Head down

It's that time of year again...

Rather than looking up into the sky or even into the canopy of the bushes, my head is down, looking at flower heads and grasses in search of invertebrates. I do enjoy the challenge of identifying these tiny insects and spiders but it takes time and patience,  I have precious little of either.

On Saturday evening Janet and I had wander around the patch. There were at least 40 Black-tailed Godwits on the Budge fields, most of them look like icelandica race birds and five Ruff including a juvenile, there was also Little Ringed Plover and a handful of Dunlin.  At least one of the cuckoos was still present and there were plenty of 'toggers' lined up along the road all taking the same photo - we left them to it and went looking for bees and hovers but it was a bit late in the day. We did find some more of the funky caterpillars of Depressaria daucella which are starting to build their cocoons. We summoned Tom Tams away from the Cuckoo as we knew he was keen to see them as they aren't a commonly recorded moth in the county.

Depressaria daucella Caterpillar building its cocoon in cow parsley

We had some adult moths and butterflies and other stuff. I'll put Sunday's sightings on here tomorrow hopefully.

Male Syrphus sp hoverfly

Beautiful China Mark moth (Nymphula nitidulata)

Common Blue butterfly (female)

Potato Mirid Closterotomus norwegicus

Yellow Shell moth (Camptogramma bilineata)

Small skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris)

Field grasshopper 

An influx of migrants

On the day that our new leader and his Home Secretary announce that they are are going to strengthen our immigration laws a tidal-wave of migrants from Africa arrived, via Europe, onto our shores overnight.

Even Boris can't stop these migrants however - painted lady butterflies - millions of them.

Painted Lady Butterfly

A typical scene this morning

In a short walk at Druridge this morning we counted over 250 of them. Other observers counted similar numbers up and down the coast. This is the third and most impressive arrival of painted lady butterflies this summer. What's also amazing is that we witnessed a mass movement of the same species over Athens in April - thousands passing through the city centre.

Today was a good day for butterflies at Druridge with at least eleven species noted.

small skipper

Comma

a beautiful 'blue' female Common Blue

Migrant moths were also noticeable with diamond back moths, silver Y's and a yet-to-be-identified moth all over the dunes and grasslands.

Diamond back moth

There were hundreds of these in the dunes this evening...

Whilst we were photographing some of the hoverflies a couple of visitors showed us a photo of a hummingbird hawkmoth they had just photographed and we soon relocated it - a patch first for me and only my third in Northumberland.

Hummingbird hawkmoth - new for the patch

Some hoverflies from today

Rhingia campestris - sometimes known as the 'Heineken hoverfly'

Pellucid hoverfly - Volucella pellucens

 Female Syrphus sp. possibly ribesii

tbc

female Platycheirus sp

male Eristalis sp. possibly E. tenax

Most of this stuff still needs identifying...

One of the 'picture-winged flies'

Crabro cribarius  - female

Tenthrado sp

Orthops campestris

Spider - underside

Same spider from above

Grasshopper Sp

Back to Birds...
Wader numbers were much-reduced from what they were on Friday. Today there were two wood sandpipers, one common sand, five black-tailed godwits, two ruff and greenshank of note. On Friday there were 10 common sand, one wood sand, one green sand, one little ringed plover, 27 black-tailed godwit, four knot, ten snipe, two ruff, whimbrel and a the first returning golden plover of the autumn.

We had hoped to try to ring some storm petrels tonight but the sea was still boiling after recent northerlies, loud enough to drown-out or speaker for sure. We did go and check the volume out though and had ten Med gulls in the beach roost including a juvenile.

Depressing

No blog activity this week. I've been internet free for a week at the famous (amongst ringers at least) Icklesham site in East Sussex. It's been rather nice having not having to deal with email for a week.

Back on the patch this morning before the rain set in. It was depressing. Highlights were a new brood of little grebe (three) and a year-tick stock dove.

It depresses me even more to hear of the new scrapes at Newton coming up trumps with a Stilt Sandpiper. It's brilliant for the Stringer, he has put a lot of work in there and deserves some good birds. Druridge could and should be pulling in birds like stilt sandpiper. It won't attract any passage waders this autumn and won't again until the Budge fields are properly grazed. The frustrating thing for me is that I can't do anything about the situation....

Here are some photos from today.

Hoverfly Helophilus trivittatus 

Hoverfly Helophilus trivittatus 

Green-veined white 'on the job'

small skipper on knapweed