Given how hot it was when I awoke this morning I decided to
have breakfast and have a quick walk up to Rede Common before my 10am Zoom
meeting. Rob Peters had seen a Dark
Green Fritillary there yesterday so I thought it would be worth a punt before
things got too sizzly.
I had a pleasant hour ambling through the fields of grass,
Rosebay, Creeping Thistle and Ragwort and amassed a good selection of
species. The DGF had a couple of power
glides through the Thistles but did not linger so I am using Rob’s pic. He saw it later on so it is still in ether somewhere.
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Dark
Green Fritillary - Rob Peters
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Meadow Browns and ‘Whites’ were everywhere with the odd
Gatekeeper, Small Copper and Marbled White too while Painted Lady and the other
thee common big species were seen.
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Small Tortoiseshell
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Meadow Browns and Ruddy Darter soaking up some early rays
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Essex Skipper
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| Comma |
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Small Copper
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Painted Lady
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Lattice Heath Moth
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I
struggle with both White-letter and Purple Hairstreak here but as usual both
gave brief tantalising views from their respective Elms and oaks.
A Chrysotoxum bicinctum was the best Hoverfly with a few
commoner species along with both Volucella zonaria and pellucens.
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| Chrysotoxum bicinctum |
A not quite mature male Migrant Hawker gave me a scare in shades
of slate grey and black and Ruddy and Common Darters were already active.
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Ruddy Darter
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| Migrant Hawker |
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| Migrant Hawker |
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| Ruddy Darter |
Broods of Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Whitethroat were all seen
and at least 45 Swifts screaming in a swirling ball above the Common was a sign
that our local birds have fledged and had a good season.
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Common Swifts
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Corn Marigold
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A quick meeting and subsequent visit and then back into Kent
for a look at The Larches to see if things had moved on. The Yellow Bird’s Nests were poking through
in several spots with most with still a way to go but I did find several that
were fully up and glowing in the leaf litter under the Beeches and Yews. They are still difficult to photograph with
most images coming out far pinker than they appear to my eyes which I suspect
is due to their semi translucent nature.
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I took this one with my phone and the colour is if anything, truer to life.
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The Broad-leaved Helleborines were now huge with some flower
spires over three foot tall but not a single bloom was even slightly open and I
think that they have a couple of weeks to go yet. However,
well away from the pathside monsters I found a strange foot high Helleborine
with open flowers, most of which lacked almost any colour. There were still
unopened ones above but they were sparsely placed. I presume it is an early runty BLH.
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| Broad-leaved Helleborine |
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| Broad-leaved Helleborine |
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| Broad-leaved Helleborine - quite possibly Var.viridiflora |
Plenty of Whites danced around the
clearing but it will be a while before shimmering Blues return btu a Clouded Yellow was my first of the year. There were lots of Meadow Grasshoppers and a
few Darters and a single male Migrant Hawker patrolling while two Silver Washed
Frits briefly landed on a few remaining Bramble flowers before rushing off once
again.
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Green-veined White
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Sicus ferrugineus
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Meadow Grasshopper
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Dingy White Plume - Merrifieldia baliodactylus
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| Silver-Y |
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| Meadow Grasshopper |
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Machimus atricapillus
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| Tutsan |
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| Tutsan |
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| Silver Washed
Fritillary |
It really was far too warm, even in the
woods so I called it a day and came home.
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