Tuesday 16 July 2013

A couple of insects

With walks being few and far between recently, I enjoyed a walk with Bec on Sunday. On the bird front there was a family of MARSH TITS and several young GREEN WOODPECKER in the woods SKYLARK and YELLOWHAMMERS sang out in the fields and the odd SWIFT drifted over but generally it was quiet as to be expected here at this time of year.
So the focus was on the insects, finally butterflies were noticeable and not for their absence! They included SMALL and LARGE in both SKIPPERS and WHITES, several SPECKLED WOOD, RINGLETS, SMALL TORTOISESHELL, MEADOW BROWN, COMMA and 2 WHITE ADMIRALS. The pond in the wood had good numbers of damsels and dragons, including LARGE RED DAMSELFLY and BROAD BODIED CHASER. The first of the highlights came when a GOLDEN RINGED DRAGONFLY was found patrolling a ditch in Bull and Birches wood, the second highlight was found on a private part of the estate a SCARCE EMERALD a new species for me and another reminder of just how surprising this place can be.
Scarce Emerald

Scarce Emerald

Golden Ringed Dragonfly


On the moth front finally numbers are really picking up and there have been a couple of new additions to the site list Steve has been doing almost all the recording, he found the RDB species OLIVE CRESCENT recently and a Kent rarity GREAT OAK BEAUTY making the Sissinghurst list now 438 for macro moths. The number of species found in just one night has peaked so far at 101!! I've managed just one visit in the last week a couple of moths from that visit are below.
Pine Hawk-moth

Coronet

11 comments:

Ana Mínguez Corella said...

Just beautiful.. Greetings from Madrid.

Ana Mínguez Corella said...

Just beautiful.. Greetings from Madrid.

Marc Heath said...

Brilliant Alan, 2 Dragons I have yet to ever encounter.

Ingemar Pettersson said...

Hi!
Stunning macrowork
Greetings from Sweden
/Ingemar

Warren Baker said...

Scarce Emerald and Golden Ringed Dragonfly, nice Alan, love to see either of those here :-)

Tammy said...

Beautiful captures, Alan! That is quite a number of moths!

Greenie said...

Alan ,
Two great Odonata there , and great shots of them too .
Well found .

Phil said...

Hi Alan. Some lovely pics there!
Paid a short visit to your great patch today. Saw Marsh Tit, White Admirals,Golden-ringed dragon, Purple Hairstreaks and Beautiful Demoiselles.
Would have loved to have seen Scarce Emerald too.

Helma said...

Hi Alan,
what a beautiful damsel and dragonfly!! These are new to me but I think they are beautiful to see. You got lucky and she could take a picture and share with us :-)
Also you night owls there are nice, but I'm all for the dragonfly and damselfly :-)
Kind regards, Helma

Lasse said...

Hi Alan, beautiful series of macro photos here!

Maria said...

These dragonflies are very detailed!