Saturday 7 May 2011

There were heavy pulses of rain early this morning, so I didn't leave the house till 06:45, it was still raining, but not quite so heavy, and by 08:30 it had cleared altogether.

I found 50 species today on my 3 and a half hour patch visit, which is always a good total on my patch, the highlights of the walk were hearing a NIGHTINGALE (61) singing from the NW corner of my patch, the same place where it was heard in April, also another first for the month was a flyover MUTE SWAN (62), a much more commoner bird than the former, but on my patch both species are scarce!

Most of the summer visitors that reside on my patch were seen today, CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, LESSER WHITETHROAT, COMMON WHITETHROAT, CUCKOO, SWALLLOW, SWIFT and SPOTTED FLYCATCHER, the latter being the same one as seen yesterday at the College Grounds, the only ones missing were Turtle Doves and House Martins they were not found today.

One more species was added to the ''successfully confirmed Breeding'' list this morning, when two recently fledged MISTLE THRUSHES were found, the hoped for Coot young have not appeared yet, in fact I didn't even see the adults today.

Raptors today were represented by both KESTREL and SPARROWHAWK, and flyovers by GREY HERON and HERRING GULL, as well as the Mute Swan, very miserly today!

I didn't take the camera out this morning, due to the weather, but this afternoon I went out and took these Butterfly pictures

Above is my first Common Blue of the year, whilst below is a Brown Argus



Below was going to be a Small Copper, but I seem to have loaded up the Brown Argus again! I can't for the life of me find how to delete an image once loaded!!










I'll put the Small Copper on tomorrows post :-), but here's a garden favorite of mine, the GOLDFINCH, just practising with my new lens :-)













8 comments:

Marc Heath said...

Nice one on the Spot Fly yesterday, a good bird to get anywhere nowadays. Some nice butterfly shots from today.

ShySongbird said...

Hi Warren, I don't know if you are still on the old editor as I am but on that one you should be able to go back to 'edit posts' and just right click and delete the image you don't want. That seems far too obvious though and I assume you must have tried that. Maybe if you are on the new editor it is different. I tried that one but didn't like it.

Anyway, well done on 61 and 62 and good news on the Mistle Thrush youngsters :)

Lovely butterfly photos and also the Goldfinch.

Bob Bushell said...

The Brown Argus is so brilliant, even when there is two of them, really good blog.

Warren Baker said...

Cheers songbird i'll remember that for next time :-)

Phil said...

Well done with the Nightingale Warren. I see you're on 62 for the month so far, same as me, but i'm away for a couple of weeks soon so it won't progress much.

Anonymous said...

Warren, on the create post page there should be an icon of a rubber. Right click the photo you want to remove, then right click the icon.

Only 2 more for the month. It seems a bit slow for early May.

Pete Woodruff said...

There you see, you saw and mentioned the Nightingale again and now I've turned that horrible pea green Warren.

Jason K said...

Lovely Common Blue photo Warren. Im quite envious of the Nightingale that is never gonna happen on my patch :-(