High summer in the garden

With prolonged hot weather during June and July, I spent plenty of time out in our Brackley garden. It's proved really enjoyable, with good numbers of butterflies popping in and out - certainly better than 2024!

Amongst a nice variety of species, I've been lucky enough to add TWO new butterfly species for the garden, in the shape of a single Marbled White on 01/07, which flew a couple of circuits before departing and also a lovely fresh Brown Argus on 10/07, that allowed just enough time for a couple of photos before getting flushed by a bee and off it went! Both have been anticipated for sometime, so it was awesome to finally get them. It's going to be really difficult now to add any more species, with the garden list now standing at 24!

Just the second ever garden Small Copper also made an unexpected appearance on 10/08, spending a short time on one of the buddleias.

Small Skippers were surprisingly with a number visits, as well as a single Essex Skipper on 10/07 - the first time I've seen both species in the garden on the same day. These were part of a total of 14 species, a garden day record!

Common Blue is a pretty infrequent visitor too but was lucky enough to have a fresh male hang about for a while on 01/07.

Just the one Painted Lady this year (09/08), but it was a beautifully fresh one, hanging out around the buddleias, which also attracted a Hummingbird Hawkmoth on 10/08. Another also made it into our kitchen for a short time on 13/08!! 

Other species seen included up to 10 Gatekeepers, occasional Comma, Speckled Wood and Green-Veined White, while more regular Large and Small Whites, Peacocks, Red Admirals, Holly Blue, Meadow Brown and Brimstone.  

A couple of new garden Odonata were also a bonus, with both a Beautiful Demoiselle and a Broad-Bodied Chaser lingering. The Demoiselle in particular was cool, posing nicely around the pond.

Bird wise, the big highlight was a Whitethroat on 13/08 - a garden first, flicking about with a small tit flock in the hedge.

Flying ant season, pulled in a mass of large gulls to the area on 10/08. The playing field was alive with Lesser Black-backs, but also a lovely adult Yellow-Legged Gull. It was strange peering over my garden fence watching a YLG at point blank range! Also of interest were three ringed LBB Gulls, two Dutch and one Spanish! The flying ants also pulled in a Hobby a couple of times - now pretty much annual in autumn.

Summer meets Autumn

Mid-summer and the early beginnings of autumn were a further continuation of the warm dry weather from the spring.

All local water bodies reached probably the lowest levels I'd seen, in my 13 years living in south Northants. As such, there was lots of suitable wader habitat and I was licking my lips, as to what this year's autumn wader passage had to offer!

Ardley Quarry was where I focused most of my efforts, with the ERF lagoon looking good, if rather low! However, it was Bicester Wetland that delivered the first half decent wader of the autumn, with a couple of stunning islandica Black-Tailed Godwit, on the evening of 29/06.

As other places started to pull in passage waders, I found it hard going, other than a pair of Oystercatchers and the usual strong passage of Green Sandpipers and sprinkling of Common Sandpipers. However, one facinating turn of events was the numbers of Little Ringed Plovers, culminating in a startling count of 26, spilt between the lagoon and the quarry lake on the evening of 05/07. Consisting of 17 adults and 9 juveniles, some undoubetbly had been the result of breeding on site, presumably suplimented by other birds on the move.  

Gulls are the other point of interest in late summer, as non-breeders gather and fresh juveniles begin to appear. Yellow-Legged Gulls were as usual, fairly easily to enounter, while a distinctive 2cy Caspian Gull lingered around the lagoon during the early days of July.