip pupae I was keeping an eye on. The patches of Honeysuckle I’m following the White Admirals on have so far escaped any clearance and I found the 3 easiest to locate still safely tucked up. Hairstreak eggs are as always, easy to locate. It will be interesting to see how the site develops with all the new clearings, makes me wonder if any new species will be on the wing here in the not too distant future…

Good to see you’re still in touch with the white ads Paul - I’m looking forward to following their progress.

I lost touch with the vast majority of mine, but am hoping that some have survived and I’ll be able to pick them up again in spring. Your updates will help me no end in that regard….

When I belatedly read you last post it looked like everything was getting ready for the final party of 2021 Bugboy A belated Happy B'Day to you

Have a goodun and stay safe

Wurzel

Thanks Ben, I’ve not been back since that visit but I’m off for 6 days now so hopefully the weather won’t descend into 6 days-worth of storms and I’ll drop in for another visit .
Thanks Wurzel, one year closer to retirement

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January 2022

It’s been a rather grey month overall, I’ve had to watch most of the sunny weather past by whilst at work and as if by clockwork, blankets of cloud return to welcome my days off. Anyway, it’s January so I can’t expect too much!

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Friday 14th. I normally stick close to home during the winter months, the furthest I ever venture is Bookham or Leigh-on-sea but a rare sunny day when I wasn’t at work tempted me to the south coast with the possibility of a January butterfly sighting. I chose Newhaven since it’s a good spot for birding so at least there should be something around. Well no butterflies were around and to be honest the birdlife was relatively scant as well. The ever-present Redshank posed rather well and a flock of Lapwing were loitering in the arable field adjacent to the Ouse Nature reserve. For me the best spot were some Fulmer that looked to be setting up home on the cliffs under the fort (I had no idea they were here). Looked like only three pairs but they provided an excellent show swooping around. ~~~~~

Tuesday 18th. Another day down at Two-tree Island Wader spotting. The Cloud had returned so no chance of an Early Red Admiral. Lots of flapping and flying was captured. It was good to see a few Rock Pipits again, their darker colouration than their meadow cousins does work very well against their chosen habitat. A Great White Egret put in an appearance, only distant views but still unmistakable. There were Modest numbers of the usual flocks of Knot and Dunlin at high tide but the Ringed Plover showed well, hanging around the edge.
They flocks were quite fidgety today and never really settled and during one of the murmurations a Knot became separated from the group and landed alone on one of the islands. A fatal mistake, it got nabbed by a Carrion Crow and was quickly dispatched and pulled apart. As the tide turned the sun finally came out. Lapwing, Turnstone, Teal and a surprised looking Fox looked much better in the rays. ~~~~~

On Saturday the 22nd I went to Chobham Common, primarily after the Dartford Warbler. Some were seen but only fleeting glimpses as they darted from Gorze to Gorze. I think Darting Warbler is a more fitting name. The plentiful supply of Pine trees here does make it a good spot for Coal Tit, several pairs were found and in the open country were easy to photograph. A Red Kite flew low but the blanket of cloud meant the magnificent rusty red colouration wasn’t particularly obvious. ~~~~~

On Sunday the 23rd I took a wander along the Lea valley, starting at Broxbourne and walking down to Cheshunt. Not many photos were taken, the light levels didn’t lend themselves too well and the best spots a flock of Snipe and a Water Rail, saw me before I saw them. I did find a nice flock of Siskin but high up in the Alder under leaden skies the photos are barely record shots. I did get closer to some Long-tailed Tits who looked like they needed a blow dry after bathing. ~~~~~

On Friday the 28th the sun once again deigned to show itself, albeit intermittently. I spent the day locally, on Walthamstow Marshes and Wetlands. The winter Thrushes have finally turned up here, plenty of Fieldfare today. I think they must turn up late here because they’ve exhausted the easy calories of berries in the hedgerows so switch to the ‘hard work’ of worm hunting. There were also some sizable flocks of Linnet about. In the afternoon I met up with some friends on the Wetlands where I managed my best sighting of the month and my best ever pictures of a Kingfisher. As he sat looking for lunch he garnered quite an audience, presumably he’s become quite accustomed to people, he didn’t seem at all bothered by the growing crowd of onlookers pointing cameras, phones and binoculars in his direction. He certainly maide up for the lack of any butterfly action! The recent few days have felt rather springlike which must surely mean winter's going to have one last go before relinquishing it's grip, only a few more weeks to go

Cracking set of shot Bugboy - love the Great White Egret and the Fulmars. The strangest ones I saw were in Iceland - flying a mile inland and nesting in the cliffs of the Skogafoss waterfall One more little bit of winter to go before the season starts in earnest

Have a goodun

Wurzel

For the Kingfisher shots.
I've only seen three in my whole life, and two of those were a quick blue flash.

Great stuff, stay well.
Trevor.

That's a tremendous selection of birds, Paul. As you say, your Avocet shot is poster material and the Kingfisher images are top class. I see the odd one in my area but never get close enough to take photos.

Some lovely photos in that selection Paul. I really must pay more attention to fieldfares, as you say, they really are wonderfully handsome.

Thanks for the comments guys, it was great to finally get some close shots of a Kingfisher .

My next post was all set to be some much better shots of him (I was within 10 meters of him) but I had an unfortunate and rather severe case of utter stupidity starting with knocking my external hard drive onto the floor shortly after transferring them over. Ok, so I may have lost one days shoot...... nooooooooo. Back up your bloody photos Paul! So the upshot is I have everything up to and including 2019 backed up, but I've been somewhat lax thereafter, so I'm currently awaiting news as to whether anything is salvageable from my poor (possibly) deceased hard drive. If not I shall be spending numerous evenings going through my last two years of posts on here saving the highlights. Oh and you don't even want to know how much it will cost me if things can be salvaged...

Sorry to read of your hard drive saga Paul.
Perhaps now is the time to confess what happened to my lap top last year.
My troublesome home hub insisted that the ethernet cable had to be plugged in.
One dark morning I came down stairs and entered the lounge without turning the light on
and tripped over the cable. Not only did I topple over, I landed on the laptop which
assumed the shape of a banana and was completely b*****d.
A few days later I found that Large Tortoiseshell, with nothing to post the sighting on.

Oh well,
Trevor.

PS. Hope you can recover your hard won images OK !.

Sorry to hear about your Hard Drive. I have a 3TB drive in the same state, the trouble with big drives they are hard to back up all the info other than to another Hard Drive or 100s of Blu-Rays they at least have 25GB per disk or 50GB on the duel layer ones.

My Segate hard drives did however have a pull off bottom, that gives a very useful interface for bare drives to USB. That is very useful for salvaging off a dead computer to another computer.

I think in lockdown we have all been lapse with our backups. I have my pictures from 2004 to 2012 well backed up, then a gap to 2016 onwards, i think the missing years are on disk somewhere. BACKUPs are very important and 64GB SDHC cards have been £10 and take up very little space.

Sorry to hear of your misadventure, Paul. It's happened to us all at some point.

These days, my external hard drive lives in a drawer in my bedroom, and only sees the light of day when I transfer images to it, whereupon it is promptly disconnected and goes back in its sanctuary.

Sorry to hear about the HD accident , hopefully it'll work out okay I reminded me of something that I read the other day - that HD's only really last for about 5 years so it looks like you need back-ups of back-ups

Have a goodun

Wurzel

Thanks for the comments, the hard drive is still in computer hospital and I’m still awaiting news on what, if anything is salvageable. As for backups, cloud storage is the way forward!
As if that wasn’t enough, my camera was sent to camera hospital this afternoon after dying on me yesterday. I was given an estimate of £200 to fix/replace the shutter which seems to have failed and I won’t know for a few weeks yet. This is proving to be a very expensive start to the season !

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February 2022

Since I’m without a camera for the foreseeable I might as well do a quick overview of this rather windy month. No butterflies yet but there has been one particular bird that has taken up much of my attention. I shall save him for the next post, although I’m sure most of you will be able to guess who he is. I’ve stayed local, saving the pennies to prepare for the financial hit that I’m nervously waiting for…

On Thursday the 3rd I met up with a friend who lives on a canal boat up in Broxbourne and went for a wander around the nearby wetlands. It was a rather grey day but a few good birds came out. We disturbed a flock of foraging Snipe. There were probably around 30 but all I managed was a quick shot of three as they swirled around before darting down into cover again. A rare decent view of a Water Rail seen from one of the hides and a trio of Gooseander were fishing on the river. A Heron and Great Crested Grebe also posed for me. Five further outings through the month were spent on Walthamstow Marshes & Wetlands and a morning in Epping Forest. The winter Thrushes are still active on the horse paddocks along with various finches. No Bramblings were seen in amongst the flocks of Chaffinch though. On the Wetlands there were the usual suspects but being in the city, and used to humans, they do tend to pose rather well and accept close approach. A cormorant in the sun is actually a rather impressive bird, particularly with the white breeding season headdress. The sun really brings out the attractive scalloping on the plumage. A couple of Grey Wagtails kept one eye on me whilst finding small invertebrates and I managed to sneak up on a Pied cousin. In Epping Forest I concentrated on some Nuthatch who seemed to be everywhere but some other species also attracted my attention. One more birdy post, concentrating on the regal star of my February and then (all fingers and toes crossed) I should be able to find some butterflies with a working camera to get my season up and running!

My condolences on the camera issues - my old D60 died back in 2020 and it was a complete nightmare so I hope they can fix yours - fingers crossed
On a brighter note - cracking bird images -the G.C.Grebe shot is a cracker with the reflection showing in the water And that Water Rail - what did it think it was doing - it should have been skulking in the reeds not hanging about in the open

Have a goodun

Wurzel

You really DO take some excellent bird images, Paul. I was trying for several minutes to capture a grey wagtail last week but none of my images were anything like as sharp as yours. I guess you know how to approach them better than I do?

I hope your camera is restored to working order very soon, as butterflies are once more upon us!

Thanks Wurzel, looks like a wait of 4 to 6 weeks for the return of the camera so I’ve gone and bought myself a cheap second hand spare Canon body from Amazon to tide me over but even that’s a couple of weeks away, must be taking the scenic route.
Thanks David, it’ll be a combination of my long lens and the fact that a lot of my birdy pics are taken locally in London so the subjects are accustomed to humans being close to them. I was probably about 5 meters away from both of those Wagtails and I was making no attempt to conceal myself from either.

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February 2022

So the main attraction over the past few weeks has been Mr Kingfisher who can usually be found in his territory along one of the river Lea channels in Walthamstow Wetlands. Even if you don’t find him yourself, he’s invariably been found by someone else and there’s usually more than one large lens pointing him out, along with casual observers with their mobile phones. I found him on three days, more often than not it was cloudy but occasionally the sun would creep out and bathe this little feathered jewel in rays. Anyway a selection:

4th February 11th February 22nd February Like I said, every now and again the sun would come out, and on this occasion he was also perched on my side of the river, he really is completely unphased by people

10 Points for that final Kingfisher shot. Great stuff!.

Trevor.

Sorry to hear about the problems with you kit bugboy, hope everything is/gets sorted.

Loving the bird shots, especially the kingfishers I have a local spot where I can see these but they are far too distant and active for me to get any decent photos with my lenses.

Cheers,

Neil.

First class images, Paul, especially that last one.

The feathers on the bird's back are a vibrant blue, much like Adonis males. Super.