Around the county

Yesterday (Sunday 21/07) I had a really early start to do the fourth and final Breeding Birds Survey for the RSPB around my big old chunk of Earls Barton GPs. Before I began, around 05:40am I had a quick look from the Summer Leys main hide to track down the long-staying adult Black Tern. It took me no more than 30 seconds to locate it, sat on Round Island with it's face just starting to come into moult. This was the first year tick I'd got in what seemed like ages so was good to see, especially in what had been a lousy year so far for Black Tern in the county.

The survey lasted the usual 4 and a bit hours. I actually managed to find a pretty decent selection of stuff with a hunting female Peregrine around 06:25am, a Barn Owl early on, an eclipse drake Garganey, 1 Black tailed Godwit, 1 Green Sandpiper, 5 Snipe, 3-4 juv. Yellow Wagtail, 1-2 Kingfishers & 4 Pochard The 'autumn' appears to have well and truely begun! Having said that there were still a few Warblers in song, especially Reed Warblers with 20 singing males counted.

After the survey, I met up with Dave and Sam and we headed off to the north of the county. On the way up we stopped off at Twywell Hills & Dales to have a quick look for Marbled Whites. We saw a pretty good number of them with the added bonus of my first two Essex Skippers and plenty of Six-Spot Burnet Moths. There had been a significant influx of Crossbill into the country of the last couple of days and so it wasn't overly surprising that we had 2 over calling, however they must have been pretty high up as we failed to actually see them.

We then headed onto Wakerley Wood to look for Crossbill. Sadly none were to be found despite a walking a big old circuit of the wood. Butterflies included 3-4 Silver-Washed Fritillaries and 2-3 White Admirals. My photos of the Fritillaries were all blurred as they kept vibrating their wings dammit! The two below were a couple of Dave's excellent shots:

Our final stop was Fermyn Woods in the hope of getting goods views of Purple Emperor. The weather however was not playing fair and pretty much the whole time it was cloudy. We did see quite a few Purple Emperors around the tree tops, however we failed to see any remotely close other than one which zoomed between us before heading for the treetops. Other things of note were 2 Purple Hairstreak, 2 Silver-Washed Fritillaries and several White Admirals & Commas.