Today we went to the wood and helped Butterfly Conservation in their survey of this year's migration of Painted Lady butterflies, which is the biggest for many years.
This involved sitting at the edge of the wayleave from 11:00-13:00
and counting all the Painted Ladies that flew across in front of us - they're going the same way, as they migrate North.
In all, we saw 77 in the two hours! We saw other cool insects as well, such as this damselfly:
and various dragonflies:
The other thing we were doing in the wood was checking the trail camera we'd left by the badger sett last night, but there was nothing apart from a video of me walking away from the camera and coming back to it! We've set it up again in a different place and with different sensitivity settings, so we'll see what we get... Anyway, I did at least get a nice photo of the moon last night:
Mike
Saturday, 30 May 2009
A couple of hours in the sun
Sunday, 25 May 2008
Allotment produce and wildlife
We had another order for produce from the wood for use at the allotment to fulfil this weekend, so went up with the trailer and brought various stuff back. Pea sticks, tomato poles and stakes for fruit trees:
The rest of this post covers the wildlife we saw this weekend...
Meanwhile everything is growing like crazy. Some of the chestnut stools have grown 12 inches now!
The wayleave outside the wood is denser than ever:
and seems to be a good place for someone to eat their dinner:
The pond is also coming on well, getting very green now:
We also some some familiar insects today, such as this Speckled Yellow moth:
and this Peacock butterfly:
and a new one, a damselfly. There's a competition going on here... the first picture is by me with the Nikon, and the second is by Tracy with the Panasonic, you have to tell us which is best (ignoring colour differences, which can be evened out in post-processing)!
apparently the most obvious difference between these and dragonflies is that damselflies fold the wings back when at rest, while a dragonfly keeps them outstretched.
And finally, an unknown fly:
Mike
