White Letter Day

Sunday (03/07) appeared to finally be a day without rain, following a horribly wet 2-3 weeks. The day began at an eye-watering 5am, to carry out the last installment of breeding bird survey in the Upper Cherwell Valley near Banbury, together with Gareth Blockley.

Despite the shock of the early start, I really enjoyed myself. The highlight was in fact not bird related as I stumbled across 18 Bee Orchids, a Pyramidal Orchid and an insane amount of Kidney Vetch, more than I've ever seen before!

On the bird front it was fairly quiet with a Common Sand & 4 Common Tern on Grimsbury Res, while the survey produced 4 Lesser Whitethroat, singing Reed Warbler, juvenile Sedge Warbler and great numbers of juvenile Whitethroat. Six Marbled White were also seen in the early morning sun.

Afterwards, Gareth and I gave Bucknell Wood, near Silverstone a go for butterflies. July really is a great time in Bucknell with plenty of interest. It was particularly pleasing to see my first White Letter Hairstreaks of the year. We found 3 in total, sunning themselves on the treetops, occasionally having a brief fly about before settling again.

There were also at least 5 very smart male Silver Washed Fritillaries about, though one was already looking pretty ragged, presumably having caught itself on a bramble. Several Wood White were still around with at least 11 and a couple of Red Admiral made an appearance too. Still surprisingly no White Admiral, nor were there any Purple Emperors as yet also. A Spotted Flycatcher was nice and the only bird of note.

We finished our day at Whitecross Green Wood south of Bicester, to have a go for Black Hairstreak. It was near the end of their flight period, however we were hoping we may catch one or two.

We took quite a long walk to the pond area and after a bit of a search had a probable flying around an ash tree, followed by decent views of one that dropped in front of us for a minute or so, before zooming off into some nearby blackthorn...result!
It appeared to be a really well-managed site, with tonnes of Marbled White along the flower-rich tracks and loads of Common Spotted Orchids, now mostly gone over. They must look pretty spectacular when at their peak. A couple of Silver Washed Frits also made appearances. The super early start was then catching up with us so we headed home.