Wednesday 1 July 2009

The hot and humid weather continues to keep everything very quiet, apart from the Butterflies and dragonflies.

A new month, and another total to chase! This month I am chasing the july
record of 69, achieved back in 2007, that is a big total, and i'm not at all confident of beating it! So far combined July totals have produced 83 species, so the potential is there at least!

I made a start this morning though, in the half hour's walk to work I recorded 31 species, the best being a pair of SPOTTED FLYCATCHERS at the college grounds, still no sign of breeding though. A BLACKHEADED GULL flew over, a useful species to record in July, and the TURTLE DOVES were singing in the scrub at Migrant Alley. SKYLARK, BLACKCAP, CHIFFCHAFF and WHITETHROAT were seen, making a reasonable start.

In contrast, a two hour walk from 15:30 this afternoon produced just 7 more species for the months list! The hot and humid conditions just do not make it conducive for birdwatching. I did record a few damselflies, and a Beautiful damoiselle over at the lake, and a Black tailed skimmer was in the tree nursery.

I think i'll do some evening skywatching later, maybe find the first raptors of the month.


Above: White Legged Damselfly.
Above and below. Beautiful demoiselle

Above and below Male Black Tailed Skimmer.





7 comments:

Chris said...

Hi Warren,
at least you got nice shots of dragon fly!!! Here also it is not that good for birdwatching. The light is very bad, it is cloudy and the temperature very heavy. It was 21 degrees this afternoon, with a nice tropical type weather... Too hot and too humid too, so birds are not moving at all.
Moreover, most of the marine birds have not started breeding and are very late... Kind of weird!!!

ShySongbird said...

Beautiful photos Warren, I particularly liked the first one of the Beautiful Demoiselle.

darrell j prest said...

fantastic dragon shots you have loads of dragons i havent seen

Anonymous said...

I took one of a damsel fly that looked like this. Blue color and all but only saw it once. Nice shot. Hope it comes back again.

Anonymous said...

Never seen a White-legged before, Warren. And what a great pic it is too.

Jann said...

Great shots! Good luck on the July count, sounds like you got a good start today! I had to look up an image of a "hobby" you mentioned yest., nice!

Kelly said...

...sounds like a pretty good start for the month. 31 in the morning and another 7 in the evening. You're more than half-way there! Beautiful shots of the dragon fly...